The residents of the Zevenfontein informal settlement, alongside Dainfern in northern Johannesburg, will be holding their breath on Monday. An application will be heard at the Witwatersrand High Court to determine whether their dream of owning houses in Cosmo City, a proposed housing project in northern Randburg, will finally be realised.
The case has been touted as a fight between the rights of property owners in the rich northern suburbs and the rights of the poor to adequate housing.
”We are excited about Cosmo City, but the community is getting impatient,” said Jake Molepo, a community spokesperson and secretary of the Community Development Forum. ”We have nothing at the moment.”
The Zevenfontein community has been promised houses in Cosmo City, Johannesburg’s flagship housing project, located smack in the middle of the affluent northern suburbs. The government announced the R1,5-billion project in 1999, but it has been delayed for the past five years because of resistance from property owners in the area who protested that the development would negatively affect the value of their properties.
In the area, not far from Honeydew, new cluster and ”security estates” have been built among older homes in settled neighbourhoods.
For the Cosmo City development, the City of Johannesburg plans to build more than 15 000 housing units with various tenure options, including low-cost, medium-density and bonded houses.
Molepo said about 3 500 members of the Zevenfontein community had registered for the Cosmo City housing project.
The Jukskei Crocodile Catchment Forum (JCCF), an umbrella body of residents’ associations, and the Village Farm Administrators, who own property in the area, have asked the court to grant an interdict to stop the Cosmo City development.
The applicants claim the City of Johannesburg did not follow the correct procedure in proclaiming the Cosmo City township and that the process was filled with irregularities.
The court case revolves around whether the Gauteng Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Land was required to complete its environmental study of the Cosmo City area before the town council tribunal, which decides on the establishment of new townships, could convene to hear objections and decide on the Cosmo City development. The department is still in the process of reviewing its environmental impact assessment (EIA).
In a founding affidavit, Josua Joubert, one of the three applicants and a director of Village Farm Administrators, claims the EIA process was flawed, because the ”record of decision [of the department] did not favour Cosmo City” and the council first had to review the environmental process before the tribunal could convene.
Joubert claims the town council tribunal met in December 2002, before the department’s study had been completed. He argues that therefore the tribunal was not authorised to make a decision concerning Cosmo City.
Democratic Alliance councillors had walked out of the tribunal because they felt it could not proceed without the department’s report. In doing so the DA councillors paralysed the tribunal, because the required quorum to make a decision could not be met.
The tribunal chairperson, MSH Cachalia, reconvened the tribunal the next day with alternative councillors to make up the required quorum and the new tribunal approved the development. Joubert claims the new tribunal was not legal and Cachalia acted in an inappropriate way.
In the answering affidavit, the City of Johannesburg argues that the departmental process and the tribunal process can run simultaneously. Soraya Nana, assistant director of legal services (town planning and tribunal) of the Johannesburg City Council, said in the affidavit that the department’s approval is only necessary prior to the implementation of the development.
”In previous hearings the tribunal accepted that the township establishment processes and [the departmental] process could run simultaneously and in parallel to each other,” Nana said in the affidavit.
While the legal eagles fight it out in court over the legality of the project, the Zevenfontein community has to do without electricity, running water, clinics and proper roads. Their nearest school is at Witkoppen, almost 10km from where they live.
The council does not want to upgrade basic services in these settlements because it expects that communities will move to Cosmo City in a year or two. As part of the proposed agreement between the city and the department, Zevenfontein and the other informal settlements in the area will than be rehabilitated back to veld.
Molepo said the community will benefit from Cosmo City through new clinics and schools that will create opportunities for the jobless.
”We blame the racist objectors who are fighting integration every step of the way. They do not want us there,” Molepo said. ”They are living in big posh houses, while we have to live in our small shacks.”