In the past few weeks the Mail & Guardian has carried a number of political views on the crisis of overcrowding and poor sanitation in the Imizamo Yethu informal settlement in Hout Bay.
The City of Cape Town has a responsibility to remedy this situation. We have therefore become involved in a public consultation process with the communities of Imizamo Yethu and Hout Bay as a whole to find an acceptable and practical way of dealing with the conditions in the informal settlement. The outcome of these discussions will determine how we move forward. But one thing remains absolutely clear. We cannot sit by and allow the situation in Imizamo Yethu to worsen simply to dodge hard decisions or to avoid criticism.
Indeed, the city’s maligned neglect in Imizamo Yethu has escaped attention for years because it suits the ANC’s electoral interests.
Government cannot continue with the ”band-aid” approach, patching up the damage every time there is an immediate crisis, like a shack fire or, as in the case of Delmas, a typhoid outbreak. This was what the ANC administration of Cape Town did in the case of Imizamo Yethu, knowing full well that it was not enough.
In November 2002 the ANC municipal government recommended the urgent relocation of families from Imizamo Yethu to other parts of the city in order to prevent further overcrowding. But on June 4 2003, the city manager declared a moratorium on shack demolitions there, stating that they would instead seek ”a more humane solution” to the overcrowding. But no solution was found. There was, in fact, no intention of finding a solution and the situation deteriorated daily.
In February 2004 one of the worst shack fires ever seen in Cape Town broke out in the tightly packed settlement, leaving 5 000 people homeless. Following the fire, some brick houses were built by the Niall Mellon Foundation, and some services put in. Yet the brick houses, which require more space, displaced thousands of people.
The majority of the fire victims were left in tents and community halls, and with a steady stream of new arrivals, informal structures began to be built further and further up the mountainside above Hout Bay, into the conservation area, the nature reserve and around the reservoir.
With no toilets and no sewerage, this became a health risk to the community and the entire water supply for Hout Bay. In 2006 a study of water quality in the Disa River and its lagoon revealed dangerously high concentrations of the bacteria ecoli, and the run-off in the area has also become toxic.
Pursuing any programme to upgrade and improve living conditions in the settlement will require some simple maths and some hard decisions.
The total available land in Imizamo Yethu is 34ha. By law, about 18ha has been allocated for housing, while 16ha has been reserved for amenities. This site has become a political football field.
Regardless of what happens to the remaining 16ha, on the total area of 34ha there is only space for an absolute maximum of 2 000 formal housing units if we hope to have a sustainable and properly serviced community, with roads, permanent sewerage and electricity.
This is worked out on South Africa’s standard low-cost housing model of 40 units per hectare. Given the number of people that need houses in Imizamo Yethu — approximately 18 000 — we need about 6 000 units. Therefore, even if all 34ha of Imizamo Yethu were used for densely packed formal housing, there would be a shortfall of 4 000 units.
This is the challenge that we have to work with and we look forward to working in a spirit of cooperation with the residents of Imizamo Yethu and Hout Bay.
In the meantime, the ANC and its apologists have done enough damage. Playing the race card or calling for land grabs only stirs up anger, makes public participation more difficult and a solution harder to find.
Helen Zille is mayor of Cape Town