I hereby invite Stephen Grootes on a tour of Khayelitsha and a few other Cape Town “suburbs”.
The tour will equip him with direct knowledge about the quality of life for residents of these ghettoes, instead of having to rely for his analysis, as he states he does (“Head and Shoulders – Cape Town success could become a key issue in 2024 elections”, Daily Maverick, 30 January 2023), on the output of the DA’s “formidable communication machinery”.
Groote’s analysis is based on the assumption that because Cape Town’s leafier suburbs and tourist areas are relatively well maintained compared to those of other cities, it follows that the quality of services to Cape Town’s less-leafy suburbs is similarly superior.
This argument is drawn directly from the Helen Zille playbook. When confronted with the poor conditions on the wrong side of the proverbial fence, she says: “compared to (X, Y or Z) life in Cape Town is better for the poor,” without providing any evidence.
It is an argument that seeks to brush away the reality that Cape Town is among the most unequal cities on Earth, while at the same time providing a measure of comfort to the middle class that the quality of life it enjoys is not at the expense of the poor – indeed, that its quality of life somehow rubs off on the poor.
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Grootes suggests that the test is to compare life in Khayelitsha to life in Diepsloot, in Johannesburg, but doesn’t provide any comparisons. He implies that Diepsloot is worse because it is not in DA-led Cape Town, but is it actually any worse?
Rather than compare Khayelitsha to Diepsloot, it may be more helpful to compare the quality of life and service provision in Khayelitsha to that of Kenilworth or Kalk Bay. That’s where the real gulf of inequality is to be found.
There is no doubt that Cape Town’s middle class receives relatively decent municipal services. Grootes refers to “power lines being repaired within hours, and potholes are a foreign concept”. But he should know that this is not the case in Khayelitsha, Bonteheuwel, Du Noon, Nyanga…
A government with a very healthy bank balance such as the City of Cape Town’s, with good financial resources and a stable credit rating, supported by a fully resourced and skilled administration, should be able to fix the power lines in Khayelitsha just as quickly as they can fix them in my neighbourhood of Newlands, on the foothills of Table Mountain. But the City of Cape Town doesn’t.
When my street has a burst water pipe it is fixed within hours, but that is hardly the test of whether a city is head and shoulders above the rest. The test is why burst sewerage pipes in Langa were only repaired months after the community requested service, and only after I intervened.
Yes, infrastructure disparities in Cape Town are largely inherited from our history as an apartheid city. But the City has also created new apartheid-like suburbs, relegating communities of colour to live in suburbs of poverty on the outskirts of the city… perpetuating disparities and creating new slums.
Grootes should question why, in this city that he has proclaimed head and shoulders above the others, parks in areas such as Delft don’t have safe rubber maps under the slides and merry-go-rounds, similar to those supplied in my neighbourhood to prevent serious injuries.
How it’s possible in this head-and-shoulders-above city for the Langa community to live for so long with raw sewage flowing out of broken sewerage systems that the dirt has hardened to form a new surface covering public open spaces and up to the front doors of people’s homes?
Is there a link between the quality of service delivery to certain communities and the fact that the same Cape Town police precincts top the quarterly crime statistics as the murder capitals of our country?
If Grootes accepts my invitation for a Cape Town township tour, these are some of the issues I’d like to discuss with him.
Cape Town can be head and shoulders above the rest. In order to truly get there it must distribute its financial and human resources in a way that prioritises the creation of decent and dignified living conditions for all residents through guaranteeing parity of service levels.
The fact that it doesn’t do this is a bad choice, that no amount of spin can make good. DM
The Good Party holds nine seats in the DA-led Cape Town Municipality.
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I suggest Brett Herron goes to live in one of the ANC-led municipalities in Jhb or wherever else, and then do a comparison. He sits in his fancy home in Cape Town, critisizing the DA, who at least mostly deliver on what they are mandated to do, for example, coming up with a plan to mitigate the effects of black-outs caused by the ANC. There are certainly problems with townships not getting proper services, but they still do more for these communities than the ANC have ever done since they came to power. The fact is that The Good Party is simply ANC-lite and Brett Herron is just pushing the ANC narrative to ensure his boss keeps her position in cabinet.
I don’t think it is ever valid to justify bad conditions in one area because there are worse conditions elsewhere, so I support Mr Herron’s point – Cape Town Metro should be making more progress in improving conditions in Khayelitsha and others, regardless of what’s happening in Diepsloot.
100% agree. We should judge our success as a city based on the quality of life of our poorest, not our richest.
One should also dig more deeply into why these conditions exist, but not because of the city, but because of the communities that live in these areas. For example, I have heard that contractors whose job it is to go into townships and provide services are reluctant to do so due to the incredible personal risk these areas pose. We all know about City staff who got mugged, with someone being shot, while repairing a sewer pipe. So yes, perhaps if I risked being shot to repair a pipe, I might put it off for months myself.
He really should visit former middle and working class areas outside the WC and run by the ANC. Areas that I grew up in in KZN are basically turning into giant townships due to the corruption and incompetence of the ANC. At very least things are (relatively speaking) stable here in the WC.
Mr Herron, you talk from a position of irrelevance. Get a real job or become part of a real political party (as sad as it is, the ANC is still real), then your opinions may perhaps be regarded with some form of credibility.
Yes, the ANC is real; really bad everywhere it governs and often where it doesn’t.
In the 1920’s – long before the days of statutory apartheid, a visiting author – (later to become reknown) author Edgar Wallace described Cape Town as a place “where the poor are regularly burnt, blown and flooded on the city’s flatlands and where the rich cling like barnacles to the mountainsides”
While the city’s topography may still promote such a divide to this day – Mr. Herron’s does nothing to refute the fact that Cape town is still the best functioning, least corrupt, best administered and serviced city in the country. A fact which is attested to by the ongoing flood of “semigrants” of all colours to the mother city. I suspect a forensic study of potholes throughout comparable cities in SA will be an embarassing reveal for his party which has consistently failed to become anything more than a minority group which is a diet version of the ANC !
Cheap politicking by the Good party as always. We notice what a great job Patricia DeLille did when she was mayor. The truth is that hundreds of thousands of poor disadvantaged people from areas like the Eastern Cape flood to Cape town each year adding serious burdens to their infrastructure. Notwithstanding, they still do a better job than the other provinces combined
You are quite correct. I pass through Dunoon daily where land invasions were rife during the pandemic and a whole new township sprung up. The residents of existing Dunoon trashed the new bus stations and the residents seem to care little about their surroundings. My point is that my business premises and home pays significant money to the city in rates & taxes. Thus I do expect good service in return, I also expect a proportion of that money to be put towards the poorer people of the community (which the country has in seemingly unlimited numbers). What does frustrate me is the constant cries of inequality – yet if you put nothing in how can you expect to get free handouts for no input to society?
There are bigger issues here. Mass migration (much resulting from cynical attempted political gerrymandering by the ANC and its acolytes) means a never ending and infinite flow of indigents into the successful Western Cape. The collapse and destruction of economic activity and de-industrialisation in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng due to outdated and private enterprise hating ANC policies and lack of de-centralisation planning plus unfettered international immigration are already and will ultimately overwhelm even the best regional and metropolitan administrations.
The country’s tax-base is shrinking as the middle-class emigrate and retire. Instead of sniping against success and the burden that attracts Herron should think how the nation’s path can be turned around and his minor party assist with that.
Half of your statements are just misleading and untrue. Far more people move to Gauteng every year than WC and it remains considerably wealthier. Also the tax base is increasing not decreasing.
There are certainly two sides to Herron’s essay. The cynic might say he should put his money where his mouth is and move from Newlands to Khayelitsha.
But I take his point that there is absolutely no justification anywhere in SA for there to be such extremes between rich and poor. We have become one of the most unequal nations on earth thanks to Apartheid and the ANC, probably in roughly equal measure.
If the DA wants to turn back the clock and make a winning nation of SA, and become national government, everywhere including Cape Town they have to address the extreme poverty of places like Herron mentions.
If they were to win in making Khayelitsha at least livable there would probably be a landslide vote for the DA nationally. But until they weigh Herron’s letter thoughtfully and honestly for its obvious merit, they will stay in opposition for ever. And SA will continue on its merry way to its destiny under the ANC. We live, cursed, in interesting times, a country without hope and without a future.
I am surprised that there has been no mention that I have read of the impact of gangs and crime in the townships. Municipal workers get attacked and robbed. Unsurprisingly, they are reluctant to go into these crime ridden areas. And don’t forget, defeating crime is the responsibility of SAPS and the DA is blocked whenever it tries to make policing a provincial responsibility.
More Good misplaced myopia. While the DA is not perfect, it is way better than the baked in corruption, nepotism and idiocy of the ANC. That is the baseline that shld be compared.
Brett, Why haven’t you joined the SACP yet? Good party is irrelevant.
I suppose Brett Heron has to criticize the DA – it is the role of opposition parties in the City of Cape Town. However, it is important to note that his party is part of the corrupt ANC government. His leaders serves as a cabinet minister in that corrupt government. I suggest Good make up their mind where they stand. Are they part of the ANC led coalition of the corrupt or are they going to be part of the emerging new governments which will include IFP, DA, ActionSA, ACDP etc etc?
I think Brett Herron misses the point and it was incorrect to make these comparisons by Stephen who certainly wanted to drive a particular point home. It is a reality that internal migration has created housing and service delivery challenges for both Cape Town and Johannesburg due to the push and pull factors. These causes of migration lie in the corruption and poor service delivery in the provinces from where people emigrate to both Gauteng and the Western Cape. However, it can also be said that the problems lie in the history of our country and Apartheid that created reservoirs of migrant labour with very poor health and educational facilities and the ANC government like the rest of post colonial Africa continued with some of the Apartheid policies to keep control and added a layer of corruption. People from the Eastern Cape go to the Western Cape just to give birth so that they do not die or their children do not die in the Eastern Cape health facilities that are an object of looting and then remain for economic opportunities. The closure by the ANC of the Bantustan industries without an alternative also spurred this migration with its withdrawal of subsidies for the subsistence agriculture. Brett Herron and Stephen Grootes are both dealing wiih the symptoms than the underlying causes which are in the ANC misrule.
Fair comment from Mr Herron, but it comes from a highly compromised place – it was his boss ‘Aunty Pat’ who really rolled out the red carpet for property speculators (sometimes known as ‘developers’) to cut corners and ‘build and run’.
People who pay for services are more likely to get good services than people who don’t pay. How can people who steal electricity complain if their supply is disrupted ? It’s the same for any service, be it municipal or private.
Mr Herron, to get an objective comparison between service delivery indicators for poor residents between Cape Town and other cities in SA, please consult the results of systematic, recurrent research undertaken by the National Treasury, StatsSA and the NDP. You will discover that by any measure and across all service delivery categories (health, education, jobs) Cape Town delivers much better outcomes for poor people than any other SA city. For good reason as touched on by Grootes in his piece: good, accountable, functional, non-corrupt governance of a DA-run city.
All these detractors of Brett Heron’s post must miss the glory days of the P.W. Botha’s National Party administration. There the first line of defense against any country, person or circumstance which made we privileged few South Africans protected by apartheid feel uncomfortable was to say” look at the American South” or “Compare that to the Australian treatment of the Aboriginal people”. Let’s look in the mirror honestly and still feel good about these counterarguments to Brett Heron’s article. My guess is you won’t as long as YOU have your electricity supply, water supply and potholes repaired speedily in your home suburb.
Brett Heron will never give credit where it is due. The DA steered by Geordin Hill-Lewis has, and is, achieving a lot despite many challenges. Only a miracle can solve this in one year.
Brett is quick to blame the DA but as the opposition refuses to ask “why are services so poor in these areas”? This could be due to a number of reasons including:
– People settling on areas that were unsuitable for permanent infrastructure, but after a certain amount of time people expect it, so it gets installed even if it will break within a short period of time
– Overpopulation putting too much pressure on the systems that exist in areas where it can be installed
– Service providers who are afraid to go into the poorer areas lest they be robbed of their belongings and work tools and the emotional damage that goes with that, as well as potential loss of life
– The simple reality that 7 million tax payers cannot support 50 million people on their backs, so there is not enough resources to decisively deal with the issue
But yes, blame the DA because that’s all you can come up with.
Sounds eerily similar to Beaumont from ActionSA and his permanent attempts to derail the DA with whatever pompous windbag rhetoric he can think of on any given day.
I only had a glance at Red Herring’s article now, but did not bother read it thoroughly. It’s always easier to criticise from the sideline than rolling up your sleeves and work for the people of this province, even if it means working with the opposition. In the words of Elvis : a little less conversation, a little more action.