Philippi Horticultural Area and the DA’s ‘malicious engineering’

All over the city there is a pattern at play relating to how the DA-led City and provincial government engages with citizens who have legitimate grievances and challenges.

First, ignore the problem. Second, ignore it long enough to cause a crisis. Third, enter the consultants (see extended version below); use vast City resources to set up a non-elected parallel structure to circumvent the voice of the community. And, finally, righteously implement the “negotiated” plan over the sidelined community, experts and scientists.

Enter the consultants - a case study

Mayoral committee member Johan van de Merwe and MEC for Agriculture Alan Winde both announced, over the last 15 months, that they would be engaging consultants to decide on the future of the PHA, totally ignoring the fact that for nine years, local organisations, including the PHA Campaign, have been involved in a desperate fight to defend the city’s prime source of vegetable supply and future potable water - the Cape Flats Aquifer.

Install Pedi, the Philippi East Development Initiative, is located in the densely urban Philippi East and funded by the City of Cape Town. It has no PHA representation on its board or staff, or a mandate from farmers or any of its 60 supporting stakeholder organisations.

Pedi’s website describes its vision “To build Philippi into a thriving urban hub where businesses choose to invest and grow” Pedi’s two-man consultancy headed by Thomas Twana would do well to work with Social Justice Coalition and others to address poor sanitation in Philippi East, a major cause of injustice polluting the Cape Flats Aquifer.

In April this year, MEC for Agriculture Alan Winde phoned the PHA Campaign chairperson Nazeer Sonday and said he wanted to help the PHA. He announced he was supporting a plan by EDP’s Andrew Borraine (see WCEDP website). 

A tender was announced to this effect. Their website says the “EDP provides targeted partnering solutions to improve the performance of the local and regional economic

system”.

Not one of the farmers or the supporting stakeholder organisations has been an EDP partner, neither were they approached to be.

The PHA Campaign opposed the tender as it called for a mixed-use outcome. Mixed-use is a term in planning for land use that allows different uses, such as housing, commercial and industrial activities.

Despite our five-page objection to the tender, it was to be commissioned. The tender was published in (Cape Times’s sister newspaper) the Weekend Argus on April 8, 2017, and called for proposals by April 20, giving just 12 days’ notice, of which only six were business days.

In terms of the Supply Chain Management Guide 2004, the preparation time for tender may generally not be less than 30 days from the date of invitation to bid. For large works, this period should generally be not less than 12 weeks.

This was the haste with which the MEC wanted to inflict another plan on the PHA.

The following month we were alerted by the opposition ANC that this tender would appear before the multiparty Western Cape Standing Committee on Agriculture. 

We appealed to its chairperson, the DA’s Beverly Schäfer, to review the tender with regards to its highly irregular process and its call for a mixed-use outcome.

The Western Cape Standing Committee mandate is to protect agriculture, hold the department and minister accountable, and serve the people of this city. 

Instead, its chairperson, the DA’s Schäfer, not only doesn’t question the R1 million spent on a study that would potentially delete our farmlands, but has now outrageously announced

her own plan for the PHA that we presume is delivered by Pedi and/or EDP, with the full support of

the DA.

We requested details of this new plan, which calls for the “creation of the city’s breadbasket” (a newspaper headline on August 17) with R8.1billion in revenue, 112000 jobs and eco-homes on aquifers. Ms Shaffer wrote back and said it’s just ideas (sic).

Conflict of interest does

not maketh an accountable

government

We now question the conflict of interest inherent in these influential portfolio positions. Ms Shafer is chairperson of the oversight committee for Agriculture, but also the DA spokesperson for Agriculture. 

MEC Winde is the Minister of Agriculture, there to protect the interests of agriculture, but he is also the minister of Economic Opportunities, having to pander to developers’ needs for land.

Some have said it’s an advantage to have two portfolios under a single political head. The PHA experience illustrates otherwise.

But I digress

To sew up the problem, the said affected community is involved in a long and winding public participation process which we term malicious engineering. Getting consultants to replace the voice of the community, make mockery of political accountability institutions, label actual community members agitators.

But my favourite is labelling said agitators “ANC supporters”. Actually one can throw any opposition party in that box.

Apparently, in this city citizens have no right to question the governing party and hold them accountable. We are made to believe that if you are not happy with how you are governed, please vote for another party at the next elections. 

Are we living in a democracy or a mockery? There seems to be a set of rules for the DA and another set of rules for other political parties, notably the one at national.

The PHA Campaign, having been involved in the DA government’s malicious engineering for nine years, we see through this smoke and mirrors and media spin-doctoring.

We are, quite frankly, gatvol of this maliciously engineered version of democracy.

We will not be solved by consultants; we will NOT be “organised” by political parties or political opportunists.

We will not be ignored, sidelined and vilified out of pursuing our livelihood. We will protect our farming area, protect our 6 000 jobs, solve our farmworker housing crisis - and we will do it on our terms in the manner which best serves us and our city.

Sonday is Chairperson of the PHA Campaign, a farmer and an activist