“The city is good to the elite. It is not good to the poor and the oppressed.”
These were the words of the Economic Freedom Fighters’ Carl Niehaus in his assessment of Cape Town as political parties and residents clashed over whether enough is being done to undo decades of spatial inequality.
Niehaus was addressing eNCA’s WeTheNation election debate at the University of the Western Cape on Sunday.
He used Dunoon, a township in Cape Town, to explain that thousands of residents live in squalor despite promises of affordable housing.
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But the governing Democratic Alliance argued they were not trying to claim they had undone decades of apartheid spatial planning and injustice.
Carl Pophaim contended that efforts to address the legacy problem were there.
He pointed to the expansion of the MyCiTi network and the building of affordable accommodation in the inner city.
A student who was part of the gathering hit back at the DA’s assertions.
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“Saying that you are going to give us MyCiTi pass - you are not solving spatial inequality. In fact, you are reinforcing it because spatial inequality is deeply entrenched in the land. You are not doing anything to fix it,” he explained.
The Good Party's Brett Herron echoed similar sentiments.
“We need to become developers ourselves instead of selling public land to the private developer for private profit. We have to use well-located public land to start addressing where housing is located," Herron said.