Lisa Lee

A superb analysis by @Nigel_Branken Some people have been asking: “Tell me exactly how, in simple English, the DA will bring apartheid back.” Let me give you ten ways that they've been bringing it back in Cape Town: 1. Unequal investment in suburbs versus townships... leaving massive infrastructure backlogs in townships: sewage flowing in the streets, dilapidated roads, water challenges, etc. Apartheid created these inequalities. Government budgets should be used to fix them. 2. Failing to adequately address apartheid spatial planning while selling off public land that could help provide affordable housing. Look at Tafelberg in Sea Point. The Constitutional Court found that both the Province and the City had failed to meet their respective social housing obligations in the CBD and Sea Point. It also found that the Province failed to meaningfully engage the public over the proposed sale. 3. Outsourcing core city functions to private companies... workers doing essential public work get low wages while their employers make profits. Public budgets should help address historical inequality through decent wages and secure jobs. 4. Promoting property investment and tourism without adequately protecting affordable housing. Homes become investment assets and Airbnb accommodation while ordinary workers struggle to afford rent near their jobs. Who gets to live in the city, and who gets priced out? 5. Fighting a war on the poor rather than on poverty... evictions, demolitions and removing people from public spaces. Look at Bongani Qolani, dragged naked from his home during an Anti-Land Invasion Unit operation. The courts found the City's conduct unlawful and unconstitutional. That humiliation should remind us of a history we were supposed to have left behind. 6. White dominance within the DA and the undermining of black leaders within the party. Having black faces means little if black leaders cannot meaningfully challenge the party's direction or the interests it protects. 7. Constant insults from “the Madam”... praising aspects of colonialism and opposing race-based redress. How do you address racial dispossession if you refuse to confront how race still shapes who owns what and who gets opportunities? 8. Advancing plans for an apartheid-style wall along the N2 airport route. The City calls it a safety project. Critics argue that it will hide poor township communities from people travelling into Cape Town. My concern is the same old logic... putting a barrier between the comfortable city and people living with its deepest inequalities. 9. Excluding emergency accommodation from the inner city on a blanket basis. In the Bromwell Street case, the Constitutional Court found this approach unconstitutional. People lose their homes through gentrification and then face being pushed away from their jobs, schools and support networks. That reinforces apartheid's geography. 10. Following neoliberal policies that leave redress to the market... prioritising private profits, property values and investors over redistribution. If apartheid determined who had wealth and land, letting money determine everything now carries those inequalities forward. You don't need to put the old signs back up to keep the old divisions in place.