GOOD Statement by Suzette Little, GOOD Deputy Secretary-General & City of Cape Town Councillor:
The GOOD Party strongly objects to the City of Cape Town’s proposal regarding Erf 142870 in Hanover Park, a legally questionable and morally unjust plan that betrays the residents of this already strained community.
What is clear is that the City of Cape Town never intended to use this land to benefit Hanover Park. It was identified by the City as a relocation site for unhoused residents from Observatory, a move that shifts the burden of the City’s failure to build inclusive communities onto a neighbourhood already facing severe overcrowding, neglect, and underdevelopment. When the Observatory community rejected the relocation plan, the City stayed silent.
Yet, underground infrastructure was quietly installed on the Hanover Park site, without formal Council approval. Raising serious concerns: how was this work authorised before this item was even tabled before Council? Why was the ward councillor unaware? Who gave the green light?
The City’s claim of public participation is disingenuous. Publishing notices in the Cape Argus and Die Burger does not constitute meaningful engagement with a community that largely cannot afford or access those publications. The report falsely claims there were no objections. In reality, residents raised concerns at public meetings and on-site engagements, which were simply ignored.
This process violates multiple legal frameworks:
- Sections 16 and 17 of the Municipal Systems Act, which require authentic community consultation;
- Section 152 of the Constitution, which obliges municipalities to encourage community involvement; and
- The Promotion of Administrative Justice Act (PAJA), which protects the public from decisions made without proper procedure, fairness, or transparency.
What is being presented to Council is a rubber-stamping exercise for a flawed, secretive process. Hanover Park is not a dumping ground. It is not the answer to elite resistance in wealthier suburbs. Its residents deserve better. This community has long pleaded for housing for their own, their children, backyarders, and elders. Instead, they are handed secrecy and exclusion. The beneficiaries of any project on this land must be Hanover Park residents. Anything less is unacceptable.
GOOD will support the community in filing a formal PAJA complaint, and will request a full review of this decision and a referral of the matter to MPAC for investigation. The City cannot continue to act with impunity.
GOOD Public Health: The party emphasizes the importance of public health initiatives.
Martini Flower
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.
romance princess
Fun South African Fact: Vilakazi Street in Soweto has been home to two Nobel Peace Prize winners. A tour through Soweto will always stop at Vilakazi Street to reveal a number of heritage sites of great importance to democratic South Africa. Both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu lived here at some point in their lives. In 1984, Archbishop Desmond Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition for his non-violent fight against the apartheid regime. Nine years later in 1993, Nelson Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with then-president F.W. de Klerk as an award for their role in bringing about the peaceful end of apartheid. Nelson Mandela then went on to become South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.