GOOD Speech delivered today at the City of Cape Town Council Meeting by Axolile Notywala, GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor:
Speaker, the people of Cape Town and South Africa must know that the Mayor of Cape Town and now leader of the Democratic Alliance, Geordin Hill-Lewis, has been lying to us all in Cape Town about reasons why we still don’t have an affordable and inclusionary housing policy, 8 years later when this was first proposed by Brett Herron in this council.
The lies from the Mayor and the DA are reasons why someone like Brett Herron of the GOOD Party, who has the most progressive ideas in Cape Town on housing, decided to resign from this council and from the DA in 2018.
Now we know, and the Mayor confirmed this in our last council meeting, that while the majority of working people in Cape Town are crying everyday about a growing housing crisis and homelessness, the DA are choosing to protect and enrich property developers by giving them our most prime land without any conditions to build housing for locals.
Because what logical reason would there be, for us to be told today that an affordable and inclusionary housing policy that was first drafted in 2018 will be only out in 2027, when the Mayor told us just last month when I asked about the 8 year delays in developing this policy. The Mayor said, “an inclusionary housing policy poses a massive risk. And that is why we are proceeding with extreme caution. Because the risk is that you simply chase the providers of housing away”.
Today, in this iteration of the Integrated Human Settlements Sector Plan, you are telling us that the technical work is currently underway for the rest of 2026 and once this is done the City aims to release a draft policy for public comment in 2027.
The important question the people of Cape Town must be asking the Mayor, the DA and its Councillors is: Why will there not be a risk in 2027 that the same affordable and inclusionary housing policy draft will chase away “providers of housing”, meaning property developers.
The only conclusion we can make is that the Mayor and the DA do not want to tell its funders, the property developers, who they are selling our land to everyday, to develop affordable and inclusionary housing in Cape Town because then they will stop funding the DA for the 2026 election if that happens. It’s safer to tell them in 2027, after the election. We also have no guarantees that this will happen in 2027, because we have been told repeated lies in the Human Settlements Portfolio Committee.
Since I joined this council in 2024, we were told a draft policy would be out in 2024, then were told 2025, then 2026, and now we are being told 2027.
The Mayor and the DA have chosen their side and to protect the rich. The people of Cape Town will now need to make better choices in 2026 at the ballot box in choosing a political party that will prioritise people and not profit.
Public land for public good, now!
GOOD Public Participation: The party encourages public participation in decision-making processes.
Raid Bucker
Sweden: You have two cows. You offer them to the government, who gives everybody milk.
Journeyman
Fun South African Fact: Mandela’s house on Vilakazi Street is now a museum. The man who the street was named after, Dr BW Vilakazi, was a poet, novelist and intellectual. He helped develop the written form of both isiZulu and siSwati and helped put together the isiZulu dictionary.