In the eyes of the NGO Ndifuna Ukwazi, suburbs such as Woodstock, Salt River, Maitland and Brooklyn do not form part of the central Cape Town area.
For them, the N1 and M3 are impenetrable barriers, Voortrekker and Koeberg Roads do not exist, and building social housing near to the Cape Town CBD, where property prices and available land make this viable, somehow doesn’t facilitate access to the inner city. Maverick Citizen, 15 March 2021).
To sustain this untruth, Ndifuna Ukwazi has gone so far as to conjure their own “central Cape Town” precinct, the borders of which irrationally exclude all historically “non-white” suburbs adjacent to the CBD.
Water reserve loses ground to coal mine
18 Feb 2021
Undermining: The Mabola Protected Environment in Mpumalanga, which supplies South Africa with half of its water, is once again being threatened by coal mining.
(Robert C Nunnington)
The protected status of a large part of the Mabola Protected Environment area near Wakkerstroom has been revoked by Mpumalanga’s minister for agriculture and environmental affairs. Now the way appears to have been cleared for a firm linked to Jacob Zuma’s relatives to mine for coal there.
On 8 December, MEC Vusi Shongwe published a notice of exclusion “to promote the co-existence of mining activities and conservation” in the biodiversity-rich protected area, a strategic water source area.
.
The PHA (Philippi Horticultural Area) Food and Farming Campaign says the massive Oakland City development could destroy farming on the land and dry up the aquifer.
Public participation on the environmental impact of the 479-hectare development is open until 24 February.
The Oakland development proposes housing for 15,000 families, schools, and commercial and industrial properties, with 77 hectares for conservation and wetlands.
The Western Cape high court in February 2020 ordered Anton Bredell, MEC for Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, to reconsider his decision in March 2017 to grant environmental authorisation to the Oakland development.
The PHA Campaign had taken the department, the City of Cape Town, and Oakland City Development to court, arguing for the “survival of unique and irreplaceable farmlands of the PHA” that is situated in an ideal farming climate.