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Today I am announcing the third of my seven pledges to the people of Cape Town: the Democratic Alliance (DA) is ready to release city-owned land in well located areas to unlock more affordable housing options, and social housing, for Capetonians. And we are ready to take the fight to the national government to release the vast tracts of land it owns in Cape Town, so that the private sector can build thousands of new, more affordable homes for Capetonians.

We remain solely focused on what we will do to secure Cape Town’s future. Our commitment to more affordable accommodation for Capetonians is firm.

We will:

• Cut red tape to empower the private sector to build thousands of more affordable homes;
• Make it easier for micro-developers to build more rental units;
• Audit and release city-owned land for social housing development; and
• Harness modern technology to improve housing construction.
• But even when we achieve these things, it will not be enough.

Cape Town’s affordable accommodation shortage means that we must be able to use the massive plots of land owned by the national government. But despite years of asking, by successive mayors, the national government refuses to free up these under-utilised mega properties.

Nowhere is the obstinance of the national government’s refusal to release state-owned land more glaring than at Acacia Park, a massive 56.8-hectare plot of land that is currently used to provide housing to politicians rather than to the people. I visited Acacia Park earlier this morning to see for myself how releasing this vast piece of well-located land – and other national government-owned sites like it – could transform the housing landscape in Cape Town.

Acacia Park already contains hundreds of houses and apartments, as well as infrastructure like a school, swimming pool, sports fields, parks and a community hall. It also has its own train station, is located adjacent to both the N1 and N7 highways, and lies within 10 kilometers of major shopping and business districts. Just like other national government-owned sites, including Culemborg and the Ysterplaat, Wingsfield and Youngsfield military bases, much of Acacia Park lies undeveloped while Cape Town faces an escalating housing crisis.

Instead of empowering the private sector to build homes for Capetonians at Acacia Park, Public Works Minister in the ANC government, Patricia de Lille, recently announced that R88 million would be spent on upgrading accommodation for Members of Parliament (MPs), most of whom are currently housed at Acacia Park.

It is a slap in the face of Capetonians that De Lille and her ANC government colleagues continue to waste money on accommodation for MPs at Acacia Park when DA-led Cape Town is ready to work with the private sector to develop the site for the benefit of thousands of Capetonians in urgent need of housing. It would be vastly cheaper to simply provide MPs from other parts of the country with housing subsidies that they can use to rent their own private accommodation when in Cape Town.

Acacia Park is a giant 568,000 square meter symbol for how De Lille and her ANC colleagues are holding back housing development in Cape Town.

That is why I have today written to De Lille, requesting her department to immediately terminate its lease over Acacia Park so that the City of Cape Town can undertake negotiations to buy the site from its owners, after which the land must be released to the private sector to build hundreds of affordable housing units.

The DA is ready to do more than ever before to fight back against a national government that is hell-bent on preventing us from empowering the private sector to build more homes for Capetonians. I will go toe-to-toe with the national government until we see cranes going up all over Cape Town, as we massively increase the supply of housing by releasing state-owned land for affordable development.

Our Mother City must become one big construction site as we build a future of shared prosperity. And that future should start by turning Acacia Park into housing for the people, rather than for politicians.

Issued by DA City of Cape Mayoral Candidate Geordin Hill-Lewis