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Reviving Princess Vlei — how local communities are transforming Cape Town's wetland ecosystem

Reviving Princess Vlei — how local communities are transforming Cape Town's wetland ecosystem
Denisha Anand, is the biodiversity restoration project manager of Princess Vlei, a 109-ha wetland system in Cape Town . (Photo: Kristin Engel)
Kristin Engel
By Kristin Engel
19 Dec 2024
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The Princess Vlei restoration project was started in 2018 as a major community-led effort to preserve and restore the integrity of the Greater Princess Vlei Conservation Area in Cape Town. Now, six years later, the project demonstrates how local communities can reclaim and revitalise degraded ecosystems.

In the not too distant past, a shopping mall was once proposed at Princess Vlei, a 109 hectare wetland system in Cape Town. Now, the plot is home to patches of proteas along with a variety of both common and rare species that are either being reintroduced, restored, or preserved by the civic organisation Princess Vlei Forum and the local community. 

The Princess Vlei Restoration Project was started in 2018 as a major community-led effort to preserve and restore the integrity of the Greater Princess Vlei Conservation Area in Cape Town. Six years have passed since the teams started implementing the restoration using a management plan, but the foundation for restoration was created through “plant protesting” and the project “Dressing the Princess” by Kelvin Cochrane, a local fynbos enthusiast.

Denisha Anand is the biodiversity restoration project manager of Princess Vlei, a 109 ha wetland system in Cape Town. (Photo: Kristin Engel)



The restoration project was born after a history of environmental neglect and urban development threats (both during and after apartheid), namely a failed shopping mall proposal that would have compromised the area’s natural biodiversity. Now, six years later, the project demonstrates how local communities can reclaim and revitalise degraded ecosystems.

Denisha Anand, biodiversity restoration project manager of Princess Vlei under the Princess Vlei Forum, shares their unique approach to social and community-led conservation with Daily Maverick. Now the hope is that the site will reach nature reserve status as restoration work continues.

A history of neglect


Making our way through the vlei, Anand said that when she started between 2017 and 2018, there was a massive clean-up operation as the site had suffered severe dumping across the vlei, with piles of rubbish that had to be removed by contractors, and people living in the reed beds. Some would pile up rubbish, clothing and newspapers to absorb the water and then build settlements on top of it. 

“The site was neglected for many, many years, so obviously you would have occupation,” Anand said.

She added that they aimed to make it a more family oriented space. This was a recreational space where families and friends would pull up with their cars and have a braai or a drink, but after a while this would get out of hand, according to Anand.

Biodiversity restoration planting at Princess Vlei wetland. (Photo: Supplied)



Along the Princess Vlei area in Cape Town, you might see a floating statue dedicated to the Khoe princess who inspired the vlei's name. (Photo: Supplied)



“We wanted to create a space that was more inclusive. We also have a mixed faith community, people who don’t want to be around alcohol… I think about the Muslim community, they never felt comfortable here because there was so much alcohol use and abuse on site. Getting rid of alcohol was a big thing for us, and that meant putting up signage,” Anand said. 

They put up signage to teach people about the plant diversity, animal diversity, the cultural history, as well as for what was allowed at the site and what was not allowed. 

“This was all to get people to realise that this was a space that needed to be respected, and it worked,” said Anand.

Having and lobbying for the rangers also made a huge difference in securing the site, making people feel secure, and attracting community members. Anand added that implementing these changes did not come without a battle, and said she frequently received comments that no one would go to Princess Vlei any more as car trunk searches were being conducted where alcohol and drugs were being confiscated.

“There was an initial drop in usage, but then I noticed that people were coming to have their end of year parties at the vlei, crèches were hosting sporting events there, and women were coming to braai and enjoying the space,” Anand said.

People started going to the site to do yoga on the deck. Birdwatching, walking and running groups, and plant enthusiasts were going because they saw the plants popping up in iNaturalist.

Restoring flora and fighting invasive species


This was a process that had to be done, and another was the actual ecological restoration. Through collaborations and community work, the project has done active restoration work as well as passive restoration and rehabilitation over the years — removing huge amounts of invasive alien species like port jackson, poplar trees, pine trees, brazilian peppers, and also more herbaceous species like lupines and the invasive Paterson’s curse from areas with restoration potential.

Every stage of the ecological restoration process involves community members and volunteers. The hope in doing this is to strengthen the establishment of local custodianship. 

This is done through invasive plant hacking, seed collecting, citizen science surveys, weeding, and restoration seeding and planting by volunteers from all across Cape Town and the neighbouring regions, as shared in the Princess Vlei Restoration Project report on learnings and gains from 2018 to 2023.

Princess Vlei Guardians is one of the projects aiming to achieve this, and is run at local schools in the Cape Flats area where learners participate in replanting, clean-ups, eco-education and more to continue to conserve and protect the site — as well as instil a sense of custodianship in youngsters.

Proteas at Princess Vlei wetland. (Photo: Denisha Anand)



Invasive water hyacinth creeps along the Princess Vlei wetland. (Photo: Kristin Engel)



Shafiek Isaacs, a teacher at Lotus High School and Guardians Project facilitator, said this gave the learners an opportunity to reconnect to nature and themselves. Isaacs has a group of about 50 learners involved at Princess Vlei, some of whom were at an eco-camp when Daily Maverick visited the site last weekend.

In terms of planting and shifts seen over the years, a huge number of plants have been reintroduced. One of the species that has done particularly well is the Serruria foeniculacea, the Rondevlei Spiderhead.

And a project that will be commencing in 2025, Anand said, would be trying to bring the heath back to Heathfield (a surrounding community) by planting Erica verticillata, a heath, on the western shore of Princess Vlei. The species is considered extinct in the wild.

In the greater project, Anand said they focused on the reintroduction of locally extinct species, and also on common species that had cultural and medicinal value to local communities, like wild dagga, the cancer bush, wild rosemary, and even sour fig which is in abundance at Princess Vlei.

Harvested as food


“These are species that are used as medicine and harvested as food. There is a whole community that forages and harvests sour fig to sell in Grassy Park and along the main road. Princess Vlei is one of the sites where they come and collect,” Anand said.

She spends a lot of time looking for common species like these that have cultural and medicinal value, and that can be foraged as food. 

“These are undervalued but so resilient. A lot of species that have become rare have been lost because of destructive land-use practices, but the common species are so resilient. If we think of climate change, those are really the species we need to be looking at… They have managed to withstand some serious destructive practices at Princess Vlei, and yet we still have those species persisting, and the more sensitive ones have disappeared,” Anand said.

Denisha Anand at work in Princess Vlei. (Photo: Kristin Engel)



One of the species that would have occurred here historically is Protea scolymocephala, and to try to get these back the team scattered the seeds of this species, a ground protea. They germinated and started growing, and now there are clusters of these proteas growing over the shopping mall footprint.

There are wonderful stories when it comes to the rare species. Anand said they told us what was missing from these systems and what we had lost in these systems, like heath in Heathfield, or Lotus River and the indigenous lotus. However, she said, there were also important stories to be told about common resilient species. 

Reconnecting communities through conservation


Bridget Pitt, the deputy chairperson of the Princess Vlei Forum, told Daily Maverick that the forum was formed in 2012 to coordinate community opposition to the proposed mall. Once the mall was finally off the table, they began working with the City of Cape Town to restore the site.

Pitt said their intention was always to retain the community focus because you could not separate conservation and environmental matters from social matters, especially because of the history of Princess Vlei.

Under apartheid, the area was classified as a “non-white” recreational area and was one of the few natural and green spaces that people of colour could frequent. According to the Princess Vlei Forum, even though it was beloved by the people, the vlei became significantly neglected by the authorities due to the racial allocation of resources at the time, and then further worsened after Prince George Drive was widened. 

The team had been planting all the way through on a slightly ad hoc basis, but in 2018 the forum was established and they took on a restoration consultant, after which the site experienced a more planned and targeted restoration process.

“It was initially a five-year process. Now that’s come to an end, so we are in the process of working out new objectives and doing the next phase,” Pitt said. 

In collaboration with the City of Cape Town, which serves as the land authority, the Princess Vlei Forum has been managing, conserving, and restoring the Princess Vlei wetland in Grassy Park since 2014.

“Our primary goal is to get it declared as a protected nature site, because then it would get the care that it actually needs. But our interim goal is to work with the City and just try to get them to run it like a biodiversity site, and not like a City park. At the same time also to keep community involvement and ensure that it’s meeting community needs as well,” she said.

The whole conservation sector in South Africa was problematic because it had been racialised, was exclusionary, and indigenous knowledge had been sidelined, according to Pitt.“There’s been a whole approach to lock people out of spaces, rather than to recognise that people are integral to the custodianship of spaces. So Princess Vlei, I think, represents a good opportunity to push those boundaries and redefine how we should be doing conservation generally, and in urban conservation specifically,” Pitt said. DM

This article was amended on 20 December.

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