Stephen Grootes should visit Khayelitsha to see the reality of Cape Town firsthand

I hereby invite Stephen Grootes on a tour of Khayelitsha and a few other Cape Town “suburbs”.

The tour will equip him with direct knowledge about the quality of life for residents of these ghettoes, instead of having to rely for his analysis, as he states he does (“Head and Shoulders - Cape Town success could become a key issue in 2024 elections”, Daily Maverick, 30 January 2023), on the output of the DA’s “formidable communication machinery”.

Groote’s analysis is based on the assumption that because Cape Town’s leafier suburbs and tourist areas are relatively well maintained compared to those of other cities, it follows that the quality of services to Cape Town’s less-leafy suburbs is similarly superior.

This argument is drawn directly from the Helen Zille playbook. When confronted with the poor conditions on the wrong side of the proverbial fence, she says: “compared to (X, Y or Z) life in Cape Town is better for the poor,” without providing any evidence.

It is an argument that seeks to brush away the reality that Cape Town is among the most unequal cities on Earth, while at the same time providing a measure of comfort to the middle class that the quality of life it enjoys is not at the expense of the poor – indeed, that its quality of life somehow rubs off on the poor.

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Grootes suggests that the test is to compare life in Khayelitsha to life in Diepsloot, in Johannesburg, but doesn’t provide any comparisons. He implies that Diepsloot is worse because it is not in DA-led Cape Town, but is it actually any worse?

Rather than compare Khayelitsha to Diepsloot, it may be more helpful to compare the quality of life and service provision in Khayelitsha to that of Kenilworth or Kalk Bay. That’s where the real gulf of inequality is to be found.

There is no doubt that Cape Town’s middle class receives relatively decent municipal services. Grootes refers to “power lines being repaired within hours, and potholes are a foreign concept”. But he should know that this is not the case in Khayelitsha, Bonteheuwel, Du Noon, Nyanga…

A government with a very healthy bank balance such as the City of Cape Town’s, with good financial resources and a stable credit rating, supported by a fully resourced and skilled administration, should be able to fix the power lines in Khayelitsha just as quickly as they can fix them in my neighbourhood of Newlands, on the foothills of Table Mountain. But the City of Cape Town doesn’t.

When my street has a burst water pipe it is fixed within hours, but that is hardly the test of whether a city is head and shoulders above the rest. The test is why burst sewerage pipes in Langa were only repaired months after the community requested service, and only after I intervened.

Yes, infrastructure disparities in Cape Town are largely inherited from our history as an apartheid city. But the City has also created new apartheid-like suburbs, relegating communities of colour to live in suburbs of poverty on the outskirts of the city… perpetuating disparities and creating new slums.

Grootes should question why, in this city that he has proclaimed head and shoulders above the others, parks in areas such as Delft don’t have safe rubber maps under the slides and merry-go-rounds, similar to those supplied in my neighbourhood to prevent serious injuries.

How it’s possible in this head-and-shoulders-above city for the Langa community to live for so long with raw sewage flowing out of broken sewerage systems that the dirt has hardened to form a new surface covering public open spaces and up to the front doors of people’s homes?

Is there a link between the quality of service delivery to certain communities and the fact that the same Cape Town police precincts top the quarterly crime statistics as the murder capitals of our country?

If Grootes accepts my invitation for a Cape Town township tour, these are some of the issues I’d like to discuss with him.

Cape Town can be head and shoulders above the rest. In order to truly get there it must distribute its financial and human resources in a way that prioritises the creation of decent and dignified living conditions for all residents through guaranteeing parity of service levels.

The fact that it doesn’t do this is a bad choice, that no amount of spin can make good. DM

The Good Party holds nine seats in the DA-led Cape Town Municipality.