Premier Zille Needs to Walk Her Talk on Street-Lighting Crisis in Khayelitsha

CAPE TIMES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2013 INSIGHT 9 Failure of the food market means many in our city go hungry Rocks and Jane Battersby-Lennard increasingly urban challenge. Security Urban Network, which context of high-energy costs and Afsun’s (the writers of this arti- strong social capital in the poor bullets and Jonathan Crush With a population approaching aims to address the challenges asso- long commutes to work makes these cle) findings reinforce the fact that, areas of the city, it also points to a 4 million, Cape Town has a particu- ciated with rising poverty and food foods less viable. in the urban setting, there are mul- failure of the market and of formal WITH food price increases outstrip- larly rapid annual growth rate of insecurity in Africa’s cities, found The proportion of households tiple causes of food insecurity. social safety nets. shatter ping South Africa’s official inflation 3.2 percent. Migration accounts for very high food insecurity in the consuming fish was also lower than There is also a range of stake- Engagement among NGOs, civil rate, and hunger and malnutrition about 41 percent of this growth and three Cape Town areas that it expected (only 16 percent) despite holders playing a role in the urban society and the state should be in Cape Town at worrying levels, the natural increase the rest. researched. the fisheries history of Ocean View. food system. As a result, the solution encouraged to put in place safety peaceful city urgently needs to develop a Addressing food insecurity in In both Philippi and Khayelitsha, Very little fresh fish is consumed; to food insecurity cannot simply be nets that neither create dependency food security strategy that goes cities like Cape Town is essential, less than 10 percent of households most comes in the form of canned linked to local and national policy nor destroy existing social safety beyond a focus on production. not simply because access to food is were food secure. Even in Ocean fish, particularly pilchards, which interventions. The findings on food nets that perpetuate community The fact that the country is a constitutional right, but also View, the better-off of the areas, are sold extensively in retail outlets sources, in particular, suggest a fail- relations. The city must consider memories nationally food secure and has a because access to adequate, nutri- only 31 percent of households were in low-income areas. ure in the current food market. The the geography of the urban food sys- well-developed agricultural sector tious, hygienic and culturally food secure. Dietary diversity was Some 88 percent of households state and private sector will need to tem, in particular planning and zon- puts into question the prevailing important food can assist the city’s also poor. stated that they had gone without work together to address some of the ing regulations regarding the loca- view that food security is fundamen- developmental aims. Given the South African tradi- food in the previous six months due weaknesses of the current food dis- tion of both formal and informal PORT tally an issue of improving rural The cumulative impact of many tion of eating samp and beans as a to unaffordability, while 44 percent tribution and sales systems. The retail within low-income areas. food production, and that this will undernourished individuals places meal, it was surprising that the pro- had gone without once a week or informal food economy is a vitally ● Battersby-Lennard is a re- POURRI automatically resolve escalating significant limitations on the eco- portion of households eating foods more. More than 70 percent had not important means for people to searcher with Afsun, a programme in Brian Ingpen food needs in urban centres. nomic and social development of made with beans, lentils, peas and had enough food within the house- access food. In policy terms, the African Centre for Cities at the South Africa’s population is the city. Making the food system other forms of non-animal derived hold within the previous year. enhancement of the informal mar- University of Cape Town. Crush is already more than 60 percent work for the poor can therefore have protein was very low. These are There are distinct differences in ket as a means of food supply is vital. director of Afsun. Battersby will I WAS a real kortbroek when I saw urbanised and is expected to reach significant positive impacts on the generally low-cost, high-protein levels of food security during the Furthermore, considerable lecture on “What does it take to feed a the beautiful Hex River Valley for 80 percent by mid-century. Meeting economy, employment, environmen- foods. Among the possible reasons year with peaks and troughs in lev- strain is being placed on community city? Understanding the urban food the first time. I was on a train that the food security needs of the coun- tal sustainability and health costs. for this finding is the time that it els of food security, with January resources as households borrow and system” at UCT’s summer school on was drawn by a magnificent Class try’s population is – and will be – an The UCT-based African Food takes to cook them, which in the being the hardest month for most. share food. While this suggests January 28-30. 15F steam locomotive with a smaller engine pushing at the stern as the “mail train” wound its way around the mountain spurs en route to Johannesburg. Heading for the pre-cooling APARTHEID FAULT LINES sheds in Cape Town harbour, smaller locomotives hauled trains of refrigerated trucks, loaded with fruit from De Doorns, Worcester, the Breede River Valley, Wellington and Paarl, while similar trains Our past haunts our future carried fruit from the Elgin- Villiersdorp area. In the busy fruit season, those trains raised the blood pressure of agents, hurrying to their ships, Colin Bundy erates. And so the ANC government they still inhabit the urban geogra- only to find Duncan Road blocked lowered corporate taxes; it deregu- phy of high apartheid. by a line of refrigerated railway THIS is a brief attempt to think his- lated; it permitted massive capital Hear the echoes of history in the trucks bringing fruit to the pre- torically about 2013. My topic is not flight in the off-shore listings of complex and instructive story of cooling sheds where reefer ships the history of the present moment, Anglo, SAB, Old Mutual and the rest. housing policy since 1994. It tells waited to load. but rather the presence of history: The conglomerates that domi- first of the drive and desire by the The northbound Union-Castle how the past permeates the present, nate the mining/minerals/energy ANC to improve the lives of the mailships also moved significant defining the “now” in obvious and sector have a built-in dependence on poor: remember the 1994 campaign volumes of fruit that, prior to in less obvious ways. exploiting primary resources and a promise to build a million homes in loading, was kept in a smaller Thinking historically about the built-in dependence on cheap labour. five years. They were built – and, storage facility at A Berth. A present also means locating our- They are naturally in favour of this today, over 2.5 m housing units have devastating fire at the height of the selves – as individuals, as citizens – policy package – and why not? They been added and 10 million South fruit export season 55 years ago within our own histories and that of have done very nicely out of it. Africans rehoused. destroyed the pre-cooling sheds, our society. South Africans some- And ever since 1994, BEE But the story also reveals the lim- forcing the reefer ships to use other times seem to think that history rewarded politicians increasingly its of policy, and the incomplete berths, and because A Berth was began in 1994, or at least that the dependent on big business, who nature of transformation. After a inaccessible during the period of past ended then… These comments unsurprisingly promoted business deal brokered in 1993, a specific reconstruction, the UK-bound try to chip away at this perception. interests in the upper echelons of form of housing was rolled out. The mailships loaded directly from the Thinking beyond the political government. The “black diamonds” state bought the land, granted trains at G Berth. moment of 1994 requires us to dis- – the new billionaires and their poor tenure to a means-tested family, and Among Safmarine’s initial reefer cern longer-term trends and cousins the millionaires – are satis- outsourced the building of the sextet was SA Hexrivier, built at the processes; to identify patterns of fied with the policy package – and house on each plot to private devel- Verolme yard in Holland, and a accumulation and dispossession why not? They have also done very opers. Thus was born the “RDP reminder that the valley is one of over the decades; and the economic nicely out of it. house”, as it became known, the most important fruit-producing structures and social relations that Let me return to the theme of his- whether in irony or gratitude. This areas in South Africa. In a major these processes generated and tory shaping the present. Take three model lent itself to a target-driven restructuring of their reefer reproduced. This perspective phenomena usually described as programme of delivery: identical operations, all six of those ships quickly warns us against over-priv- “post apartheid” – which, on inspec- structures, one-size-fits-all, on mod- changed names as Safmarine ileging the drama of 1994, signifi- tion, all have longer histories.

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