Chapter One the Republic of Hout Bay: a House Divided
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Chapter One The Republic of Hout Bay: A house divided Figure 1.1. Aerial image of Hout Bay Hout Bay is a suburb about 20 kilometres south of the heart of Cape Town, located in a valley on the west coast of the Cape Peninsula. A natural bowl shape, Hout Bay is remarkably beautiful, framed to the west by the dramatic Sentinel mountain peak, and flanked to the east by the Table Mountain range. The lower slopes of the valley are green and fertile, fed by the Disa River that runs into a natural harbour with an attractive swimming beach. The striking setting of Hout Bay, and its relatively close proximity to the city centre, make it a sought after residential and tourist location. Although there is evidence of inhabitation of the area prior to colonisation, there is no written history before Dutch settlement. The name Hout Bay is an Anglicisation of the Dutch Houtbaai (literally ‘wood bay’), and stretches back to 1653. The area was so named for the quantity of excellent timber growing in its ravines. The fishing at Hout Bay extends back prior to colonialism; the first colonial fishing village was established in 1867 when a German immigrant, Jacob Trautmann, began to farm and fish in the area (SAHistoryOnline 2011). Until the 1950s, 1 the land in Hout Bay was used primarily for agricultural purposes and the area was sparsely populated. In the 1950s, the lumber industry went into decline and fishing, including factories processing fish, became the largest industry in the area. Following the decline of the fishing industry in the 1980s, Hout Bay became an increasingly sought after residential area as Cape Town rapidly densified (SAHistoryOnline 2011). Today, adjacent to the two public roads that lead down the valley to the heart of the settlement, are signs saying ‘Welcome to the Republic of Hout Bay’. Somewhat faded and dilapidated, the signs, like the idea of a self-governing community, have seen better days. According to the Hout Bay Organised website, the idea of the Republic was born in the late 1980s when local charities and business attempted a tongue-in-cheek effort at secession: The concept took root, with an official passport which was sold at roadblocks at the three entrances to Hout Bay. Some residents took the idea quite seriously and there was even a President, an anthem and costume. Several people were able to convince immigration officers around the world to stamp their Hout Bay passports. (http://www.houtbay.org/2011/09/brand-hout-bay.html) Figure 1.2. Welcome to Hout Bay sign 2 Notably, the idea of a Republic emerged at a time when Hout Bay was a small community with a mix of coloured and wealthy white residents. It was a quiet suburb with low levels of political contestation. Today Hout Bay is a multi-racial, multi-national and socio-economically diverse suburb of some 35,000 people, more than half of whom are not white, and a sizable minority of whom are not South African. Following thirty years of significant migration, Hout Bay has transformed from a quiet seaside village into a bustling suburban centre. However, there is more to the idea of a Republic than a common identity and belonging; there is the notion of self-government too, as expressed symbolically in the Hout Bay ‘passport’. While in the post-apartheid political order a collection of suburbs cannot be sovereign, there are good reasons to be optimistic about the capacity of residents of Hout Bay to influence decision-making over their area. Hout Bay residents have access to a formal democratic system with both representational and participatory mechanisms, as well as a system of civil liberties that enables civil society organisation, popular mobilisation and public debate. Furthermore, and this makes it somewhat different from much of the rest of Cape Town, while most residents are poor, a high proportion are wealthy, and thus the settlement has significant local capacity to drive development for all. Consequently, there is much going on in Hout Bay. Many people are trying to do many different things, from international donors, to national and provincial government, to local civil society and residents. They initiate housing projects, build clinics, open schools, create markets, host festivals, build food gardens, conduct health education, clear alien vegetation and collect rubbish. The list is endless. Given this significant capacity, opportunity and intent to make a real difference in public life, it seems safe to assume that local democracy in Hout Bay would be healthy too. Indeed, it is unlikely that there are too many suburbs in South Africa with conditions more conducive to effective and democratic local governance. However, as we will demonstrate, this is not case. Indeed, Hout Bay is close to an archetype for the democratic deficit described in the opening paragraph of the book. Thus, despite a dramatic increase in democratic institutions and opportunities since the end of apartheid, most residents of Hout Bay today feel frustrated by local governance. Indeed, when we started our research the one thing almost all respondents shared was a dislike of local politics, politicians and government. In this chapter, we will show how the idea of the Republic of Hout Bay is undone in two ways. First, despite economic, social and political relations across three adjacent communities, the area resembles the apartheid logic of spatially segregated communities divided by race, socio- economic status and culture. Thus, the wealthy, white and English speaking suburb of ‘the Valley’ sits alongside the poor, black, isiXhosa-speaking settlement of Imizamo Yethu, and both are close to the poor, coloured and Afrikaans speaking area of Hangberg (See Figure 1.5). Second, despite the promise of local democracy, the Hout Bay community is not self-governing in any significant way; residents have limited influence over decision-making that affects their 3 lives other than for the actions they take directly themselves, and the leaders of the three communities of Hout Bay often pursue contrary political ends. The promise of a Republic At one level, the idea that Hout Bay could be a self-governing Republic seems peculiar. The settlement is part of the City of Cape Town, which in turn is part of the Western Cape Province in the Republic of South Africa. The 1996 Constitution of post-Apartheid South Africa makes it clear in the very first founding provision that the ‘Republic of South Africa is one, sovereign, democratic state’ (RSA Constitution 1996). The numbers and boundaries of provincial and local government are decided by national legislation, and are not prescribed in the Constitution. There are currently 9 provinces and 257 municipalities in South Africa. While the Constitution divides political authority spatially in terms of three spheres of national, provincial and local government, each with their own executive and legislative capacities, it privileges national over the other spheres, and gives limited powers to local government. Thus, Schedule 4 confers concurrent powers to national and provincial governments in respect of most key issues including agriculture, health, housing and policing. Section 44(2) gives national parliament primary power to frame any policy on any issue in the interests of national security, economic unity, setting national standards or ‘to prevent unreasonable action taken by a province which is prejudicial to the interests of another province or to the country as a whole’ (RSA Constitution 1996). This affirmation of the primacy of the national means, for example, that while in theory all spheres of government can raise tax, provinces do not currently do so. Furthermore, in respect of local government, Schedules 4b and 5b of the Constitution identify comparatively limited areas of competence for local governance, including street cleaning, local markets, air pollution, traffic and the like. While all this appears to concentrate power in the national sphere of the state, there are three sets of reasons why local municipalities, and especially metropolitan areas like Cape Town, possess a significant degree of power. The first is the Constitutional requirement in Chapter Three for ‘co- operative governance’ that looks to reduce the possibility of gridlock or conflict by requiring constructive relations between the three spheres and the integration of rule across the state (RSA Constitution 1996). This requirement for co-operation is manifest in various attempts to integrate policy processes from local to national spheres, in particular around developmental governance (see section 41 of RSA Constitution 1996). For example, the Municipal Systems Act of 2000 requires that each municipality develop a five- year Integrated Development Plan (IDP), and that this plan incorporate the development priorities of provincial and national government (for instance around health clinics and schools) into one vision for the municipality (Local Government 2000). Further to the requirement of 4 planning across spheres, the IDP is meant to address the socio-economic and spatial disparities that endure from apartheid. In respect of the latter, the recent Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) of 2013 seeks to redress racial inequality, spatial segregation and unsustainable land use patterns. Notably, Section 2(1)a of the requirements of SPLUMA apply to municipal planning, including Integrated Development Plans. Importantly then, municipalities are enabled by national legislation to drive both developmental and spatial planning processes. In addition to this leading role around local development and spatial planning, municipalities are also empowered to raise taxes in the form of property rates and revenue through the sale of services. The City of Cape Town’s total annual budget for 2017/18 was R44.3 billion ($3.25 billion) which is raised mostly from property rates (22%), services such as electricity, water, sanitation, and refuse (52%), and national subsidies (17%) distributed in terms of an equitable grant system (CCT 2017).