CA1st acknowledges that the spatial planning legacy of Cape Town needs to be addressed and rectified in order to make the city work for everyone. CA1st calls for an audit of the current housing list and undertakes to work on providing decent housing.
Decent, affordable housing for everyone is a right and not a privilege. This is the departure point for the CA1st as we take our people-first activism from the streets into the City of Cape Town’s Council chambers.
For us, the provision of housing is much more than just putting a roof over someone’s head. The provision of housing must ensure that people are able to live a dignified life in an environment that allows people to grow and flourish, with work, education, recreation and worship opportunities for all, and with access to basic services, such as water, electricity, sewage, transport and safety.
The provision of housing is therefore one of the biggest issues for the CA1st because through it, we live our value of human rights and dignity, and it drives the provision of services, which must be at the core of the City’s value proposition to its citizens. It is even more so because of broken promises made by unscrupulous politicians about providing housing for the homeless poor and the backyard dwellers, whose numbers continue to grow, even as the promises continue to be broken.
The CA1st commits itself to finding out what the plans are and sharing these with the people of Cape Town. We want to review the housing lists and unlock the bureaucratic issues that continue to frustrate the efforts of Capetonians who only desire to have a roof over their heads. We want to understand and unlock the bottlenecks which prevent housing delivery and unravel the complexity of the dependency of bulk services, such as water, or sewage, or electricity. We will take the people of Cape Town into our confidence and share all information related to this crucial subject, as we do the work.
We commit to annually spending the budgets allocated by National Treasury for basic services such as housing, transport, water and sewerage in an open and transparent manner and not to return these funds as unspent to national treasury.
CA1st Movement undertakes to focus on encouraging entrepreneurism in Cape Town.
The CA1st will make it easier for entrepreneurs and business owners to operate businesses within the City of Cape Town in order to address the spiralling youth unemployment rate and make it easier for families and informal traders to earn a living.
We believe in a blended and integrated economic model, where entrepreneurs as well as established businesses, and large, small, medium and micro enterprises can all share trading spaces with the ultimate goal of making Cape Town a vibrant trading hub for all and where formal and informal economies have equitable market share and share in the revenue streams, that will result in stronger local communities.
We want to create the opportunities for supply chains to emanate from diverse local sources, believing that we have sufficient capacity to use local resourcefulness as supply chains for the Cape Town economy. We want both government and the private sector to use local supply chains for their requirements.
CA1st is clear on the manifesto about the safety and equality of women.
Women have a right to equality in all spheres of life. This means nothing if it is not actively fought for, and for all forms of gender prejudice and gender oppression, including systemic gender oppression to be identified and weeded out.
The scourge of South African society remains gender-based violence, and the combating and elimination of gender based violence is a prerequisite to the ongoing pursuit of equality of women, and equity for women in all spheres of life. The CA1st commits itself to utilize the resources of the City to combat gender based violence on the one hand, but also to provide shelter and security to women and girls who are the victims of such gender based violence.
Ca1st undertaking: We want to be the engine of transformation in Cape Town.
Our manifesto states the following in this regard:
If Cape Town continues to grow at the rate that the United Nations expects cities to grow over the next 30 years, the 4.6 million Capetonians will grow to close to 7 million Capetonians by 2050, and the numbers of unemployed and homeless and working poor will continue to grow.
The city is both the problem and the solution. Intelligent leadership will understand how these two issues are harnessed to build a successful, inclusive and prosperous 21st century city for all its residents.
If the Cape Town City Council continues be managed in the way that it currently is, the only areas of growth for that additional 2.4 million people will be in slums and ghettos. There is not enough housing to accommodate the current population, and not enough planned housing to accommodate the expected increase in population. There are not enough work opportunities to enable those who are looking to work, and there is not enough economic development to accommodate those who are still to come, who will seek work in this city. That is the current City Council’s problem!
If the City Council is to become the solution, it needs to recognise that the building of housing, the development of roads and infrastructure and the provision of services, the production of green energy, and effective waste management are themselves both productive activities, that will provide employment opportunities and individual growth, but are also investments in the city of the future, that works for all.
If the City Council of Cape Town is to become the solution, it needs to recognise that the land that it owns and disposes of for short-term revenue generation, are assets that, if they were developed by the City Council, could create sustainable revenue to the Council, for the benefit of all its citizens into perpetuity.
If the City Council is to become the solution, it needs to more aggressively pursue the creation of an environment that encourages large enterprises to create work opportunities here, and, at the same time, enables small businesses and entrepreneurs to get off the ground; thrive and be sustainable.
The City of Cape Town has the potential to be the engine of transformation of itself. Yet, there is nothing in what it is currently saying or doing that informs Capetonians of that vision, and nothing that invites Capetonians from all walks of life to be a part of it. The CA1st has the vision of Cape Town being the engine of transformation in every Capetonian’s mind, on every Capetonian’s lips, and in every Capetonian’s heart. We will put all our energies into advancing the narrative of Cape Town’s being a humane, caring, and entrepreneurial City that has the interests of all its citizens at heart and treats everyone with respect and actively push back against this ugly divide that is taking root in Cape Town.
