The Freedom Front Plus (VF Plus) supports the application for establishing a City Improvement District (CID) in Cape Town’s Lower Gardens area and will campaign for it to be introduced in more areas throughout the Metro.
The Lower Gardens is the area between the CBD and the suburban neighbourhoods of Vredehoek, Oranjezicht and the Upper Gardens, including the Company’s Garden.
This pro-active approach will help tackle the most pressing problems in the Lower Gardens as highlighted in a recent report by the City, such as the erection of illegal structures and the consequent high crime rate.
A City Improvement District (CID) is a defined area in which property owners contribute additional rates to fund additional services for that specific area.
It follows a community-driven plan that has to be approved by the City Council for an initial period of five years.
One such success story is the northern neighbourhood Boston where public safety officials of the CID keep, among other things, loiterers out of the residential areas by pro-actively patrolling the streets and ensuring that informal structures are dismantled within 24 hours by the relevant law-enforcement officers.
These safety officials also patrol previously illegally occupied areas every morning to prevent re-occupation.
The response time of these Boston CID officials is, on average, 2 to 3 minutes when residents call for assistance. It was implemented in August 2020 after 60% of residents requested it.
The Freedom Front Plus is simultaneously also calling on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) siding with illegal occupants to rather cooperate with the City in relocating the homeless.
This includes Ndifuna Ukwazi that describes itself as “an activist organisation and law centre that challenges the reproduction of spatial apartheid in Cape Town”.
These organisations have already spent millions on taking the City of Cape Town to court after illegal structures were dismantled.
Many of the problems relating to homelessness are rooted in drug and alcohol addiction that, in turn, leads to unemployment as people choose to live on the streets to facilitate their substance abuse.
South Africa’s Police Service has only one police officer for every 427 citizens (defenceWeb; 12 April 2024). The international norm, according to the United Nations (UN), is one police officer for every 220 citizens.
The Freedom Front Plus is committed to supporting the establishment of City Improvement Districts throughout the Metro to bring much-needed security, cleanliness and social support services to the areas that need it most.
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