The chant: “Hands off our land.”
Our land?
The land around the Good Hope Centre was owned by national government under the Department of Public Works before a 2025 land swap. Long before any of today’s political parties existed, the area was used by the Khoikhoi — even before the Dutch built the Castle of Good Hope in the 1600s.
So when politicians shout “our land,” what do they actually mean? Public land managed by the state? Or just whatever land suits today’s protest?
Lawyers representing a collective of land activists have filed an urgent application to halt the proceedings, seeking to prevent the City from moving forward with the sale.
The GOOD Party is joined protesters in opposing the planned auction.
The party's deputy secretary-general, Suzette Little, said the auction is a slap in the face to more than 400,000 residents who are still on the city’s housing waiting list
The party’s deputy secretary-general, Suzette Little, calls the auction a “slap in the face” to more than 400,000 residents on the housing waiting list.
James Vos, Mayco member for Economic Growth, said the narrative that the City of Cape Town is selling land without regard for social return or housing needs is false. And that's a 100% true response.
But let’s be honest: the last thing those 400,000 people need is to be pushed from the pot into the frying pan — relocated into an area where the cost of living will squeeze them even harder in an economy that is already choking working families.
She claims residents “trusted the process,” and criticizes the Democratic Alliance-led administration for allegedly disposing of public assets without engagement and without centering the housing crisis.
To what end?
Does the Good Party truly believe that relocating underprivileged families into Woodstock or the Good Hope Centre precinct is some kind of victory? The lower parts of Woodstock are already under strain. Residents are battling to survive. The area is dealing with visible homelessness and displacement.
This is not a blank canvas waiting for social engineering — it is a community already stretched thin.
And let’s talk about the cost of living. There are no sprawling informal markets like those in the Cape Flats where residents can stretch a rand. Everyday goods are more expensive. Even small foreign-owned shops charge noticeably higher prices than similar stores on the Flats. For families living hand-to-mouth, those differences matter.
Then there’s schooling. Where exactly are these children supposed to go? Woodstock and Salt River already have at least 10 to 12 schools — primary, secondary, and specialised facilities — serving existing communities. Are there confirmed places? Expanded capacity? Transport plans? Or are we simply expected to assume that infrastructure will magically absorb thousands more residents?
Housing policy cannot be driven by slogans or political point-scoring. It requires sober, economically realistic planning. Placing vulnerable families into high-cost, high-pressure urban nodes without comprehensive support systems is not empowerment — it is displacement by another name.
If the housing crisis is truly the centre of this debate, then let’s have an honest conversation about sustainability, affordability, infrastructure capacity, and long-term viability — not just rhetoric.
Then there’s healthcare — because obviously that’s a small, insignificant detail when planning for growth.
We’re already working with a system that’s stretched thin. Facilities like District Six Community Day Centre, which opened in 2018 to serve around 70,000 residents from Woodstock and Salt River. Chapel Street Clinic****, Spencer Road Clinic, Alexandra Hospital, and of course Groote Schuur Hospital — all doing the heavy lifting for communities that continue to grow while resources don’t magically multiply.
But apparently, that part isn’t exciting enough for some political narratives.
What I find fascinating is how certain parties prefer theatrical outrage over long-term planning. It’s far more thrilling to shout about “overdevelopment” than to acknowledge that the City of Cape Town has actually been developing a Local Spatial Development Framework (LSDF) for Woodstock and Salt River — including University Estate and Walmer Estate — to guide future land use in a way that balances heritage, community stability, economic growth, and yes, social diversity.
An inconvenient detail, I know.
This LSDF process isn’t a TikTok trend — it’s structured, consultative, and time-consuming. It aims to promote affordable housing, protect public spaces, and encourage economic participation. In other words, it’s trying to do the hard, boring work of sustainable development instead of the easy, dramatic work of political point-scoring.
But why talk about a nuanced, policy-driven framework when you can simply frame development as villainy and job creation as suspicious activity?
Because heaven forbid we discuss how economic growth might actually empower residents who need employment. Much better to imply chaos than to engage with planning documents.
Yes, development is complex. Yes, healthcare capacity matters. Yes, growth needs to be managed responsibly.
But pretending that thoughtful urban planning doesn’t exist — or actively trying to stall it for optics — doesn’t strengthen communities. It just makes for louder press statements.
And apparently, that’s what really counts.
So when it comes to the GOOD party — and let’s add the National Coloured Congress (NCC) into the mix — the selective memory is hard to miss.
You can’t romanticise history when it suits your narrative, then suddenly develop amnesia when the legal and policy realities don’t align with your outrage of the week. Either we respect the full context — legal frameworks, constitutional processes, spatial planning laws — or we admit we’re just curating history like a social media feed.
Leadership requires consistency. It requires engaging with facts even when they’re inconvenient. It requires offering workable alternatives instead of reflexive opposition.
Opposing everything isn’t courage.
It isn’t principle.
It isn’t strategy.
It’s just noise.
And communities don’t need more noise — they need solutions.