Last year, a group of civil society organisations and academics urged President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Minister of Public Works Patricia De Lille to immediately release three large, well-located and under-used military sites in Cape Town for the development of low-income housing. The organisations say that these three pieces of nationally-owned land – Ysterplaat, Wingfield and Youngsfield – have the potential to combat Cape Town’s affordable housing crisis and alleviate the most harmful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,
which has driven many into homelessness. By releasing the sites, they believe the national government could make room for up to 67,000 low-income households in Cape Town.

The group of organisations includes Ndifuna Ukwazi, the Development Action Group (DAG), Legal Resources Centre (LRC), Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC) and academic Professor Vanessa Watson of the University of Cape Town.

The organisations hosted a virtual public meeting that brought together almost 200 land and housing activists from a range of different community-based organisations and social movements – to raise awareness of the submission and put pressure on the government to release these sites for the development of housing.

Ndifuna Ukwazi researcher, Michael Clark, and Town Planner from the Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC), Chadernnay Glenn.