Cape Town's N2 wall project: A continuation of apartheid-era spatial planning?
Cape Town's proposed 3m high, 8km security wall along the N2 highway aims to curb crime but sparks debate over inequality.
Image: Ayanda Ndamane / Independent Newspapers
Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Appropriations, Dr Mmusi Maimane, has condemned the City of Cape Town’s N2 wall project as a failure of effective policy and a reinforcement of apartheid spatial planning.
Speaking at a briefing with chairpersons of Parliament’s Finance Cluster Committee on Monday, Maimane addressed the deployment of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), describing it as a popular yet inadequate response to the country’s crime crisis.
The City’s N2 Edge project, informally called the N2 wall project, would seek to replace and reinforce a severely deteriorated security barrier along the N2, alongside a package of safety and community-focused interventions.
“This project will not only repair safety barriers, but also bring various safety improvements for communities along the N2.
“It is not fair that a small number of criminal elements are impacting the safety of hundreds of thousands of daily users of the N2, including commuters from Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain, Blue Downs, Eerste River, Mfuleni, the Helderberg, and neighbouring towns,” Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said when the project was announced.
The City has faced repeated criticism of the project, not only from Khayelitsha residents and political parties, but also this past weekend at Cape Town’s Pride Festival.
Maimane said that he believes the practice of building walls and isolating citizens fails to address effective policy.
“I disagree vehemently with the idea of the wall. I think it entrenches apartheid spatial networking. I certainly think that it is a poor way of answering the question - who can go inside the community, and who can go outside the community?
“In my humble opinion, if you want to fight crime in communities, rather than deploying the army, we should devolve certain policing functions so that what metro police do, they are not spending their days checking license discs,” Maimane said.
Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Appropriations, Dr Mmusi Maimane, has said that the City of Cape Town’s N2 wall project is a failure to deal with effective policy, and that it entrenches apartheid spatial planning.
Image: Phando Jikelo/ParliamentRSA
This is where Maimane and the City appear to be on the same page, as the City of Cape Town has been championing their case for the devolution of policing powers for years.
“They must add them to the SAPS, increase intelligence, and make sure they're available in townships, so that we amend the law as to what a metro police can do, so that you give them investigatory powers.
“What we ought to be doing is thinking about a different crime strategy,” Maimane said.