{"id":242220,"date":"2022-11-07T17:18:42","date_gmt":"2022-11-07T15:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/development-will-destroy-the-philippi-horticultural-area-says-farming-advocacy-group\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T17:18:42","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T15:18:42","slug":"development-will-destroy-philippis-farming-say-activists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/development-will-destroy-philippis-farming-say-activists\/","title":{"rendered":"Development will destroy Philippi\u2019s farming, say activists"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Ashraf%20Hendricks\/pha-20221103-ew3a3070hr.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/development-will-destroy-philippis-farming-say-activists.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">The Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) Food and Farming Campaign\u2019s Hazel Nyaba, Susanna Coleman, and Nazeer Sonday voiced their concerns over the potential approval of the 479-hectare development in the area. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Members of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) Food and Farming Campaign believe the urban development of land in the community could potentially destroy farming on the land and dry up the Cape Flats Aquifer and food security.<\/li>\n<li>The development initially proposed housing for 15,000 families, schools, commercial, and industrial facilities, and the remaining land for conservation.<\/li>\n<li>The Western Cape High Court, in 2020, ordered Bredell to reconsider the impact of the development and to do proper public participation.<\/li>\n<li>The PHA Campaign is concerned that more developers will encroach on the farmland once this project is approved.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The proposed urban development of the 479-hectares of land in Cape Town\u2019s Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) could cause \u201cirreplaceable loss of significant and fertile agricultural land\u201d. This is according to members of the PHA Food and Farming Campaign who believe that the Oakland City development could potentially destroy farming on the land and dry up the Cape Flats Aquifer and food security.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/development-will-destroy-philippis-farming-say-activists.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The Campaign wants the land to be used for agricultural purposes.<\/p>\n<p>The development initially proposed housing for 15,000 families, schools, commercial, and industrial facilities, and the remaining land for conservation.<\/p>\n<p>The City of Cape Town initially applied to the Department of Agriculture in 2009 to change part of the land from \u201chorticultural use\u201d to \u201curban development\u201d. However, the department denied the application. The City then rezoned the area in its <a href=\"https:\/\/resource.capetown.gov.za\/documentcentre\/Documents\/City%20research%20reports%20and%20review\/SDF_Technical_Report_2012_Interactive.pdf\">2012 Spatial Development Framework<\/a> and the development site now falls within the urban edge of the greater PHA.<\/p>\n<p>In February 2020, the Western Cape High Court <a href=\"http:\/\/www.saflii.org\/cgi-bin\/disp.pl?file=za\/cases\/ZAWCHC\/2020\/8.html&amp;query=oaklands\">ordered<\/a> Anton Bredell, MEC for Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, to reconsider the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).<\/p>\n<p>The court also ordered that proper public participation be done. Comments from the public on the development\u2019s EIA <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/civic-farming-campaign-takes-philippi-horticultural-area-development\/\">closed on 24 February 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The new EIA report is expected to be submitted to Bredell this week.<\/p>\n<p>Susanna Coleman, PHA Campaign volunteer, said the decision to give the development the green light a few years ago had to be reconsidered under the current climate circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe now know there is going to be less rainfall. There are going to be more extreme climate events,\u201d she said. Coleman also voiced concern that the development might trigger more proposals in the surrounding PHA area.<\/p>\n<p>Nazeer Sonday, PHA campaign chair and small-scale farmer, believes that the development could dry up the aquifer and encroach on food farming space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is ludicrous of [the developer] to claim that the impact of the development is actually going to be a good thing for the City.\u201d Sonday said he is confident that Bredell would make \u201cthe right decision\u201d when considering the EIA and public comments.<\/p>\n<p>In response to GroundUp\u2019s questions, Bredell\u2019s spokesperson, Wouter Kriel, said that the minister \u201cwill apply his mind to all the information before him in order to make a decision in this matter\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He said that should the development go ahead, it will \u201cresult in job creation and will address the shortage of housing opportunities\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The developer, Oakland City, did not respond to GroundUp.<\/p>\n<p>The City said it could not yet comment on the issue until it has had an opportunity to go through the EIA, which will first be considered by the provincial government.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/development-will-destroy-philippis-farming-say-activists.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) Food and Farming Campaign\u2019s Hazel Nyaba, Susanna Coleman, and Nazeer Sonday voiced their concerns over the potential approval of the 479-hectare development in the area. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks Members of the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) Food and Farming Campaign believe the urban development of land in the community could potentially [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-242220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/development-will-destroy-philippis-farming-say-activists.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}