Is Cape Town thriving or just delaying Johannesburg’s fate? - Viv Vermaak
Key topics:
Cape Town’s migration boom strains housing and planning
Informal settlements are now a permanent urban feature
Secession talk rises but lacks practical feasibility
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By Vivienne Vermaak*
I was one of the vlugtelinge of the second Great Trek. I didn’t quite go as far as asking Trump for refugee status, but I moved to Cape Town from Johannesburg. My tribe, of the whiter, more mature variety, made jokes about how we are re-colonising the Cape and re-invigorating it, waking it from its Slaapstad slumber. In our social media pages and news outlets, we saw pictures of people similar to us moving down and enjoying the most beautiful city in the world for its natural splendour, administrative competence, and shining examples of how municipalities should be run. There is a strong tax base here, better unemployment numbers, and the spectre of government corruption does not loom as large over Table Mountain as it does over the mine dumps of Germiston.
As African cities go, Cape Town is distinctive. A separate universe, a different world. Some are saying the Cape should be independent, even secede. They are making it an argument about bureaucratic efficiency, ideological supremacy, and good cappuccino, but it hides a more uncomfortable truth and realisation – that there is a much larger influx of people from the Eastern Cape, up north and beyond, for whom the price of a latte is of no concern; they are merely following the aroma of those with more money than them, hoping some crumbs will fall off the table and that the wealth somehow trickles down. Their stories don’t make the online pages like mine, but like me, their plans to move to the Cape were inspired by rainbowy thoughts of abundant jobs and infrastructure for all, only to find that it is not like that, and whichever components of it are true, might not remain like that forever.
Important: I am not complaining here, I am sharing. It is central to my citizenship of this country that I feel good about my contribution and place therein. This starts with an honest and robust assessment of the realities, which, if I can’t change, I must adjust to.
Between 2011 and 2022, the city’s overall population grew by 27.6% and the total number of households in the city increased by approximately 36%. Can Cape Town cope? Burgert Gildenhuis, a leading authority in municipal planning across Africa, thinks maybe not. “The Western Cape’s key vulnerability lies in the inability to absorb the volume and velocity of its in-migration in a structurally sound way,” he says. “Beneath Cape Town’s image of prosperity lies a fragile urban model, strained by migration, informality and fiscal stress. Cape Town might become an echo of African regions where rapid urbanisation outplaces planning and governance strains under demographic and political pressures.”
In his article, “The Cape Mirage? Why Cape Town might become another dysfunctional African city,” he explains how the land and housing market has in effect become prohibitive. While the council promotes a ‘pro-poor’ rates and taxes dialogue, housing falls short of demand. Informal settlements are becoming a reality to the extent where calling it ‘informal’ becomes a misnomer – it is now a formal reality, and should be treated as such, according to Gildenhuis.
“Informality is, therefore, not a temporary condition, but a permanent feature of urban growth in the province, yet provincial and local policies still treat it as an aberration to be controlled or eradicated.” In practical terms, it plays out like this: “The city’s development pipeline has struggled to keep pace, not due to a lack of planning but because formal systems are too slow, too regulated and too expensive to respond to real-time growth. Planning has become a compliance exercise rather than a tool for adaptation. The result is familiar across Africa - cities expand, but increasingly beyond the state’s design.”
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I am paraphrasing Gildenhuis’ words here, but for me, as a newer resident of the Cape province, I read it to mean: “It is only a matter of time before much of what happened in Johannesburg happens in Cape Town. As more and more people arrive, the mismatch between demand and supply will become more apparent and social tensions will increase. I recall having just moved here from a volatile situation in Germiston and walking around the area to see if I could spot illegal electricity connections and backyard dwellings, which were the first signs of decay in an area. I got up on my roof in Parklands, as I did in Gauteng, and surveyed the landscape. Electricity, I would not be able to spot, as the cables run underground here, but I was relieved to see no backyard dwellings with the naked eye. In Gauteng, old family homes were modified into units with 21 rooms housing 45 people and easily spotted from a rooftop. The backyard dwellings in Cape Town have doubled since 2011, though. People don’t really have another choice.
I am at peace with that, understanding I have outrun that component of society for a while. For how long, I don’t know. It feels like 5 or 10 years, but maybe 20. I am appreciative of the cautiously worded article of Gildenhuis. It gave me solace that there are realities one has to accept, even respect.
Certainly, some options are off the table for me, even ideologically. Cape secession is a dream, full of sound and fury, but without a concrete plan. Like ‘socialism done properly’, it is a lovely idea, but not practically feasible. There is no way to integrate the complexities of urban town planning, immigration control, and the overarching reality of a central government bent on centralised power.
Town planners don’t understand the social impact of their decisions, and governments don’t comprehend the principles of free markets. All people understand is that they must survive and must move to where they think they have a chance of a better life, even if only a dream, and even if for only a few years. As I travel now through the province, I am relaxed about understanding the informal settlements being as much part of the landscape as fynbos, something to be acknowledged, not weeds that must be rooted out.
Cape secession? From where I am sitting now on top of my roof, I would be in favour of a referendum on the issue, but I would vote ‘no.’ You can outrun history for a while, but not forever. As the seasonal storms shift the plates of daisies and dunes around, the winds of change will make informality of prescribed policy. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with this progression.
Now that I understand it, it gives me a more pragmatic future outlook, and I feel good about being in South Africa. We have had an extraordinarily peaceful transition to democracy. We were the leading emerging market after democratisation in many fields in the world. Substantial improvements were made for the majority of our people in the first two decades. There were massive advances in service delivery and housing development on a formal level. On an informal level, people are starting to catch on to the concept that Kasinomics is a vibrant and valid economy in its own right. We can build on the good, the bad, and the adapted.
Maybe Cape Town is not ahead of the curve, but living up to its nickname, ‘Slaapstad,’ and is in fact a bit slower than Joburg in some areas of progression. For this, I am extremely grateful.
*Vivienne Vermaak is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer and public speaker. Vivienne is a Senior Associate of The Free Market Foundation.
