Cape Town – Good Party warns that the city of Cape Town cannot allow mismanagement and critical human rights violations in its transitional housing project in Pickwick, Salt River.
Commenting on the issue on Wednesday (April 2, 2025), Cape Town Councillors Axolile Notywala and Roscoe Palm said they had “who witnessed a shocking situation.”
Among the abnormalities discovered,
Residents were voluntarily detained or confined from their residence. Illegal evictions at the discretion of security guards and facility managers were carried out in a clear violation of the prevention of the Illegal Eviction (PIE) Act. Even more shockingly, many residents are forced to marry to stay in facilities close to family, friends and children. Visitors, including long-term partners and family members, cannot stay for more than 10 days. Good established that several couples who are married under obsessively to stay there are married. This reflects the darkest apartheid practices that people who were forced out of Cato Manor in the 1950s were forced to marry to get a home in Korea. City services that should be rendered at the facility, such as social services and occupational therapy, are absent except for minimal box-tic exercise. We also have complaints about lack of maintenance at the facility.
“The City of Cape Town's failures and actions at this facility are illegal and unconstitutional,” the two councillors said in a joint statement.
In a similar case filed in 2017, the Constitutional Court held that lockouts and family separation rules for temporary emergency residential accommodation offered by the city of Johannesburg, including cities such as Doradora and another v. Johannesburg, violated the constitutional rights to dignity, privacy and freedom and security.
“Pickwick is a naked promise that the city of Cape Town can see across the country,” the statement said.
“'Its history dates back to 2018 when Brett Herron, a member of the Meiko, a human settlement at the time, identified it as a transitional home for residents of Pine Road.
“They moved to transitional homes in Pickwick so they could begin construction of Pine Road social housing.
“The real tragedy is that people have lived in residential homes that have been in transition for nearly seven years, and there are no indications that development is being developed at the Pine Road location.
“These residents have been promised that housing in transition is just that.
The Good Party said the stagnation caused by Cape Town's falling into building social housing in the area where it was actually positioned, led to omission and trampling on the rights of residents by the committee.
“The attempts by management company employees and security personnel to block legal surveillance by city councillors is extremely troubling,” the statement said.
“To this end, we have filed accusations against South African police services to investigate illegal obstacles to the work of the City of Cape Town Councillors.
“After the visit, we acknowledge any measures taken by the management company to relieve tension within the facility.
“The future of this project is important to address housing shortages on land located in or near the city center.”
The good party said that for this is to meet officials from the Cape Town City Human Village Bureau, including MMC Karl Pochheim and the management company.
“MMC Karl Poppyim, a human settlement, must now intervene, cooperate and authenticate,” the statement said.
“The lack of clear action in fixing abuse at this facility shows that by ruining this project, it is breaking down our promise to deliver housing.
“Pickwick residents made these promises by the city, and residents have kept their words, and cities aren’t.
“Instead, residents need to dodge themselves for themselves for themselves against any abuse on a daily basis, clearly about when they will operate like prisons from this transitional residential facility.”
