The Cape Independence Party (CAPEXIT) strongly condemns the City of Cape Town’s latest proposal to expand informal settlements into Browns Farm in Philippi, warning that continued accommodation of illegal land invasions is destroying the Cape Flats’ historic agricultural heartland.

The party argues that rewarding unlawful occupation with free services only encourages further invasions, placing food security, farming livelihoods and the remaining Philippi Horticultural Area at risk. CAPEXIT says it will oppose any further expansion of illegal settlements and is calling for the City’s remaining farmland to be protected before it is lost forever.

The DA talks about population influx into the City of Cape Town and high-density low-cost housing expansion like it is some magical phenomenon of nature that no one understands, nor how to stop, manage, or reverse.

In a speech delivered in the Cape Town Council on Thursday, CAPEXIT party leader and City councillor Jack Miller slammed the DA’s approach to population growth and informal settlement expansion, accusing the party of treating it as an unstoppable force of nature that must simply be accommodated indefinitely.

“The DA talks about population influx into the City of Cape Town and high-density low-cost housing expansion like it is some magical phenomenon of nature that no one understands, nor how to stop, manage, or reverse. It must simply be endlessly accommodated for, until we have no green open spaces left and high density low cost housing all the way to the top of Table Mountain,” Miller said.

“Today’s proposal is to expand informal settlements into an area called Browns Farm in Philippi. The previous proposal we just had was also in Philippi to expand infrastructure into an area called Cape Farms. These names are appropriate as not that long ago, all of this area was farmland.”

Food basket

Miller noted that farmers on the Philippi farmland — many from the Cape Flats — once grew abundant vegetables that provided food for neighbouring Mitchells Plain communities as well as the rest of Cape Town.

“However, in 2014, illegal land invasions in the area began the massive informal settlements we see today of Marikana and the surrounds, with further land invasions taking place a few years ago in 2020 in Philippi Village,” he said.

He said it is well known among the farmers in the remaining farming land of the Philippi Horticultural Area, that the remaining areas of this old Cape farming land in Philippi and the Cape Flats are under constant threat of further land invasions.

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He said the first step to preventing further land invasions was simple: “You don’t reward land invaders with free electricity, free water, and other free services after they’ve illegally invaded land.” The rights of farmers in Philippi, the protection of historical farming land, and the Cape Flats communities that rely on its produce, he said, should take precedence over the demands of illegal land invaders.