Parklands registration campaign
In case you think this blog is all opinion and no action, here's the plan.
Table View is the nearest Cape Town suburb to where I live, and I used to live there for several years. I still live nearby. It's a great place. It is one of the fastest-growing affluent suburbs in South Africa. Table View has some busy commercial districts, such as the pleasant seaside Marine Circle area that serves the glorious Blaauwbergstrand beaches. The houses and flats on the beach are some of the most valuable properties in Cape Town; but inland there are houses affordable to young middle-class people.
Crime is a managable problem; the sad increase in car hijackings in the southern suburbs has thankfully not yet reached Table View; and the local SAPS is highly regarded. There are good private schools, like Parklands College and a network of excellent Educare creches.
Table View has problems, like all places. I've mentioned a few already. There are the many problems of poverty in Dunoon township and Doornbach squatter camp to the east. Table View suffers pollution from the Caltex refinery and Vissershok dump. Transport is a nightmare, since the roads are already hugely overloaded by suburban growth and there are no public service alternatives except the erratic buses and taxis.
Unlike Sea Point and Hout Bay, which are similar suburbs, Table View has space to grow. Developers marked out four major new areas in the last ten years: Parklands, Sunningdale, Bloubergsands and Dunoon. Parklands and Dunoon are the biggest, and also the most strongly contrasted.
Parklands is a wealthy townhouse residential area with facilities like shopping complexes, private schools, churches, entertainment. Dunoon is a township of RDP shoebox houses with hardly any facilities other than the basic provision of Sophokama school. Most churchgoers in Dunoon travel to other parts of the city for their observances, and nearly all those residents who have jobs there work elsewhere and are heavily dependent on dangerous taxis hurtling down Koeberg and Blouberg Roads.
Until now, Table View has been a political gold mine for the Democratic Alliance. Table View elected two ward councillors in 2000, and since it has grown so much since then it will probably elect three ward councillors in 2005.
However, Dunoon and its neighbouring informal settlement Doornbach overwhelmingly vote for the ANC. The pattern is stronger here than it is even in the ANC redoubt of Crossroads: Dunoon and Doornbach cast 6814 votes for the ANC in the 2004 general election, and 643 for all other parties including the UDM, who obtained the overwhelming balance of the ballot. Dunoon and Doornbach could now be used as anchor tenants of a gerrymandered ward.
The local DA - me amongst others - believe we can change the situation, but this hinges on what we can do about Parklands. This is because the huge growth of Parklands is not well-reflected in the voter registration of Table View. The Parklands voting district (VD) has 3005 registered voters, but we believe that VD may be home to five times that number of voting-age citizens.
The message is clear: to win Table View for the DA we must register those people.
Tomorrow I'm going to meet with Neil Ross, who is an old hand at elections. He's ward councillor for Plumstead, which is also a DA gold mine, but a very different suburb. We're going to examine tactics in Parklands and come up with a plan.
Table View is the nearest Cape Town suburb to where I live, and I used to live there for several years. I still live nearby. It's a great place. It is one of the fastest-growing affluent suburbs in South Africa. Table View has some busy commercial districts, such as the pleasant seaside Marine Circle area that serves the glorious Blaauwbergstrand beaches. The houses and flats on the beach are some of the most valuable properties in Cape Town; but inland there are houses affordable to young middle-class people.
Crime is a managable problem; the sad increase in car hijackings in the southern suburbs has thankfully not yet reached Table View; and the local SAPS is highly regarded. There are good private schools, like Parklands College and a network of excellent Educare creches.
Table View has problems, like all places. I've mentioned a few already. There are the many problems of poverty in Dunoon township and Doornbach squatter camp to the east. Table View suffers pollution from the Caltex refinery and Vissershok dump. Transport is a nightmare, since the roads are already hugely overloaded by suburban growth and there are no public service alternatives except the erratic buses and taxis.
Unlike Sea Point and Hout Bay, which are similar suburbs, Table View has space to grow. Developers marked out four major new areas in the last ten years: Parklands, Sunningdale, Bloubergsands and Dunoon. Parklands and Dunoon are the biggest, and also the most strongly contrasted.
Parklands is a wealthy townhouse residential area with facilities like shopping complexes, private schools, churches, entertainment. Dunoon is a township of RDP shoebox houses with hardly any facilities other than the basic provision of Sophokama school. Most churchgoers in Dunoon travel to other parts of the city for their observances, and nearly all those residents who have jobs there work elsewhere and are heavily dependent on dangerous taxis hurtling down Koeberg and Blouberg Roads.
Until now, Table View has been a political gold mine for the Democratic Alliance. Table View elected two ward councillors in 2000, and since it has grown so much since then it will probably elect three ward councillors in 2005.
However, Dunoon and its neighbouring informal settlement Doornbach overwhelmingly vote for the ANC. The pattern is stronger here than it is even in the ANC redoubt of Crossroads: Dunoon and Doornbach cast 6814 votes for the ANC in the 2004 general election, and 643 for all other parties including the UDM, who obtained the overwhelming balance of the ballot. Dunoon and Doornbach could now be used as anchor tenants of a gerrymandered ward.
The local DA - me amongst others - believe we can change the situation, but this hinges on what we can do about Parklands. This is because the huge growth of Parklands is not well-reflected in the voter registration of Table View. The Parklands voting district (VD) has 3005 registered voters, but we believe that VD may be home to five times that number of voting-age citizens.
The message is clear: to win Table View for the DA we must register those people.
Tomorrow I'm going to meet with Neil Ross, who is an old hand at elections. He's ward councillor for Plumstead, which is also a DA gold mine, but a very different suburb. We're going to examine tactics in Parklands and come up with a plan.
posted by mal @ 8:05 AM
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