Capetonians and interested parties have until 17:00 on Friday to share their views on plans to renovate an old Woodstock Hospital site into a housing development.
A public participation period on the Woodstock Hospital
site or Cissie Gool House opened in September 2024 and was extended to 31
January 2025.
Housing advocacy Reclaim the City hand-delivered submissions on the future of the Old Woodstock hospital at the Civic Centre on Friday morning.
PHOTO: X - @ReclaimTheCity‘’The City of Cape Town (City) has announced plans to
dispose of our home, Cissie Gool House (CGH), a place we have lived in and
built our lives around for nearly a decade. Many people living in CGH were born
and raised in Woodstock, this is our ancestral place, our living heritage is
here. Despite our long-standing presence, the City has failed to meaningfully
engage with us, the residents. Instead, this process has become yet another
threat of evictions and displacement. Apartheid may have ended in law, but it
persists in the exclusionary economic policies that continue to push poor and
working-class people out of well-located areas,’’ said Karen Hendricks, Reclaim
the City Woodstock Chapter leader.
‘’ Without well-located transitional housing, many families
have been forcibly removed. The housing market’s exclusionary nature further
deepens spatial inequality, forcing poor and working-class people to the
outskirts of the city. We too could have been displaced. But in 2017, when we
occupied Cissie Gool House, we found refuge. Today, more than 900 people,
including women, children, and the elderly, call this place home. Now, the
City’s plans threaten to evict and displace us once again,’’ she added.
Speaking on Bush Radio's Sakhsizwe programme, earlier this week, Kopano Mashike, a filmmaker and storyteller, documented life inside the Cissie Gool House and shared her experience.
‘’I think people try and hold space for each other the best
way they are able to. Everyone is worried about what will happen. A community meeting
was held in Woodstock and what the chairperson said there will not be a mass
eviction, but an incremental eviction… I feel like occupiers of the Cissie Gool
house does not know what is happening as
they are being spoken to in a language they do not understand.’’
Comments can be submitted to leanetteanathi.dywili@capetown.gov.za & affordable.housing@capetown.gov.za or online submissions can be made.
Done by: Mitchum George
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