Minister Essop has, therefore, succeeded in fulfilling her promise to launch these before Christmas as part of our Krismis Box Deliverables. This ensures that the Western Cape is the first Province to respond to the National Spatial Development Plan and is the one Province that has subjected the development of Golf and Polo Estates to our overall objective of ensuring sustainability in everything we do in this Province.
This launch today represents a raft of interventions that send out one single message: Our environment is our core resource. It has to be sustained. It cannot be compromised at the altar of short term returns. It cannot be gambled with between spheres of government, at the hand of promises of jobs by developers, or held to ransom by gifts to officials and politicians.
It is our environment that is the source of well-being and our sought-after lifestyle in this Province. It is our environment that leads to our agricultural output that employs so many in our Province. It is our environment that attracts tourists over long distances to our shores. It is our environment that makes us the custodian of 2/3 of our country's biodiversity.
Our Province launches our PSDF at a time when we are witnessing, unfortunately, the realization of many threats to our planet and our province which were identified many years ago. The reply at the time to those identifying the threats were that they were hippies ringing alarm bells or that they were simply privileged people who were now anti-development. These are matters we will continue to debate.
Yet, who can argue against the fact that the world's collective negligence has plunged the Western Cape into a 3 year drought cycle where we face both water scarcity and poor water quality. Is this not a wake-up call?
Who can argue against the fact that traffic congestion and air pollution is beginning to negate the positive advantages of living in the most scenic and beautiful piece of Earth imaginable? Is this not a call to commitment and planning?
Who can argue against the fact that already we have lost or destroyed some of our most fertile agricultural land, scenic landscapes and vast tracts of Earth containing some of the most unique and rich sources of biodiversity? Is this not a call to action?
We have to respond to all of these challenges, as well as the challenges posed by migration patterns, the pressures for housing land, the need for economic growth beyond the 6% target set by the President, and the need for racial, linguistic and cultural integration based on the spatial integration of the Province.
The main criticism we will face is that we are making it difficult to develop in the Western Cape. Cabinet will reply very succinctly that:
- A predictable set of criteria for development within a set time frame for decision-making will always be preferable than long, drawn out decision-making based on arbitrary decisions by individuals, and the ability to bribe those decision-making individuals.
- Even before an investor decides on a development, that investor is influenced by a map that predicts the degree of difficulty that will be encountered by the developer, alternatively by the degree of ease. This will save undue time and costs even in pitching for a particular development.
- The result of today's launch of this raft of policy interventions will result in a consistency from National through Province to Local and will begin to mean that IDP's are in the image of PGDS's which will reflect the imperatives of the NSDP. This should result in a consistency of decision-making.
These I believe begin to make the Western Cape a Province that is fundamentally investor-friendly because it eliminates arbitrariness in decision-making, minimizes corruption from officials and developers, and ensures predictability in the development processes.
Another criticism that Cabinet anticipated is that Historically-Disadvantaged Businesses may complain that at the point at which they are ready to enter the lucrative golf and polo estate market, we are making it harder to enter.
Any black business that enters, cannot enter at the ethical levels of the apartheid era. We have to set new standards. Apartheid planned only until the end of Apartheid whereas we have to plan into a future without end. Therefore, our enduring ethic has to be sustainability.
Secondly, we can be green and black at the same time. In shutting down the era of wanton, unsustainable development, we recognize that in many of these developments, HDI's or blacks or "the community" have been appendages to the main deal. What we launch today, says that any approvals for developments - golf, polo, resort or any other kind of development - must be green ie sustainable and must be black ie empowering in fundamental ways.
Thirdly, in anticipation of a development levy, we begin to create the basis for incentives to win the rights to develop in the Province. No longer will we simply be fooled by the first developer who entices us with the promise of jobs, jobs, jobs, or win community support through a donation to the crèche. We need cross-subsidisation to areas of life in the Western Cape that have proven to be difficult - such as housing and land reform.
Today's launch invites developers to offset the housing backlogs in the Western Cape with the proceeds of the development.
Lastly, the PSDF also begins to overcome the spatial legacy of apartheid. We are still divided in the Province along racial lines. We are still fearful and suspicious of those who look, talk and pray differently. We rarely get to see the hearts and souls of our fellow citizens. All of this is so because we are physically separated. We are ghettoized as Coloureds, Africans, and Whites. The PSDF begins the hard process of reintegrating us, of ensuring that the Western Cape will become a Home for All.
In this Home for All, the PSDF is the fountainhead of all our Growth and Development Strategies. It will integrate us where we live. It must create possibilities for economic development. It must be the template for our infrastructure investment. It must drive our skills development. It must be underpinned by our Social Capital Strategy.
The Western Cape is at a Crossroads. We cannot go back to familiar development paths. They are unsustainable. We cannot solve our problems at the hand of short-term gain. We cannot right the wrongs of the past with short-sighted relief. The wrongs will only re-emerge again. The government of the Western Cape invites you to join us on the hard, steep and difficult road of sustainable development. The rewards will be good, long term and ensure that the goose always lays her eggs.
Only then can we say that, indeed, the Sustainable Home for All is being built in the Western Cape.
