Save Bonteheuwel Peace Garden

Dear Respected City Manager: Lungelo Mbandazayo, Mayor of Cape Town: Dan Plato & Ward Councilor: Angus Mckenzie

RE: Bonthewel Peace Garden – Camellia street

When doing a search online for our neighborhood of Bontehuwel, the results you get is usually very negative.  Shootings, gangsterism, gender-based violence and all the other stories we detrimentally associate with a Cape Flats neighborhood.  We don’t easily see the story of a community working together to save the place we call home.  There are no stories about our many street committees who work tirelessly to create programmes for our youth, about the community-initiated netball tournaments, about our scouts, about our career workshops, about our youth movements, about our parent support groups or of the numerous other community empowerment programmes in place.  These community initiatives are started and run by ordinary people, who in addition to having regular jobs, also work hard to make Bontehuwel a place we are all proud to call home.

One of these initiatives, is the peace gardens.  There are 2 peace gardens in Bontehuwel, one in David Profit Street & and our second one, in Camellia street.  The Camellia street property for years has been an illegal dump.  A neglected eyesore, frequently used by the negative elements in our society as a place to pedal drugs.  We (the community) however, took it upon ourselves to clean the plot, we worked with environmental organisations & regenerated the soil.  We converted the dump into a beautiful community garden, a place of safety.

While the garden was “inaugurated” on June 17th 2019, as a Youth Day project, work on the garden started February 2019, which took the community about 5 months to get the garden in the beautiful state it currently is.  On youth day 2019, we officially “inaugurated” both our gardens with a special programme with our diverse Interfaith leaders, Ward counsillor, organisations and neighboring community members.

We started at our David Profit Street garden with opening prayers and Blessings & walked to our Camellia street garden for the Blessing and closing prayers. On this inauguration day, we were addressed by a number of speakers, including Ward Councilor Angus Mckenzie.  Mr Mckenzie hower did not stay to join us at the Camellia Street gardens.

Mr McKenzie is a representative of the City, therefore our assumption was that the City had approved of our gardens.

We however were deeply saddened when we saw the notice of auction at our garden.  The land had been a dump for many, many years and just months after the community turned it into a place of safety, it is being sold.  I’m sure you can understand how extremely hurt and disappointed the community feels by this unfortunate turn of events.

Dear city leaders, our community does not want this land sold.  We have a petition of over 1100 people who support that the land not be auctioned.  We understand that this plot of land is not ours and as the community, if the land cannot be freely given as a peace garden, we ask that you sell this land to the adjacent Church of the Resurrection, so it can still be used to benefit the community.

Interestingly, the Church of the Resurrection has been trying to purchase this land from the City since 1994.  They have proof of correspondence with various City officials where numerous attempts were made to purchase this land.  Again, we as the community are extremely disappointed that this land is being auctioned, when the Church, which is an institute within our community, has been begging to purchase this land for years.

Sirs, in closing, we request that
1) You provide the land to the community for a peace garden
OR
2) You sell the land to the Church

As mentioned, we have over 1100 signatories petitioning to save this plot of land for community use.  In addition to these signatories, we have many community organisations (including ourselves, the Bonteheuwel Walking Ladies) who are 100% behind this land being sold to the church.

We call on the City of Cape Town, who claims to be pro-poor and who claims to be interested in creating safer communities, to do the right thing and not auction the peace garden in Camellia street.

Thanking you in anticipation.

Kind Regards

Soraya Salie
Founder Member
Bonteheuwel Walking Ladies Est 2007
walking
walkingladies@bonteheuwel.co.za

IWPG Peace Ambassador
International Women’s Peace Group

WOW Champion
Western Cape on Wellness

Link to online petition: https://bonteheuwel.co.za/save-peace-garden/

The above email was sent to:

lungelo.mbandazayo@capetown.gov.za, mayor.mayor@capetown.gov.za, angus.mckenzie@capetown.gov.za, info@claremart.co.za, city.manager@@capetown.gov.za, Alan.Winde@westerncape.gov.za, bence.corne@gmail.com, service@westerncape.gov.za, Johannes.Bouwer@westerncape.gov.za, andrew@claremart.co.za, zain@claremart.co.za, farrell@claremart.co.za, andrewe@claremart.co.za, info.acm@inl.co.za, info@groundup.org.za, vincent.cruywagen@inl.co.za, riana.howa@inl.co.za, Nidha@hsm.co.za, capetownetc@hsm.co.za, ctnews@inl.co.za, ctletters@inl.co.za, news@vocfm.co.za, Tasneem@vocfm.co.za, admin@radio786.co.za, mother@bushradio.co.za, info@capetowntv.org, contactcentre@sabc.co.za, kfm@kfm.co.za, editor@ewn.co.za, news@ewn.co.za, lois@smile904.fm, marketing@ccfm.org.za, info@muslimviews.co.za,churchoftheresurrection60@gmail.com, sc07.adams@gmail.com, press@reclaimthecity.org.za, phaletters@gmail.com, contact@reclaimthecity.org.za, sarah@sjc.org.za, bruce@co-creators.co.za, info@safcei.org.za,

 

 

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