Residents’ fears for the future of Clairwood (The Mercury, February 24) are well-founded given the betrayal of this historic node by successive local government councils and absentee landlords.
Since the 1880s, when it came to be settled by former indentured Indian labourers, Clairwood flourished as a microcosm of Indian culture, enterprise, industry, and education. Up until 50 years ago, it had a population of 40,000. Its history, heritage and identity was comprehensively chronicled by Dr Juggie Pather in his 2015 book titled Clairwood: The Untold Story.
But its survival has been torpedoed in two ways. Deterioration of Clairwood commenced when absentee landlords allowed informal settlements to mushroom up on their properties, thereby devaluing property investment and gradually eroding the traditional social fabric of the area.
The other deciding factor of its ruin was the posturing of local government. This was unambiguously indicated on December 4, 2006, at a meeting held in the boardroom of the Flower Rd Municipal Fresh Market. Addressing the meeting at which I was present as Clairwood’s Council representative, the then City Manager, Dr Michael Sutcliffe, stated that Clairwood’s future would be determined by economic interests.
The significance of his statement is that Town Planning regulations would be of secondary relevance. And indeed they have been. Situated in close proximity to the port’s container depots, in the past 19 years, Clairwood has become a logistics hub. Some 48 trucking firms have infested what was a residential node the infrastructure of which was never intended for heavy transport.
Marches, protests, petitions, and numerous letters by the tireless Clairwood Ratepayers’ Association to Council departments have proved futile. Thus, it is with utter disbelief that one reads the latest statement from the Council’s Development Planning and Environmental Management Unit head Lihle Phewa.
His statement that the Council is “not rezoning land” but is developing “a framework to assess development applications” is 19 years too late. Sadly and by design, economic forces have overtaken circumstances in Clairwood.
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