Hout Bay
Associations in Johannesburg

Impacts on the Hout Bay River ecosystem, and on Skoorsteenkop/ Table Mountain National Park.

Republic Radio was set up just over a year ago and has a small studio in the Mainstream Centre, next to the Amphitheatre. Given the size the town has grown to in recent years, we believe that it’s time to have a fully operational FM station of our own that you can tune into on the normal dial. We are therefore preparing to make an application to ICASA (the government communications authority) for Republic Radio to obtain an FM licence. The reason being that the vast majority of our members are ratepayers but there are also some who are residents who rent property in Hout Bay. Slope development in IY Land Use Complaint Form When taking the high ground can be a hazard. It seems that informal settlements, or any low-cost housing projects, should be built anywhere but in low-lying areas. Areas which are level, or nearly level, and slightly elevated, are preferable. After all, if you build houses up on stilts, as they do in many places in the East, seasonal flooding does not cause too much of a problem in low-lying areas. In the Cape Peninsula, much of the most expensive housing is built on sloping sites, because of the splendid views you get from them. Only the rich can afford such sites, not only because they are sought after by other rich people, but because the cost of building is significantly higher. If you want to build a house on a sloping site you have to level the ground, which means expensive retaining walls or banks. Water supply might need a reservoir at a high point, with a pump to get the water up to it. These technical problems significantly increase the cost of housing for the poor on sloping sites, which means that fewer poor people can get housing. The problem is ongoing slow-motion environmental disasters. And the primary physical cause behind them is the steeply sloping mountainside that IY is built upon. This means that the foundations will have to be special: expensive piles would need to be driven, and structural ground beams constructed, as well as the retaining walls or banks for the necessary levelling. A few years ago it was discovered that some residents had been pouring their sewage into what they thought was a sewer; only it turned out to be a stormwater drain. In the latest proposal for the development of Imizamo Yethu, the council has come up with a scheme to deal with this. A detention pond would be constructed on the lower slopes, near the Hout Bay Main Road. Detention ponds normally serve to retain the large amount of water which accumulates in an area whenever there's a lot of rain. It is then gradually discharged into the stormwater disposal system. The slope of the land in IY, combined with gravity, hydraulics and unacceptable human behaviour, is causing an environmental disaster. Which is what the Hout Bay Residents' Association intends to do. Chairman Len Swimmer states that the residents of Dontse Yakhe are there illegally, as the area they occupy is outside the demarcated area of Imizamo Yethu.