Speech by the City’s Executive Mayor, Patricia de Lille, at
the handover of title deeds to Lagunya shop owners on
25 February 2014
Members of the Mayoral Committee
Members of the Steering Committee
Councillors
Lagunya Business Association
Honoured guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Good morning, goeie môre, molweni, as-salaam alaikum, shalom.
The City of Cape Town is committed to building an opportunity city, where
all residents are given the means to reach their full potential and become
full and productive citizens.
But in creating opportunity, we have to look deeper than networks; to the
foundations upon which any network is built.
We have to consider the foundation of any society where people have
economic freedom and economic choices.
It is the foundation of ownership.
Many of our residents are already owners in our economy.
Many of our poorer residents, however, are not.
And at the individual level, in most cases, the major asset from which all
other opportunities can be leveraged is the home or small business
premises.
That is why we have been providing title to qualifying beneficiaries, to
expand opportunity to poorer residents.
Indeed, I believe that there is arguably no single intervention that holds
the greater prospect of changing the lived reality of poor residents than
the provision of ownership.
Having title to property is a fundamental requirement of a free market
system, as it allows an owner to derive an income and to access capital.
Title enables recipients to start or expand a business venture, which in
turn enables them to derive an income stream and help create jobs.
The City is driving this process in numerous ways, both relating to public
housing and in empowering small business owners.
These are signature projects of our goal to drive reconciliation through
redress programmes in the City of Cape Town.
In terms of public housing, we have three streams.
Firstly, we are ensuring the transfer of title in new housing projects, with
recent significant successes including Kewtown in Athlone and Kuyasa in
Khayelitsha.
Secondly, a separate process has seen the City focus on affording
ownership to qualifying beneficiaries in existing housing.
The third process is specifically focused on redress, where the City is
transferring title to beneficiaries in historical housing projects, where
these housing projects were completed more than ten years ago.
Today, however, we wish to add to our successes in public housing by
broadening the scope of ownership to small business owners.
These business owners already drive economic activity in their
communities and it is our duty to empower them further, where we can.
Today’s beneficiaries have travelled a long journey to finally realise the
benefits of ownership.
Under the previous dispensation, they were issued with permits to
become tenants of their business premises.
This particular regime saw the State maintain ownership and allow people
temporary leases.
This theme is something we are familiar with in our history: the previous
regime withholding ownership rights from the majority of our population
in accordance with their unjust racial reservation policies.
In the years that followed, a great deal of government restructuring took
place and many of these outstanding issues became the victims of
administrative reconstructions.
Bureaucracy is tedious at even the best of times and it was made so
much worse when replacing one bureaucracy with another.
This affected business owners, the Lagunya shops, in Langa, Gugulethu
and Nyanga.
The history of the finalisation of title deeds for the Lagunya shops is a
reminder of our divided past.
Today we mark the beginning of a new chapter for the Lagunya shop
owners and I want to thank them for their patience in working with us.
After a process of reviewing the leases, writing off debt incurred,
subsidising transfer costs and resolving title disputes, we are in a position
to hand over 40 title deeds as of today.
I think that this is a proud day for reconciliation and redress of the past in
Cape Town.
In conclusion, we are working to broaden the base of opportunity in this
city, especially in terms of our infrastructure investment.
But the greatest investment we can make is in our people, especially by
giving them ownership.
This makes economic sense.
It makes financial sense.
It makes business sense.
But whatever else it does, it is the right thing to do.
Thank you, baie dankie, enkosi.