The ambitious Richmond Park development in Cape Town is bound to set a new benchmark in land-restitution cases in South Africa. This public-private partnership serves to benefit the Richmond Park community that was forcibly removed from the land during the 1970s. Significant progress has been made since the inception of the project and Atterbury and co-developers Bethel Property, Quibic and Old Mutual were honoured to host the minister of Rural Development, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane at a site visit recently. Atterbury’s Western Cape Head of Development, Gerrit van den Berg, faciliated the delegation.
What led to the visit of minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane to Richmond Park? Was she responding to an invitation?
No, the initiative was all hers, which was really great; it was quite refreshing to have the enquiry for a site visit come from the minister’s side. We received a call from her office, requesting to meet on site the following day. It was heartening to see a minister in a new position display an immediate interest in the project as well as her new department.
What was the minister particularly interested in, and how did you structure the visit to maximise the experience?
It was quite something – we had over 20 officials attending a meeting at 8:00 on a Saturday morning; especially as everybody arrived on time that early on a weekend! Ms Nkoana-Mashabana asked for a status update on the project and clearly wanted to ensure that there is progress. She made it clear to the officials how important it is for them to give the community and developers all the necessary support to make a success of this project, for the benefit of the claimants. She mentioned that they should not sleep at night if there are unresolved issues on their table that might influence people less fortunate than all of us around the table. we believe that a big drive for the visit was also to encourage the officials to do their part in making this public-private partnership work.
We were proud to take the delegation on a tour showing them the Phase One infrastructure where transfer was given in 2017 to three new owners, CFC (Cape Fruit Coolers), Mustek and CTM. Construction on the Mustek building that includes an office and a warehouse component, is at an advanced stage and is expected to be completed later this year along with Origin Park, a 13 000 sqm mini-unit scheme, that we launched recently. CFC also started construction in May this year and we expect the building to be completed in April 2019.
What was the feedback afterwards?
I’m glad to report that the minister was suitably impressed with the progress so far; and she also said that she was looking forward to more buildings being constructed in the foreseeable future. All the feedback was really positive, motivating us to improve direct communication with the community to keep them even better informed on the processes and the progress. We intend to spend more time liaising with the broader community going forward, rather than only targeting communications at the level of the committee of representatives.
Are there any next steps leading from this ministerial visit?
We have more engagements planned with the Department of Rural Development going forward. They have been extremely helpful in resolving matters.
Did members of the community association participate?
Yes, Community Property Association (CPA) chairman Daniel September and vice chairman Rudi Adams were in attendance to represent the community.
What other good news can you share about community participation in the project as a whole?
The three contractors on site are making use of local labour from the Richmond Park community as well as from the nearby Dunoon settlement, as per the agreement. A skills development programme was completed before the development commenced and 120 beneficiaries graduated from training in various disciplines in the building industry, and were awarded diplomas in bricklaying, carpentry, plumbing, painting and electrical skills. Where possible the graduates from this programme were appointed by contractors.
Various community members have further benefited from the activities and this will increase over the next few months as more developments take off. A full-time community liaison officer will be on site from August to further streamline the process.
On the educational side, there are currently around 30 tertiary students from the community who are supported by the Richmond Park Treasury Trust. Twelve new students were funded in 2018, studying a variety of courses including BEd, journalism, IT, HR, social work and law. These students are enrolled at the Universities of Stellenbosch, the Western Cape and Cape Town, also Unisa and CPUT, and a few of them are at Damelin, Northlink and Boston College.
