Land invaders had a lot of people on their nerves last week.
They used Human Right’s Day to protest land inequality, access, and apartheid spatial planning, by targeting some especially lovely pieces of real estate in the Western Cape.
They did this in response to a report proposing that golf courses and bowling greens be used for affordable housing.
Well, you can just imagine how this issue is dividing families and homes across the country.
It turns out, we all want social justice, but many of us would prefer it didn’t happen on our doorstep.
Personally, I have never cared enough about golf to understand it, play it or lobby to preserve it.
Bowling greens, on the other hand, were going to be my retirement playground.
I remember staring in awe through the fence at the Green Point Bowling Green, convinced that I could hit that white ball at the other end every time.
I was a master at marbles, after all.
To me, bowling greens signal the end of all daily corporate worries; and I had long ago decided that I want to have that much free time.
Anyway, it turns out I may have to find another way to remind myself every day that I don’t have a single worry in the world anymore.
Because this new report by the civil society organisation Ndifuna Ukwazi reckons there’s some very valuable city land that should be used for housing.
One such piece of land is the Rondebosch Golf Course between the Athlone bus stop and the M5/Klipfontein Road bridge.
The report says the golf course pays the City rent of just R1 000 a month for their 450 000 square metre piece of land.
And this fact drew a hundred or so people to march on the golf course on Human Rights Day.
FRUSTRATION: Poor people in need of land. Photo: David Ritchie/ANA
I live nearby, so locals quickly started talking about a “land grab” that was going to result in shacks in the neighbourhood by the end of the week.
This - it turns out - is a genuine fear for many in the middle class.
The way I see it, they would love to see poverty addressed constructively; including seeing low-income Capetonians be given decent housing in decent areas that are not hours away from their places of work.
They are very sincere about this, but they would rather it not affect their own standard of living, lifestyle or property value.
That is, of course, a very reasonable expectation from people who work very hard to progress and improve their lifestyle; and having one reckless event wipe all of that away in one fell swoop is something they will rightfully resist.
The problem with that argument is that everyone has exactly the same argument.
So nobody is ever prepared to reconsider their standpoint or even just open up their views to new, innovative thinking.
Also, these are the people who point at government for a solution, as long as it doesn’t require much work, compromise or even thought from us.
I don’t think I have ever before realised what a bunch of entitled hypocrites middle-class people are.
Here’s the risk, though: as long as there is selfish indifference, the poor will get more and more angry at resistance to change.
It is this kind of brewing discontent that contributes to violent revolutions.
The other contributing factors are corruption; broken political promises; unchanged social status quo and a lack of political will to address any of these issues.
Most South Africans agree that we have the above in bucket loads.
We can change all of it, but it seems the one thing we can do out of the goodness of our hearts, we are shunning.
I am not advocating for allowing an informal settlement on Rondebosch Common.
The solution is not as simple as that.
What I do know is that too many people are not prepared to even discuss the issue outside of their own set of expectations.
There is a blanket “no” when certain possibilities are raised.
We are seeing only the negative to low-cost housing in our neighbourhoods; not the long-term benefits it will bring to those families.
And this is, after all, a challenge of human beings, not real estate.
We are all very eager to point fingers at greedy government officials, who only ever think of money.
But one of THE most pervasive (and least convincing) arguments I have heard against this problem is “what about the value of my property?”