A City Split in Two: How Cape Town's 2024/5 Budget Betrays Its Poor

This article draws directly from the official City of Cape Town budget document: Annexure 21 – Projects Over R50 Million: 2024/25. A full sector-by-sector analysis covering Housing, Water and Sanitation, Energy, Transport, and Digital Infrastructure including all Top 20 projects in each category.

Cape Town’s 2024/25 budget is being marketed as a record investment in infrastructure, growth, and future-readiness. Glossy graphics showcase R36.8 billion in capital projects from smart city operations and solar grids to road upgrades and wastewater treatment plants. The DA-led City Council proclaims progress. But beneath this polished façade lies a deeper, more uncomfortable truth: this budget reinforces the city’s spatial and economic apartheid, entrenching exclusion while branding it as modernisation.

The Myth of Equal Development

Across five sectors Housing, Water and Sanitation, Energy, Transport, and Digital Infrastructure a clear pattern emerges. While poor and working-class communities receive rhetorical inclusion and a few tactical investments, the lion’s share of funding is absorbed by already well-serviced, wealthier areas. We are not witnessing pro-poor development. We are watching the deepening of a Tale of Two Cities.

1. Human Settlements: Perpetuating Spatial Apartheid

Of the Top 20 Housing Projects, valued at R2.55 billion, the city directs funding mostly toward peripheral townships: Blue Downs, Gugulethu, Mfuleni, and Atlantis. On the surface, this seems just. But scratch deeper and a disturbing omission appears: there is no major inner-city social housing project funded over R50 million. Not in Salt River. Not in Woodstock. Not in the Foreshore.

This is despite: Court orders compelling the city to act, available well-located public land and a backlog of over 400,000 families on the waiting list.

Projects like the Airport Industria housing development remain in limbo, delayed by bureaucratic inertia and political resistance. In contrast, R247 million is earmarked to build mixed-use housing further away from the CBD entrenching commuting costs, congestion, and carbon footprints. Apartheid’s logic lives on, not by law, but by land use and budget choices.

2. Water and Sanitation: Cape Flats Neglected While Camps Bay Thrives

Cape Town faces a sanitation crisis. Raw sewage runs through informal settlements. Toilets overflow in Gugulethu. Khayelitsha’s ageing pipelines collapse under strain. Yet the city’s R9.25 billion water and sanitation budget prioritises mega-projects that bypass the poorest.

Yes, the Cape Flats Wastewater Works upgrade (R1.35 billion) is commendable. So is the Zandvliet expansion. But consider this: the Camps Bay Pump Station serving one of the wealthiest suburbs receives R427 million, nearly three times more than the entire sanitation budget for Masiphumelele.

No funding is allocated for dry sanitation pilots, community-managed ablution blocks, or decentralised waste treatment in informal settlements. No urgency exists to address Philippi’s groundwater contamination or the sanitation gap in "Covid" informal settlements.

The rhetoric says “inclusive growth.” The numbers say “privilege protection.”

3. Energy Transition: A Future for the Few

The DA administration is proud of its green energy agenda. In this budget, it allocates R8.27 billion to energy and electricity, with projects like: Atlantis Solar PV + Battery Plant (R621 million), Smart Grid Automation (R964 million), Steenbras Hydroelectric Station Rehab (R1.27 billion).

Yet township residents, who experience the worst of load-shedding, are left in the dark literally and figuratively. The Informal Settlement Electrification Program, targeting Crossroads and Nyanga, receives just R254 million a meagre 3% of the energy budget.

Why no investment in: Microgrids for backyarders? Rooftop PV pilots in Khayelitsha? Solar training for youth in Mitchells Plain?

This is not an energy transition. It is a green gentrification strategy dressed in climate language, engineered to benefit commercial zones, CBD towers, and smart offices while the Cape Flats remain energy-insecure.

4. Transport: Roads to Nowhere for the Poor

Transport receives the largest capital allocation R11.5 billion. The DA calls it a “mobility revolution.” Yet 67% of this goes to: Foreshore Freeway redevelopment (R940 million), N1/N7 and N2 Interchanges (R1.96 billion), CBD nodal upgrades (R663 million) and Airport Link reconfiguration (R463 million).

Meanwhile, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Bonteheuwel, and Nyanga remain traffic-choked, underserved, and dangerous for pedestrians.

Yes, there is R588 million for Spine Road and R501 million for Nyanga road rehab but these are a fraction of what is needed. The Bonteheuwel Active Mobility Project, a rare pro-poor investment in walking and cycling, is only R275 million less than a third of the Foreshore flyover upgrade.

Where is the funding for: Safe school zones in Bishop Lavis? Accessible taxis for the elderly in Manenberg? Flood-proof roads in Philippi?

Public transport reform is sorely needed. Yet the MyCiTi expansion continues to exclude most black working-class commuters, while taxis used by 70% of residents are still criminalised, not subsidised.

5. Digital Infrastructure: WiFi in Theory, Disconnection in Reality

The DA touts its “Smart City vision”, with R7.8 billion in ICT and data infrastructure. Projects like the: Smart City Ops Platform (R712 million), ERP Cloud Upgrade (R648 million) and IoT Sensor Network (R314 million), ...are futuristic and seductive. But for whom?

Yes, R184 million goes to Cape Flats Smart Poles and R288 million to school WiFi but many township youth still lack devices. Fibre to Langa and Manenberg libraries means little without laptops, stable power, and tech support. An AI chatbot to help pay rates does not help a backyarder whose shack has no electricity.

Open Data and Digital Inclusion mean nothing without co-design, digital literacy, and community ownership.

The DA’s Double Game: Performative Efficiency, Structural Exclusion

The DA often says: “we get the basics right.” But budgeting is not neutral. Every project chose nor not chosen reveals values.

• Why do Camps Bay’s sewers get R427 million, but Gugulethu’s sewer backlog R154 million?
• Why is Foreshore’s freeway prioritised over Masiphumelele’s flood-proof roads?
• Why is there no social housing in Sea Point, but R247 million for a distant project in Airport Industria?

These are not accidents. They are ideological expressions of a vision: one where the city is clean, digital, solar-powered, and efficient for those who already have.

A Progressive Vision Reimagined

We are not calling for no development. We are calling for just development. A budget that:

• Prioritises sanitation where dignity is denied, not where beaches must be clean.
• Electrifies informal homes before expanding CBD offices.
• Delivers social housing where jobs are, not where land is cheap.
• Funds youth tech skills before smart surveillance.

Cape Town can be both world-class and inclusive. But it must break with its colonial urban design, apartheid-era zoning, and neoliberal budget logic. It must place the poor and working majority at the centre of capital planning not on the outskirts, or at the bottom of funding tables.

Conclusion: From Smart Cities to Just Cities

The DA’s Cape Town is not a failed city. It is a selectively successful one.

It succeeds for the inner-city ratepayer, the coastal elite, and the industrialist. It fails for the factory worker in Atlantis, the single mother in Delft, and the student in Langa waiting for fibre that never arrives.

Budgets reveal priorities. And this budget reveals a city that is still hostile to the poor, performative to the public, and generous to the privileged.

It is time we reject the myth of “DA efficiency” and demand equity, justice, and spatial repair. Because a truly well-run city is not the one with the most sensors or fibre but the one where every resident counts, every area matters, and every cent reflects that truth.

* Faiez Jacobs is a former Member of Parliament, Proud Capetonian and current strategic advisor on local governance and inclusive development.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.