On Thursday 9 October the chain saws fell silent on the Butler property on Bolandweg, leaving a scene of devastation reminiscent of the Deville Wood area during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. For me it reminds us of the 1918 poem from WW I: And Then the Guns Fell Silent.
“And then the guns fell silent, Smoke and death were in the air, The sounds of echoed silence.”
For three weeks we have been listening to the chain saws cutting down majestic trees in our neighbourhood, some 50- to 80-year-old giants, all in the name of development but we know it’s about an improvement of the City of Cape Town’s finances, the same City “that works for you”.
At the same time The Argus front page of Tuesday 6 October displays the details of the court application by CTCRA (City of Cape Town Collective Ratepayers Association) challenging the City’s budget of 2025/26. Without going into detail about this court action it remains a travesty that rate payers, people who pay the City official’s wages and the political echelons salaries, must turn to the courts to force this cabal to listen to our concerns.
Reference the City’s defence of these various levies, to wit; water, electricity and now cleaning, I cannot find any evidence that there is a concerted effort from the City’s side to reduce their expenditure. From the Free Market Foundation (Cape Town’s budget: A departure from the rule of law | Free Market Foundation): By linking service fees to property values rather than actual usage, the City shifts from a cost-recovery model toward wealth redistribution.
Somewhere is a research piece from 2015 about the City’s unsustainable wage bill warning about an unfolding disaster. Now in 2025 this where we are with a City wage bill climbing at an unsustainable rate, and I quote: “Staff-related costs continue to increase, now set for R20,758 billion. Although salary increases are reflected as 5.1% ‘cost to company’, the actual increase is 7.5%. The budget appears to hide behind centrally negotiated SALGA salary increases.” This from the Western Cape Property Development Forum’s letter dated 2 May 2025 addressed to the mayor and his team. Did they listen? Not on your Nellie. Currently the public sector wage bill stands at an eye-watering R750 billion on top of national debt costs of R1,1 billion per day. As a concerned citizen I would have thought that our young vibrant mayor would take note of this financial cliff we are approaching.
But Sunday we will have our small Malawian gardener, who works two jobs to feed his family in Malawi, on duty here at our house. Cleaning and planting new shoots to offset the carbon footprint lost on the Butler property on top of cleaning the street. Yes, cleaning the street, as do all the neighbours using garden services, which begs the question: Those of us, including the “gated developments”, that fund this function with after-tax money, can we submit an invoice to the City for “services rendered”? Or can we apply to have these levies discounted on our municipal account? In the 30 plus years we have been living at this address the City has never had to clean our street, why are we now required to fund a mythical activity?
Will we end up funding a mythical unicorn run by the City? Let’s unite and stop this.
Francois J Marais, Durbanville
