TAMARA

By Michelle Collins, Chairman CRB Blaauwberg(Community Representation Blaauwberg): Cape Town, Blaauwbergstrand, September, 6, 2025: The City of Cape Town and the Department of Public Works are forcing an unsafe and unlawful LSDF onto land inside Koeberg’s evacuation zone and mapped as critical biodiversity — all to justify calling it a PHSHDA. The City of Cape Town and the Department of Public Works & Infrastructure are moving ahead this week to finalise a Local Spatial Development Framework (LSDF) that would enable thousands of new housing units on Erf 1117, Blaauwbergstrand. This land lies inside Koeberg Nuclear Power Station’s Urgent Protective Zone (UPZ), where evacuation in an emergency is already in doubt, and it is mapped in the City’s 2025 Biodiversity Spatial Plan as Critical Biodiversity Area (CBA1a) and wetlands within the UNESCO Cape West Coast Biosphere Reserve. Yet the project is being justified on the false claim that Erf 1117 was gazetted as a Priority Human Settlements and Housing Development Area (PHSHDA). Erf 1117 sits within the Koeberg UPZ (5–16 km radius), a zone where national regulations demand rigorous evacuation modelling before any large-scale population increase. No such modelling has been provided for this land. The dangers are not theoretical. During the unrest on the Dunoon/Malibongwe corridor, a key evacuation route, roads were blocked and impassable. If this can happen during protest, it will certainly compromise emergency evacuation. To concentrate thousands of new households here without proven evacuation feasibility is reckless, unlawful, and a breach of the National Nuclear Regulator’s mandate to protect public safety. In its Human Settlements Strategy (May 2021), the City of Cape Town made clear that housing focus in Blaauwberg should be on Du Noon and Joe Slovo, not Erf 1117. The strategy further stressed that any development in the Koeberg UPZ must carefully weigh nuclear evacuation concerns. To now …