One of the townships in Cape Town, Philippi was established in the 1980s, about the same time as Khayelitsha and Delft. On what is referred to as The Cape Flats, it is located between Ottery, Hanover Park, Grassy Park, Mitchells Plain, and Manenberg. It served as a battlefield during apartheid and still faces formidable difficulties today due to poverty, unemployment, overcrowding, and vulnerability to fire and flooding.
Philippi was formerly known as Die Duine, or The Dunes, and was mostly used as grazing land for nearby farmers. Despite the enormous residential boom and the strain for space, it is still home to small-scale farms that produce about 80% of Cape Town’s vegetables (100,000 tonnes yearly). This farming region, also known as The Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA), is vital to the city’s food security. But it discovers that it is engaged in a serious conflict to hold onto the territory.
The farmers, whose food is a source of income (sold to neighbourhood supermarkets and to residents of The Flats), are fighting to get their goods identified as “local” and branded in stores in an effort to raise awareness. The Cape Flats Aquifer, a 630 square kilometre subsurface water source that is mostly covered in tar and concrete, has one remnant uncovered part in the PHA. It seems that this same fresh water is sufficient to meet 30% of Cape Town’s needs for potable water. The city plans to use this land for both housing and business development.
The need for housing in Philippi is huge due to the large influx of people, but the PHA is also crucial to the city’s food security because of the growing effects of climate change on food production and the demand for water.
The PHA launched the Food & Farming Campaign, and in early 2016, it achieved success when the Heritage Western Cape (HWC) decided not to permit one of the PHA’s two proposed developments to be rezoned and instead placed the PHA under heritage protection. The City and local government are not bound by this HWC decision; the City is free to still approve the application.