eNCA's election debate exposes the stark divide in Cape Town governance

Yesterday evening, at the University of the Western Cape's main hall, eNCA held a WeTheNation election debate. The focus was on whether Cape Town is being governed as one city or two. The Democratic Alliance's Carl Pophaim, the Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, spoke on behalf of the DA.

Pophaim claimed that the DA cares for Cape Town's Black poor, citing improvements to the MyCiTi network, affordable inner-city housing, and treating a bus timetable as a housing policy. However, the reporter directly challenged Pophaim, stating that the DA is a party of the wealthy and not the poor. He highlighted the overcrowding and poor living conditions in Dunoon, where thousands live in squalor and sewage runs in the streets.

Despite owning the land, the DA has not built affordable housing for these residents but instead has spent years sitting on it.

The EFF student leader reinforced the MyCiTi claim's inadequacy, emphasizing that a bus pass does not address spatial inequality. Pophaim's performance in the UWC debate was done in the shadow of a Constitutional Court judgment. On July 2, 2026, the court set aside the 2015 sale of the Tafelberg site in Sea Point, as the province and City of Cape Town had failed their obligations under the Constitution.

The court ordered the DA not to sell Tafelberg to a private developer and to develop affordable housing for social housing near workplaces and amenities. The DA's performance in UWC, therefore, was a lie, as the two cities are not an accident but a settlement the DA has chosen to maintain.