Food Justice

If there is one thing that 27 years of raising this democracy has taught us, it is that genuinely democratic institutions cannot stand or flourish in landscapes of injustice. Now is precisely the time to build a state that cares for the many, not the few.

What began as a hyperlocal movement to protect the interests of emerging and commercial farmers, farmworkers and informal settlement residents in Cape Town’s Philippi Horticultural Area has become a much bigger campaign.

The struggle to preserve this resource for residents of the Cape Flats to farm and feed themselves is about protecting it from development and nurturing the richness it offers.

With findings that neither the City of Cape Town nor the provincial government considered the full impact of development on the Cape Flats Aquifer in the Philippi Horticultural Area, the Cape High Court has sent two crucial decisions back for a second look.

On Friday 20th September, thousands of South Africans joined the global climate strike to register their objections to the continuing destruction of the planet. Among them was HBF partner the Philippi Horticultural Area Food and Farming Campaign (PHAFFC) who are fighting to reverse a series of land use decisions that will render Cape Town anything but food, climate and water resilient.