Ringing Bellville's changes — how this pan-African hub is returning to its former glory
Warren Hewitt, chief executive of the Greater Tygerberg Partnership, and I meet in Marshalltown in the Jozi inner city, of all places. The partnership is a collaboration between businesses and the City of Cape Town that has spruced up the Bellville CBD, about 20km north of Cape Town, and Hewitt is in town for a series of meetings. He's fresh from talks with Jozi My Jozi, a similar urban revitalisation initiative, to discuss innovative waste management solutions.
We take a brisk walk through Marshalltown, down the pedestrianised Main Street to Gandhi Square, City Hall, Library Gardens, the Rand Club and back to 44 Main.
It's fascinating to walk with Hewitt because his eyes are sensitively attuned to urban renewal indicators. He notices the clever use of water reticulation in a sidewalk garden, new CCTV cameras, a heritage plaque here, a missing drain cover there. He's impressed by the cleanliness of Marshalltown, how secure and safe it feels.
Compared with the Jozi inner city, Bellville is significantly bigger. It's a huge pan-African hub, Cape Town's busiest transport interchange where 300,000 daily commuters use buses, taxis and trains. It hosts multinational company headquarters, well-established medical and educational centres and people living in a mixture of houses, apartments and housing estates.
Unlike the Jozi CBD, Bellville never entirely collapsed, but it underwent a slow decay from the 1980s. It became a secondary city with an increase in congestion, urban slums, homelessness and illegal trading – a familiar South African narrative.
Responding to the decline, the Greater Tygerberg Partnership was formed in 2012. 'We started to implement the broken window theory: fixing the small things will lead to fixing the bigger things. If you walk in Bellville these days, you'll see the results of these efforts.
'Our sidewalks have been repaired, there are huge murals and mosaic artworks decorating the area, there are urban gardens, art walks and general beautification of public spaces. And there's been a 43.4% increase in business activities since 2017,' says Hewitt.
There are different pillars to the work the partnership does as urban specialists, ranging from waste management, gardening and mural projects, to creating job opportunities through waste management initiatives and enabling investment opportunities.
Bellville has a huge informal trading corridor, says Hewitt, and the Greater Tygerberg Partnership is actively involved in supporting the traders. 'The main area of trading is along Kruskal Avenue near the Bellville train station, where the partnership installed a R450,000 ablution block.
'We asked local design students to submit proposals and chose the best one. Traders pay R2 per use and it's made a huge difference to their dignity.'
With money from the City of Cape Town, the partnership started the 'better. bellville. together.' place-making initiative to clean up Bellville. 'We had to first understand the journey of waste – both organic waste and landfill waste – and then work out how to recycle it in sustainable ways.'
Now, through its Zero Waste buy-back centre and waste pickers programme, the amount of waste the city must manage has been halved.
The Zero Waste programme involved businesses, schools and communities to take more active responsibility for their waste practices. 'It's a whole-community approach,' says Hewitt, 'with a variety of projects whose intended outcome is a zero-waste future. We work with local schools to educate on waste management, we partner with informal traders and we collect over 23 tonnes of organic waste monthly.
'We also have a Track My Trash programme, where residents can use a custom-designed app to track how much waste they recycle each week.'
The Greater Tygerberg Partnership also has a waste collection trolley project that matches local businesses with informal waste pickers, who are allocated trolleys to transport businesses' recyclable waste, enabling them to earn an income.
The key to urban management is partnership-based local development, says Hewitt. 'We work with property owners, small businesses, civil society and culturally diverse communities. We also collaborate with the City and city improvement districts.'
Working in the public space is interminably fascinating, says Hewitt, and sometimes a little frustrating. He wants less posturing, less red tape and more businesses to get involved. But for him the ultimate reward is when people feel a sense of belonging in the community and their pride of place is restored. DM
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