Where a child grows up shapes their experience of childhood and chances in life so much so that those in the same city can have wildly different experiences of love, access to food, safety and opportunities for early learning.
These children don’t get to vote in Local Government Elections, yet municipal decisions shape almost every aspect of their daily lives — from whether they have safe places to play and learn, to the quality of public services in their communities, such as waste removal and sanitation.
This was the central theme of the first Metro Lives held at the Homecoming Centre in District Six, Cape Town last night, 21 July 2026. The event brought together a panel that included Deputy Mayor Eddie Andrews and Brett Herron, representing GOOD and RISE Mzansi.
Also on the panel were Western Cape Commissioner for Children Sarah Roberts and DG Murray Trust (DGMT) Project Director Kwanda Ndoda, bringing diverse perspectives on the future of Cape Town.
Metro Lives is a series of public dialogues focused on the role of municipalities in creating the conditions for children and families to thrive. Hosted by Change Ideas, DGMT, Hold My Hand and a KfW-funded ECD project, it challenges local leaders to put children at the centre of local
government planning and decision-making.
The reason is clear: “It’s the experience of children in Cape Town today that will determine the future of this city,” said David Harrison, DGMT’s Chief Executive Officer, when he opened the event.
“That’s not an exaggeration — it’s probably the single biggest predictor of what this city will look like in 20 years,” Harrison explained.
Spatial inequality and service delivery
Roberts illustrated the inequality of childhood experiences by imagining two children’s mornings. One walks a short distance to school through a well-maintained park and has a rich extra-curricular programme that includes sport; the other wakes at 4:30 a.m. to catch a bus or taxi to a school in another district.
For Andrews, who grew up in the Cape Flats, the second story was personal: “That was my life”. A pressing issue in Cape Town remains the legacy of apartheid-era spatial planning, which pushed poorer communities to the edges of the city, far from economic opportunity. That pattern has not been “fundamentally” disrupted — poorer residents still live on the outskirts, many in shacks or backyard dwellings, and face long commutes to work, Herron argued during
the panel discussion.
“Where children live matters,” he said, arguing that the vastly different experiences of childhood today are the direct legacy of design. “
“In 32 years, we haven’t done enough to fix the apartheid spatial plan and everything that goes with it,” said Herron. A fundamental change was necessary, he argued. Andrews insisted the city is systematically undoing this legacy, pointing out that a significant portion of the city’s budget is directed at improving services in the communities that were left behind during apartheid.
New interventions focused on children
One of the initiatives that Andrews highlighted was the city’s fresh plan to expand access to early learning programmes in poorer neighbourhoods where practitioners have long struggled to register because of onerous compliance requirements.
Andrews says the city has an early childhood development task team focused on removing compliance barriers and has established a fund to offset development costs, which have held practitioners back.
The fund is part of a broader programme, supported by around R300 million in funding from German development bank KfW in partnership with DGMT, to help the majority of the city’s unregistered early learning programmes become compliant and access state subsidies. These subsidies are used to pay practitioners’ salaries, buy learning material and deliver nutritious meals.
The next Metro Lives event is set to take place in Johannesburg on 24 August, followed by an event in Durban in September. Both will be livestreamed on ZOOM
Watch Metro Live – City of Cape Town below
