Children growing up in Cape Town’s poorest communities are still paying the price for apartheid spatial planning more than three decades into democracy.
This is according to GOOD party mayoral hopeful Brett Herron, who warned that unless municipalities put children at the centre of planning and investment decisions, another generation will inherit the same inequalities.
Speaking during the inaugural Metro Lives Conversation hosted by the DG Murray Trust, Change Ideas and the Hold My Hand Campaign at the Homecoming Centre in District Six on Tuesday evening, Herron argued that the city’s deepest inequalities remained rooted in apartheid-era spatial planning and that local government had a constitutional responsibility to change that.
The discussion brought together Herron, Cape Town Deputy Mayor Eddie Andrews and Western Cape Commissioner for Children Sarah Roberts to debate how municipalities can create child-friendly communities through housing, neighbourhood safety, and early childhood development ahead of the 2026 local government elections.
Herron said that where children grew up continued to determine their life opportunities.
“For a decade, I’ve been using the phrase ‘where people live matters’. But certainly where children live matters – how they live, how they grow up, and their environment,” he added.
Herron contrasted the daily lives of children growing up in affluent suburbs with those living in poorer communities, saying many children still wake before dawn to travel long distances to school, live with food insecurity, and are surrounded by unsafe public spaces.
“You can actually tell from what a child would describe to you… whether they live in an area that was created under apartheid for African children, coloured children or white children,” he said.
“And unfortunately, in 32 years, we haven’t done enough to fix the apartheid spatial plan and everything that goes with it.”
Herron argued that municipalities should stop spreading resources evenly across the city and instead prioritise communities facing the greatest need.
“We need a convergence of services and infrastructure in those communities that need it first,” he said.
“The spreading thin of our funding and our focus and our services and our infrastructure is not actually lifting anybody out of the conditions in which they have grown up.”
Herron called for stronger political leadership rather than waiting for consensus to address inequality.
Andrews agreed that Cape Town’s apartheid spatial legacy continued to shape children’s lives, but rejected the suggestion that the City was ignoring the problem.
Andrews said the City had recognised that government departments often worked in silos, and had introduced planning tools to force investment into the communities with the greatest need.
“The spatial vision for the city should compel all those departments to crowd these investments into a particular community,” he added.
While acknowledging that this had not always happened, Andrews said the City was now requiring departments to align their budgets with priority areas.
“We’ve put together a piece in planning and management software, saying that this document you have to comply with. And by the way, when you ask for a budget, and it does not speak to those areas, go back and do more.
“Because if you don’t crowd the investment in those areas, then you fail those communities.”
Andrews said the City’s budget reflected that approach, with 73% of infrastructure spending directed towards historically underserved communities through investments in housing, water and sanitation, roads and public transport. “The budget would be a strong indicator of where you’re spending your money,” he added.
Andrews also defended the City’s work to improve early childhood development centres, saying Cape Town had removed several regulatory barriers preventing centres from becoming compliant and accessing provincial subsidies.
Roberts, meanwhile, said municipalities needed to involve children directly in planning decisions, rather than assuming adults knew what was best.
“We are adults making decisions on children, but there’s no child to tell us this is my lived experience,” she added.
“I think the big thing is we must start hearing the voice of the child.”
Roberts also called for municipalities to introduce mandatory child impact assessments when considering developments and planning decisions, arguing that every project should be assessed for its impact on children before approval.
This article was originally published by News24 on 22 July 2026. Read it here.
