Walking the streets of Cape Town, I can’t help but reflect on how far we’ve come as a central city since the inception of the Cape Town Partnership in 1999.
This year is promising to be fast-tracked and reverberating with opportunities and challenges. I spent a considerable amount of time in the central city over the past week.
There is no doubt that Cape Town is in peak ‘creative season’. The city is buzzing, organic and vibrant with motion on the streets, pulsing with citizens and visitors going about their business to live, work and play.
When we started we thought of cities as economic engines, driven by investment. A lot of time was spent working with both the public and private sector to ensure that business stayed in the central business district. Over time, we came to see the city as an interconnected system – of transport, infrastructure, business, services – of which people were the users. Our goal was to get the basics right of ensuring that the CBD is safe and clean. Without the basics in place, no amount of private investment would make the space more user-friendly. Today our motto at the Cape Town Partnership is: ‘People make places.’ This is tangible as we are starting to see more and more citizen-led activations improving the public spaces of Cape Town’s central city.
I firmly believe that collaboration and partnership is the reason why we have a thriving central city today.
When we started as an organisation, the idea of a Central Business District and area-based partnership was still embryonic and was met with a fair amount of scepticism. It’s astonishing that, with enablement from the City of Cape Town as well as business support and citizen involvement, today a total of 26 City Improvement Districts exists across the metropole.
The old saying, “two heads are better than one” has been used for centuries for a reason. More efficient problem solving happens when you combine talent, experience, finances and infrastructure. I passionately believe that the most pressing challenges of our city, and indeed our country, can only be solved by collaboration and partnership. The world of the future will not be served by the organisation of the past. When people work together in an open way with porous boundaries – that is, if they listen to each other and really talk to each other – then they are bound to trade ideas that are mutual to each other and be influenced by each other. That mutual influence and open system of working creates collaboration.
There’s a new breed of partnerships that are emerging all over greater Cape Town. These are the area-based partnerships initiated and supported by the City of Cape Town. They are tackling the large and intractable challenges we face as a city: unemployment, spatial underdevelopment, contracted economic growth and low levels of industrialisation.
These area-based partnerships play a catalytic role in creating zones of economic opportunity for citizens at a local level. The City of Cape Town’s support and enabling of collaborative and area-based partnerships is a paradigm shift that has the potential to surpass traditional silos that are dividing governments, private companies and citizens. Replacing it with networks of partnerships working together can create a prosperous society in Cape Town.
“The City of Cape Town continues to invest in area-based partnerships, primarily because they demonstrate our commitment to inclusive economic growth and development that is driven collaboratively. Because their focus is local, area-based partnerships develop interventions that respond directly to the needs of the communities their based in”, says Cllr. Gareth Bloor, Mayoral Committee Member for Tourism, Events and Economic Development at the City of Cape Town.
These, and many other area-based partnerships like iKhaya le Langa and the Hout Bay Partnership, demonstrate the value of area-based partnerships in facilitating inclusive local economic and social development in different parts of our city. Collaboration is important not just because it’s a better way to learn but learning to collaborate is part of equipping our city for effectiveness, problem solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy.
I am also starting to notice something significantly different about creativity in Cape Town. It is in the way that creatives and designers collaborate.
Cape Town has become an engine-room of collaboration where those at the coalface of creativity bring out the best in each other. One of the collaborative initiatives that I have particularly keenly been keeping track of is the the Imbadu Collective that was initiated by ceramic artist Andile Dyalvane and included designers like Atang Tshikare, Alexis Dyalvane, Mlondolozi Hempe and Zukisani Mrwetyana. They see collaboration as crucial in envisioning a horizon of new, experimental and bold creations that transcend any individual creations. Through partnership they are opening up a space for communal artistic creations. The Cape Town Partnership in collaboration with Design Indaba supports the Imbadu Collective in assisting with creating platforms for their collaboration to be showcased.
Collaboration is also at the very heart of initiatives like Open Streets that in January closed the entire Bree Street and brought to life the alternative reality of a car-free city. Everyone from chess players, breakdancers, yogis and graffiti artists to cyclists, skaters and buskers came out to play in public space, for free, as equals. The upcoming Open Streets in Langa on 29 March again promises to bring together skaters, cyclists, walkers, joggers, kids, adults, artists, musicians and others to enjoy car-free space together in one of Cape Town’s most vibrant communities.
Collaboration is key to the Provincial Government‘s Khulisa Project that is designed to identify the parts of the Western Cape economy with the greatest potential to accelerate growth and job creation. Project Khulisa is focussed on achieving significant growth in three economic sectors best placed to create jobs: Tourism, including business and leisure tourism, as well as niche tourist markets; Agri-processing to add value to a range of agricultural products; and servicing the growing oil and gas sector, particularly through mid-stream services such as rig repair.
MEC of Economic Opportunities, Minister Alan Winde is upfront that job creation and inclusive economic growth requires collaboration and partnership: “The Western Cape Government believes it is our role to create an environment in which the private sector can grow the economy and create jobs.”
One of my favourite public events is happening as you read this. Infecting the City is shifting artwork out of theatres into our public spaces, bringing a stage to Capetonians by using some of the city’s most recognisable spaces like St Georges Mall, the Company’s Garden and Church Square.
From the deeply poignant, to the thought-provoking, humorous and curious, Infecting the City’s 2015 programme includes work from both local and international performance artists. I am particularly moved by the work ‘Colour Me In’, where artist Sandile Radebe presents the audience with an old city map depicting the geographic lines of racial segregation, and ask them to redraw and colour in the city they want to see.
A deep partnership with local government, private sector and citizens is what we hope to achieve this year with City Walk, the placemaking project that we introduced at the end of last year and will be implementing this year. In our role as facilitators, we are providing the canvas. We hope that it will be seen as an invitation to Cape Town’s many citizens and their many narratives to embody the spine of our CBD’s public space – the Company Gardens, St George’s Mall and the Fan Walk – that connects into every aspect of our urban experience.
This canvas needs a name, however, and of course we all need to name it together, for which we’ve put together an online poll. The shortlist of the names are City Walk, Molo, CTown and Walk The City.
The name needs to be an open frame that allows space for everyone’s story, regardless of demographics or culture. It also needs to say exactly what it is, so that a visitor to Cape Town can understand immediately. Please be in contact with us to help create an experience where all Capetonians can recognise themselves. You can participate in our online poll or drop us a line at citywalk@capetownpartnership.co.za.
I am eagerly awaiting your responses, and looking forward to this year where we will put partnerships in action because collaboration is the best way to work. It’s the only way to work, really!
This column by Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana, CEO of the Cape Town Partnership, first appeared in the Cape Times on 10 March 2015. For more information on the work of the Cape Town Partnership, visit. Talk to me @darksjokolade.
