City of Cape Town

Now, we all would have seen a solar panel because most of the houses lately have got the solar panels on.

So it's a significant physical installation on a previously vacant or unutilized roof space that then through this weeding framework of the city of Cape Town, we had the ability to connect it through a substation to the municipal grid.

Now, when you say this is going to be wheeled through to Kenilworth Centre, Blue Route Mall and the Towers office precinct, or let me understand this, will this power only be available in those certain spaces? Or is it being pumped sort of back into the grid and redistributed even further than that? How's the distribution work there?

So maybe just to explain wheeling again.

It had to be complicated getting this going.

There's always a lot of, call it red tape if you'd like, when public and private come together.

Do you want to speak on that a little? What was that like? Was it hard to get this off the ground? The city of Cape Town obviously had to work well with you in this.

ESCOM probably had to be involved with this.

nappies, the sanitation, the sanitary products that they need to help retain some of the dignity, obviously, for health and hygiene issues as well.

Absolutely, so the organization Disability Revolution contacted us and to say that, you know, they've been trying to get answers from the provincial Department of Health, as well as the city of Cape Town that manages some of the clinics and health facilities to find out, you know, what is the clear policy around the provision of these adult nappies at clinics? Because you'll go to one clinic And on the ground, they'll say, OK, they're only going to give you between 10 and 15 nappies for the entire month.

And people are saying that just is not enough.

And coupled with the situation where you're in an informal settlement, it could be a day like today where it's rainy.

By the time you get there, it might not be clean.

So this is really a matter of, it's about dignity, but it's also about essential needs for incontinence.

But we spoke to the city of Cape Town, And they say that they are currently working on writing up a guideline that covers things like eligibility, assessments based on need, because not everyone will be the same or have the same needs.

And they're saying that while they are working on this guideline, They say anyone in need, any client should not be refused.

You know, indeed, because we understand that the N7 is also a critical economic and transport corridor for goods to the West Coast and beyond to Namibia and so forth.

It also connects the surrounding communities which falls within the City of Cape Town's jurisdiction.

So, indeed, all the safety aspects that we have built into this was to incorporate, A, to enhance the safety aspects, A, to bring this intersection up to a world standard to ensure even enhanced safety.

But, again, because the City of Cape Town are expanding and the one part of our design does make into cognizance the expansion of the communities which will form part of that corridor in the next 10 to 15 years, ensure that as those future housing developments will be implemented by the City of Cape Town and the possible private sector partners, that the aspect of free-flowing traffic, free-flowing various forms of mobility, that safety for the pedestrians is and remains key given the number of people that do currently use that part of the N7 corridor.

Yeah.

You're in conversation with the Provincial Minister of Infrastructure, Tarsia Simmers, and you're welcome to send through questions related to this project on 021-446-0567 or WhatsApp 0725671567.

Um, but it also required a lot of, um, legal, legalese happening.

City of Cape Town had to play ball.

There's a lot of moving parts here.

There, there are.

There's many more mind shift, mind shifts that need to happen.

Um, land use consent is definitely a challenge that we haven't cracked yet and, and there's certain municipalities like City of Cape Town and, and even City of Tshwane that where we're seeing green shoots of people thinking differently, thinking through how, how do we come up with policies that's contextually relevant and don't lock people out of government, but, but really pull them in so that we can support them? Because the reality of an ECD program is it has to be close to where the child is.

You cannot have a three-year-old walking five kilometers to the closest ECD program.

[laughs]