I’m writing this as a Capetonian as someone who lives here, raises family here, works here, and listens every day to what people are carrying.
I read the Mayor’s argument against rent control. I read Kiasha Naidoo’s response. I support Kiasha because she names what too many leaders refuse to say plainly: Cape Town’s housing crisis is not a natural disaster. It is the result of political choices for the few not the many. Lets not complain or posture, but speak honestly to Capetonians about where we are, why we are so angry and fearful, why things are not getting better and what we can do together to change this city.
Because this is no longer an abstract debate. It is a lived emergency. Do we just accept that we are being priced out of your own life?
If you live in Cape Town, you don’t need an economist to explain affordability.
You feel it every month.
You feel it when your rent jumps by thousands of rand with a polite email and no conversation.
You feel it when your child studies in a damp room because that’s all you can afford near campus.
You feel it when you leave home before sunrise and return after dark because you’ve been pushed further and further from work.
You feel it when groceries, transport, school costs and rent rise faster than your wages year after year.
This is what unaffordability does.It doesn’t only push you out of a neighbourhood.
It pushes you out of a life.
It shrinks your choices until survival becomes the only plan. And when that happens at scale, something breaks not just trust in government, but trust between people.
What the Mayor is really saying
When Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says “don’t interfere just increase supply,” he may think he’s making a neutral economic argument. But here’s how it lands on the ground:
- High rents are the price of success.
- The market matters more than people.
- You must adapt to the city the city will not adapt to you.
To someone stuck in traffic for three hours a day, paying R8,000 for a small place far from everything, with no security of tenure, that message sounds very simple:
“You’re on your own.” But is does not have to be.We need more housing. Where is the plans for public and social housing?But we must stop pretending that all housing supply helps the same people.
Cape Town’s skyline has been full of cranes for years. Developments keep rising. And yet rents keep climbing. Why?
Because much of what gets built is built for profit first, not for affordability. Developers follow returns. Investors follow appreciation. Short-term rentals follow tourist demand. Remote work brings global money into certain neighbourhoods. Push up prices so us local can not live with DIGNITY.
That money isn’t evil. But when this city and its Mayor refuses to protect residents, it becomes pressure pressure that pushes people out.
So the neat story “build more and rents will fall” doesn’t match lived experience. It sounds like a story told by those who don’t have to worry about the next increase.
Rent control isn’t the whole answer but dismissal is the real problem. Because when people talk about rent control, they are asking for protection. Stability. A sign that City and its Mayor is on their side and cares.
Instead, he dismissed the idea outright. And that dismissal is what makes people angry because it signals that they rich and elite interests are being protected.
Cape Town is being run as an asset, not a home.
This is the uncomfortable truth.
Cape Town is increasingly governed as a global lifestyle product tourism hub, investment destination, short-term rental market, playground for those who can pay. That’s not inherently wrong. But when “global attractiveness” becomes the main KPI, residents become collateral damage.
A city is not successful because property values rise.A city is successful when the people who keep it running can live in it with dignity and stability.
A city where ordinary workers cannot live near their work is not efficient. It is exporting its costs onto the poor: longer commutes, worse health, broken family time, higher policing and transport costs.
That is not prosperity.
That is outsourced suffering.
Power, not inevitability
Kiasha Naidoo is right: the Mayor’s argument rests on a tidy version of economics that ignores power. Rents are not just prices they are power relations.
In a concentrated housing market, landlords and developers manage supply. Tenants absorb shocks. Waiting for affordability to arrive “naturally” is not policy. It is surrender.
This is why rejecting rent stabilisation outright is not neutral. It is a confession: property value growth is being treated as a public good, even when it harms residents.
There is another way and it is realistic
Let’s be clear: this is not about fantasy politics. Cape Town has real, legal tools right now.
A city serious about affordability would:
- Use public land fast and at scale for mixed-income and affordable rental housing.
- Enforce inclusionary housing in new developments not symbolic percentages, but real numbers.
- Tax vacancy and speculation so hoarding is no longer comfortable.
- Regulate short-term rentals where they displace long-term residents.
- Build strong tenant protections: inspections, mediation, minimum standards, support against abuse.
- Treat housing like infrastructure as essential as water, roads and electricity.
This is not reckless. It is responsible governance.
Turning anger into change
Here is the lesson from new urban movements the Mamdani-style politics people talk about so nervously:anger is not dangerous. Disorganisation is.
Anger becomes power only when it becomes together.
To the family in Mitchells Plain watching rent rise while safety collapses.To the student in Observatory sharing a room they can barely breathe in.To the worker in Khayelitsha waking at 4am to reach a job that barely sustains life.To the parent in the Southern Suburbs watching children move further away.To the small business owner in Athlone watching customers disappear.
These are not separate struggles.This is one city being squeezed.
What Capetonians must do now
Stop accepting lectures.Demand plans with timelines.Organise ward by ward.Build cross-community housing forums.Challenge councillors publicly.Vote with intention, not habit.
Make unaffordability politically expensive.
Cape Town will not change because one mayor suddenly “gets it”.
It will change when people refuse to accept that nothing can be done.
This city can be beautiful and fair.
Globally attractive and locally liveable.
But only if we stand together and demand it.
This is our city.
And power—organised power—can change it.
* Faiez Jacobs is a former Member of Parliament, founder of The Transcendence Group, Capetonian, Activist, and Servant of the People.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of or Independent Media.
