Community leaders from the Parkwood Baptist church are up in arms with a local councillor over a space, opposite the church, that has been allocated for a community garden.
Church leaders claim they applied to the City to use the space as a parking lot.
On Tuesday 7 February, pastor Paul Phillips from the church, which is based on Walmer Road, called a community meeting to voice their disagreement.
“Today’s gathering is where we want to raise a concern regarding the non-transparent process of non-public participation that has been followed by the councillor to put up a structure and to allow a non-participating organisation, that no one is aware of within our community to afford them the opportunity to run a project in our community.
“The location of the structure, opposite a church, is going to disturb the church. It’s another religious group that is going to put up a structure that conflicts with the current church,” he says.
“We are inter-faith but at the same time, we expect, from the councillor, to be transparent or to afford the community the opportunity to have a choice and to be part of the process.
“If there is no public participation, we have many other organisations who are very relevant to render a very good service in the community and not to favour one particular group.”
Another issue raised at the public meeting was that of backyard dwellers, who say that housing was more important than a community garden.
Dominique Booysen, chair of the Parkwood Backyarders Association, explained that they were removed from the field in 2018 while building structures.
“In 2018, we were busy building structures here and the City and law enforcement removed us by force. Last week, we had a meeting with the councillor and without letting us know, they are building this here.
“We don’t have a problem if they are going to do a garden but we had a meeting with the church and we don’t want this garden here because all they are going to do is smoke dagga here,” Booysen claimed.
“My main concern is also housing for backyard dwellers, the homeless and landless people, not gardening. We asked the councillor if they can’t move this further down so that the church could also have parking.”
A resident, who grew up in Parkwood near the Baptist church, says a park had previously been removed from the area during a parking application.
“The Baptist church has put in an application for parking already and councillor Nelson says there is no record of it. There was a park here before and it was moved, so half of the application was done. So, it tells you that the City does have a record of it.
“Who are we going to trust tomorrow?”
Mark Schrikker, a community leader, said councillors who were not playing their part would be removed from office.
“The saddest part is that our councillors are playing games with us and they want to divide us. They tried the same thing in Lavender Hill and I promised them if they continued they would be removed.
“If you don’t do certain things that we want, you will be removed. We are taking back our city.”
According to Ward 65 councillor Donovan Nelson, there will not be structures built on the allocated space as it would be a community garden.
“It’s a community garden. The organisation is turning the dumping site into a community garden.”
He adds while the church claimed to have applied for parking on that stretch of field, they are yet to come up with the relevant documents.
“The church claims to have made the application, 20 years ago, for parking. I’m not aware of that. If they have the documents then they have a valid claim, but they have not produced it and we are talking about four terms ago. The challenge is that illegal dumping is taking over public spaces and an organisation asked to turn the dumping site into a garden. There are no structures and no structures will be built, that is misleading.”
He added that produce from the garden would be given to members of the community such as the elderly.
“The church is politicising this. The garden is something that is needed to uplift the community and there is opposition. We have also made the observation on Sundays that there is no need for a parking lot.”
