My vision for Capetopia
(Sustainability | Social Equality | Safety)
"Progress is the realization of Utopia."
(Oscar Wilde)
What do we stand for? What do we want to improve?
In our view, Sustainability | Social Equality | Security build the three central pillars that need to be recognized as the three biggest challenges in Cape Town, South Africa. Therefore exactly these three pillars offer the biggest need but at the same time also the biggest room of improvement. We need to recognize the current situation as it is and start to use the current space we've got for visions, improvements, to initiate changes and to develop utopias that make the possibilities tangible.
Current situation:
Sustainability
With roundabout 3100 hours of sunshine a year, strong winds that make it a paradise for kitesurfers and surrounded by two oceans, Cape Town offers the best conditions for the use of renewable energies. The difficult situation of an adequate power supply in Cape Town, as well as the global problem of climate change, only intensify the need for the use of renewable energies. Even though the South African government is making it difficult for its citizens to use the energy out of their own solar systems or cells, we feel the need to promote the use of solar energy and see a vision of a sustainable Cape Town which will be implemented through ongoing efforts and projects.
Social Equality
South Africa can be seen as one of the most unequal societies in the world. According to the World Bank, it even is the most unequal society in the world. The gap between rich and poor is wider in South Africa than in any other country with comparable data, the World Bank found. [1]
The inequality between nations is usually worse than the inequality within nations. This means that, for example, the economic distance between an impoverished Burundian and a wealthy Belgian is far greater than the economic distance between impoverished and wealthy people in Burundi itself. There is only one place where the severity of this global inequality is reflected at a national level : South Africa [2].
Cape Town in particular is a city where some parts and people flourish on a First World level while other parts and people live and die on a Third World standard.
According to the latest figures from the World Inequality Database, the top 1% of South African workers take home almost 20% of the country's total income, while the top 10% take home 65%. The remaining 90% of the South African earners get only 35% of total income. More than half of the South African population (55.5%) lives in poverty (on less than 70€ per month).
Safety
The lack of safety is one of the biggest issues in Cape Town. Although this issue affects everyone in Cape Town in their everyday life, it is an even bigger issue for women and girls. Gender-based violence (GBV) is a profound and widespread problem in South Africa that affects almost every aspect of life. GBV (which disproportionately affects women and girls) is systemically and deeply anchored in institutions, cultures and traditions in South Africa. For example, between 28 and 37% of adult men report having raped a woman in their life. In South Africa in particular, GBV “pervades the political, economic and social structures of society and is driven by strongly patriarchal social norms and complex and intersectional power inequalities, including those of gender, race, class and sexuality.” [3]
