Len Swimmer, chairperson of the Hout Bay Residents and Ratepayers Association
Your new journalist John Harvey is proving himself to be a credit to the Sentinel News. However, in his article “Residents oppose Common clinic” (Friday November 4), he makes a serious mistake in saying that “the establishment of a polyclinic near the Hout Bay Common will entirely destroy the building of the intended integrated united family Park.” This statement is quite wrong as the bowling green and community centre on which it is planned that the polyclinic be built are on the Hout Bay Common and very much a part of it.
A polyclinic here would be entirely inappropriate, because there are other places to build it, which, as we have repeatedly pointed out, would be equally convenient for the communities of Hangberg and Imizamo Yethu to access – a central determinant of the location as far as the provincial Department of Health is concerned.
The Hout Bay Common was originally a golf course, and until about 20 years back there was still a Hout Bay Golf Club.
We wonder whether there was any form of foundation servitude to protect it as public open space when the original farm was developed around it?
Ward 74 councillor Roberto Quintas responds.
The entire area, including the site of the old bowling green, is what is known as the Commonage. However, most residents refer to the green open space where the Lion’s Market used to be as the Common. It is also not a polyclinic, but a community day care centre that may be built by the Western Cape Department of Health on the site of the bowling green, club house and parking area.
