New Road for Green Point

The construction of the Granger Bay Boulevard between Main Road and Beach Road is now open.

The entire traffic circle at the intersection with Western Boulevard has been reconstructed to facilitate pedestrian access to and from the adjacent new stadium.

“Although this project has long been part of the City’s Transport Plan, its implementation has been expedited by the advent of the FIFA 2010 World Cup tournament,” says the City’s Director: Roads and Stormwater, Henry du Plessis.
“It is just one more example of how the tournament is providing a catalyst for accelerated development that will, in general, benefit Capetonians as a whole but, in this specific instance, the residents of Green Point and Sea Point in particular."

Recycling along the Atlantic Seaboard

For several years Cllr Smith has been trying to get recycling projects going along the Atlantic Seaboard. While there were several privately run initiatives, the City was not formally driving a process until a pilot Waste Minimisation project was formally launched in 2006. Cllr Smith even went so far as to canvass five blocks of flats in Green Point himself to get the pilot study started.

The City of Cape Town is committed to sustainable waste management, including investing in and developing sustainable recycling strategies. To this end, the City has developed a recycling program known as Think Twice. Think Twice is the core message underpinning the City’s recycling service and is the brand that is linked to the free door-to-door voluntary recycling project being rolled out in the Atlantic Seaboard area that is aimed at reducing waste to landfill.

Approximately 6000 tons of waste is dumped in Cape Town every day, rapidly filling up the already limited landfill space that remains. The Think Twice programme is the City’s response to this growing problem whereby residents and businesses will be encouraged to implement a two bag system for their solid waste. People are being asked to think twice about how they dispose of their waste, and instead of simply dumping it all together in one black bag, to separate the recyclable material from the non-recyclable waste within their homes and places of work so that with only a little effort from everyone we can create a more sustainable system of waste disposal that will reduce both energy usage and greenhouse gasses.

In the case of suburbs along the Atlantic Seaboard and other parts of the City, many homeless persons or street people also make a living engaging in informal recycling, removing recyclable material from the bins that residents put outside for the City Solid Waste Department to empty on the refuse collection day. While the positive impact on recycling and the entrepreneurial activities by street people to sustain themselves is admirable, this informal recycling practice has some serious unintended consequences.

The City engages in various strategies to assist homeless people or street people to reintegrate with their families or communities and a number of projects are funded by the City for this purpose, including outreach workers, sheltered employment, job placement, skills training, emergency accommodation, shelter and second phase accommodation as well as alcohol rehabilitation and psychiatric services.

Over time we have realised that the informal recycling practices had the effect of making street people resistant to attempts to assist them in rebuilding a life off the streets, mainly due to the fact that the unstructured access to income lead to ongoing substance abuse problems, mainly with alcohol. It is therefore preferable for residents and complexes in the area to participate in the Think Twice formal recycling project, which can ensure that jobs that are created can be channelled to street people that have committed to reintegration and that the recycling industry incentivises people off the street and not disincentivises people still on the street.

Over the past 18 months the City has been running a pilot project in the Sea Point area collecting recyclables from 100 complexes. In line with the Integrated Waste Management Policy (IWMP), implementation of the Think Twice programme and planning for the 2010 World Cup Soccer event, the City has now expanded the pilot project to include complexes, businesses, etc. in the greater Sea Point, Green Point, Mouille Point and Three Anchor Bay areas.

Mandla Recycling has been appointed by the City as the contractor to roll out Think Twice in the Green Point, Mouille Point and Three Anchor Bay Area servicing residential and non residential properties from 1 October 2008.
They can be contacted on directly on
Tel. 021-409 1266

The Cape Town Stadium has been completed on schedule.  The total cost was R4.5 billion.

Concept designers were GMP Architekten from Germany, while detail design was done by Louis Karol and Associates and Point Architects. The main building contractors were Murray and Roberts and WBHO, two of South Africa’s largest construction companies.

Test Events

The Cape Town Stadium is near completion and will host 3 test events. The first will take place on the 23 January 2010.  This will be a test run with only 20 000 seats available for a match between to Cape Town based PFL soccer teams, Ajax Cape Town and Santos. Kick off is at 4pm.

The second event will be a rugby game between Vodacom Stormers and an ivitational Boland team on the 6 February 2010 - 40 000 seats will be available.

The third event, on  Monday, 22nd March 2010, will be a religious gathering hosted by the 'Global Day of Prayer' (GDOP) to full stadium capacity  - 68,000 people.

These test events will enable organisers to iron out any problems before our biggest event ever in Cape Town, the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

For the 2010 World Cup, the stadium will have 68,000 seats, but 13,000 will be removed after the event and used at other City of Cape Town facilities.

The First Test Event

The first test event took place on Saturday 23 January 2010 at the Cape Town Stadium.  A soccer match between Ajax Cape Town and Santos, two locally based PFL soccer teams, was played.  The game was sold out with only 20 000 seats available. 

The game played out to a 0-0 draw and being a friendly lacked commintment from the two sides and ended up to be a booring game. However, just being there was exciting, the Stadium is impressive, although still incomplete, the top tier seating has still to be installed.  The event went ahead without any noticable problems.  There was a strong police presence and they were helpful and friendly.