GF Jooste rebuild promised for 2016, but no construction begun

Written by Brett Herron

When the Western Cape Government promised in 2012 to upgrade the hospital serving one of Cape Town’s most underserved and violent crime-ridden areas, then Health MEC Theuns Botha said: “The GF Jooste Hospital will be rebuilt on its present site between 2013 and 2016.”

Since Botha’s promise, the delivery of this new hospital has been regularly featured in the DA-led government’s statements/PR, but 13 years later, not a single brick has been laid.

Promises-on-repeat are a hallmark of the DA’s political leadership. In the housing sector, the City of Cape Town and Western Cape Provincial Government have been announcing and re-announcing the delivery of the same affordable homes in the inner city for years. As with the phantom Klipfontein Hospital, there are no contractors in sight.

Last month, in a statement on Facebook headed, “Western Cape accelerates infrastructure delivery”, MEC for Infrastructure Tertuis Simmers noted with respect to the promised delivery of regional hospitals: “Enablement & procurement prep underway, concept design complete, planning funded and professional teams appointed.”

Three years ago, Simmers said the cost of decommissioning GF Jooste Hospital had already swelled to nearly R20m. The demolition itself had cost under R2m. The most expensive item, by far (nearly R15m), had been spent on security due to poor DA planning and delays. These costs continue to mount.

I posed a fresh set of questions to MEC for Health and Wellness Mirreile Wenger this month. Her answers were long on excuses and mitigations for the 13-year delay (yes, MEC, building a regional hospital is easier said than done). But Wenger did not answer the most pertinent question, the one that requested a timeline. While the project had progressed through key stages, she said, construction was “anticipated to commence in a future phase subject to funding and approvals”.

The clear message to long-suffering Cape Flats residents is: Don’t hold your breath! One assumes, however, that in an election year residents will be asked to sustain themselves with further delivery promises (or, perhaps, a ribbon-cutting ceremony) …

The DA campaigns on the fact that the governments it leads obtain relatively good audit outcomes. Good bookkeeping is highly desirable, but it doesn’t mitigate the actual costs (to the fiscus and communities) of poor planning and decision making, and it obscures skewed service delivery.

GF Jooste Hospital should not have been demolished until the Western Cape Government was ready to replace it with something better. Instead, the underdeveloped and underserved Cape Flats had a precious facility removed for a period that could extend to two decades or more.