Construction Of Homes For Bishopscourt Land Claimants Set To Begin

Land claimants, community members and government officials attended a sod-turning ceremony on Tuesday in Protea Village, Bishopscourt, for the construction of 86 homes .

Between 1959 and 1970, under the apartheid Group Areas Act, more than a hundred families were forcibly relocated from here to the Cape Flats.

The Protea Village community had settled in the area in 1834. The 28 hectares of land they occupied had a church, a shop and a freshwater spring.

Today, Bishopscourt is one of Cape Towns most expensive suburbs , while the suburbs on the Cape Flats , where the claimants were relocated are battling crime, unemployment and poverty. According to Property24, the average property sale price in Bishopscourt is over R20 million. House prices sometimes exceed R100 million .