Digging at the root of the ivy problem to save our trees

28 November 2021

On Sunday, 28 November 2021, the City of Cape Town’s Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, Alderman Eddie Andrews, joined Asezwao, an international young adult worker volunteer group with a mission to uplift the community in Cape Town and across the world, who hosted a volunteer ivy removal event on the Alphen Greenbelt in Constantia.

The group is encouraging people to join their ‘save a tree’ campaign.

The ivy is a genus of 12 to 15 species of evergreen climbing or ground-creeping woody plants in the family Araliaceae, native to the Western Cape, among other places. The ivy climbs the trees and properties and is detrimental to the trees. The initiative came after one of the group members saw how Constantia was infested with ivy and that the trees were dying at an alarming rate. The resident took it upon herself to mitigate the situation and got other people involved.

‘This morning, I was honoured to be part of this event as building integrated communities is one of our key objectives. We want to work with communities and organisations like Asezwao to find solutions to issues affecting our communities. This initiative is the true epitome of active citizenship and I salute everyone involved. The organisation has asked us for support and we will do everything in our power to assist them in any possible way we can. I want to encourage other residents to take a leaf out of this organisation’s book and take ownership of issues affecting their communities. When we work together, greater things are achieved. I was happy and proud to be joining the event yesterday. Getting out there and connecting with residents will be part of my term of office as this will give me an understanding of what is important to our residents,’ said the City’s Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, Alderman Eddie Andrews.

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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office