Bellville is an established commercial engine for the Cape Town metropole. Bellville businesses range from light-industrial workshops and retailers to professional services firms, to multinational corporates. Over 4 000 small- and medium-sized enterprises support the local economy with products they create and services they deliver. The headquarters of Africa’s largest financial services corporate, Sanlam, has been located in Bellville for over 40 years.
Among other large corporates are The Foschini Group, MMI, PSG, Cipla, Capitec, Telkom and more. We are home to nine major educational institutions, including three of the leading universities in the country (UWC, CPUT, UofS) — as well as many other excellent schools and colleges — and have over 100,000 students in our community. In addition, Bellville is a major medical hub with more hospital beds than anywhere else in the country and over 250 medical practitioners operating in the area.
The foreign national community plays an integral role, not only in the local economy, but support and provide a wholesale service to all the informal traders in the entire Cape Town metropole. They have congregated in and around the Bellville transport interchange both as a result of past xenophobic attacks and the natural access created by Cape Town’s busiest transport interchange (350,000 daily trips). Without these African partners, this economy would have suffered even harsher consequences over the last 20 years.
We are excited about building the Bellville community; about creating a vibrant, sustainable 24-hour economy; and about facilitating the urban transition to achieve that. We’re doing this while also acknowledging that Bellville grapples with the same issues that affect any other urban area: criminal activity is a challenge, some areas are less pristine than others and homeless people do live on our streets. But we, and our partners, including the City of Cape Town, the Voortrekker Road Corridor Improvement District and many others, are working hard to change that.
Bellville is a vibrant, busy urban city where people live and work and play every day. It is a culturally and socially diverse centre, full of people from all parts of our society and all corners of our continent. That diversity is rare in Cape Town, and we celebrate it.
Regardless of the past perceptions of Bellville, the GTP is working to create a new reality for the city that plays such an important role in the broader Cape Town landscape. We’re building on what exists in the real Bellville — a place of potential, opportunity and creativity. And we invite you to come and see, not only why, but how.
Get in touch with the team at the GTP to find out more about what we’re doing in Bellville, and our vision for its future. And, please, get involved.
