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Despite the Western Cape Provincial Government and City of Cape Town’s record of not having delivered a single social housing unit in the inner city or any other part of Cape Town previously designated for white people, for 30 years, the  Supreme Court of Appeals regards the province and city as being in compliance with national housing regulations.

The Appeals Court appears to have been convinced by an array of provincial and municipal policies and plans to address apartheid planning – without considering whether those plans and policies were being implemented, or whether the DA-led province or Metro intented to implement them. 

The matter relates to a decision of the provincial government to profit from the sale of an unused property previously occupied by Tafelberg School, in Sea Point, rather than deploy it for social and affordable housing.

In a judgement issued on Friday (12 April), the Appeals Court overruled a judgement by the Western Cape High Court that the province and city had failed to take adequate steps to redress spatial apartheid in Cape Town.

The Western Cape High Court specifically found that the province and city had not complied with their obligations under the Housing Act, the Social Housing Act, the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act, and the Constitution.

The province and City took the Western Cape High Court decision on appeal to the Appeals Court in Bloemfontein… 

Sea Point, a stone’s throw from the inner-city on the Atlantic seaboard, was first occupied by colonial soldiers during the smallpox epidemic in 1776. By the 1900s it was a predominantly white, middle-class suburb, with pockets of diversity where working class families had lived for generations, centred around  Tramway Road and Ilford Street.

In 1957, the order was given for the forced removal of all people of colour.

It is a travesty that, since then, despite the demise of apartheid 30 years ago, people of colour working in Sea Point – of whom there are several thousand – must spend up to half their wages on public transport to and from the Cape Flats.

In this context, the Tafelberg school site offered a perfect opportunity to bring people “home” to Sea Point, and begin the long-delayed process of integrating the people of Cape Town.

It is the GOOD Party’s view that the Supreme Court of Appeals erred in not being guided by the Constitutional Court’s preference for a “generous construction over a merely textual or legalistic one in order to afford claimants the fullest protection of their constitutional guarantees”.

While the Western Cape court approached the matter from the perspective of the  State’s obligations to overcome the legacy of apartheid spatial planning – a critical human rights issue in a divided and unequal society – the Appeals Court took a narrower, legalistic view.

GOOD is not privy to what arguments were made at the Appeals Court, or to what extent the court considered the province and city’s actual delivery of their policies and plans.

When they argued the matter in the Western Cape court, the province and city relied, for example, on the August 2010 Inner City Regeneration Plan. This plan proposed to release several inner city provincial sites for redevelopment, and included a vague commitment to “Achieve densification by developing a percentage of the residential stock for affordable housing”. 

Calls for proposals for these sites were issued four years later, but 14 years later, in 2024, not one of the sites identified in this plan has been redeveloped. In fact the plan seems to have died a quiet death.

Similarly, in its arguments in the High Court, the City attached much importance the establishment of the Transport and Urban Development Authority and its intention to integrate and align various urban functions to eradicate the divisiveness created by spatial apartheid. But the City abandoned the TDA concept at it Council meeting on 13 December 2018. It is not clear that this change of heart was brought to the Court’s attention.

The City also relied in its arguments, on the Inner City Affordable Housing Plan launched in September 2017,  in which the then-Mayor, Patricia de Lille, and I announced the release of several city-owned inner city sites for social and affordable housing.  Again, it is not clear that the cancellation of this project by the council was brought to the Court’s attention.

Land is available in the inner city – and has always been available – but not a single social housing unit has been delivered in the inner city under any of the plans the court appeared to accept as evidence of the Province and City’s intentions. 

GOOD respects the role in our democracy of an independent judiciary.

The Appeals Court judgement, while a setback for spatial justice, does not reduce the city and province’s obligations to address apartheid planning. We call on the Western Cape Premier, Alan Winde, to publicly acknowledge this obligation, including the delivery of affordable housing in the province’s economic hub, the City of Cape Town.

We note that the option remains open to Winde to commit to making Tafelberg School available for that very purpose. A good premier would have no quibbles over the duty to pursue spatial justice and social integration.

Submitted by GOOD Party