The Constitutional Court has ruled that the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town failed to meet their constitutional obligation to provide affordable housing when they sold the Tafelberg site in Sea Point in 2015.
The court found that the decision perpetuated apartheid spatial patterns and that well-located land must be used for housing that provides residents with access to transport, jobs and services.
Provincial Infrastructure Minister Tertuis Simmers says the province respected the judgment and would engage with all affected parties to implement the court’s directives within the prescribed timeframes.
“We respect the judgment that was handed down by the Constitutional Court. The court did highlight specific matters in terms of public participation. There needs to be a review done of the relevant legislation in our province, which relates to the disposal of provincially owned land. But also we needed to, and need to, consult into the future with the National Department of Human Settlements, among others, which is why we will now constructively engage with all affected parties and we will implement the court’s directives responsibly, because we have now moved from litigation to implementation,” says Simmers.
Asked whether the ruling had implications beyond the Tafelberg site, Simmers says the province had already shifted its approach to inner-city land since 2019, focusing on affordable and mixed-income housing development rather than disposal.
“Since 2019, which is the start of the sixth term of office, we have actually seen a number of provincial-owned land parcels — I mean we have Founder’s Garden, Prestwich, Leehoek, and others — which have moved from planning to being implementation ready. All of these are well-located land within the city bowl and even Sea Point,” adds Simmers.
He says these sites alone were expected to yield more than 4 000 housing opportunities, with the Tafelberg site, now referred to as 353 on Main, also included in the province’s planning.
He says public participation around these developments had been positive, and that much of the initial resistance had stemmed from a misunderstanding of what affordable housing entailed.
“It should be understood that it’s not that the residents are against this. It is just that they had a misperception of what affordable housing is. Many people thought it was going to be low-cost housing, which affordable housing and social housing is not,” says Simmers.
He explained the distinction between the two: affordable housing involved various forms of ownership assisted by the state through partnerships, while social housing was an affordable rental model supported by a national grant from the Social Housing Regulatory Authority.
Simmers says the national grant for social housing was declining, which was prompting the province to develop alternative funding models to reduce its reliance on the national budget and expand affordable rental options in the inner city.
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