Cape Town - The nearly decade-long legal battle over the Tafelberg site in Sea Point will head to the country’s apex court, as land and housing organisations Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) and Reclaim the City (RTC) continue their fight for affordable social housing within inner Cape Town and redress of apartheid spatial planning.
NU and RTC will be heading to the Constitutional Court to appeal a ruling by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), which overturned a Western Cape High Court ruling that deemed the sale of the site unlawful and the deed of sale was declared void.
The Constitutional Court is expected to consider whether the Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town acted reasonably in fulfilling their obligations to redress spatial apartheid, and to realise the rights of equitable access to land and adequate housing.
It also includes clarification of what the law requires of the government in how it uses, manages and disposes of public land, and how people are to be included and enabled to participate in the decision-making regarding public land.
Up until 2010, the site housed a remedial school by the name of Tafelberg. In 2016, the property over 1.7 hectares located on Main Road, Sea Point, was sold by the Western Cape Government to the Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School for R135 million.
RTC coordinating committee member and Cissie Gool House resident, Bevil Andre Lucas, said the Tafelberg matter was not just significant in Cape Town, but in addressing and undoing spatial apartheid planning that continues to dominate the processes in which land and property owned by the state should be used.
“Sea Point, in particular, is a very important case in point in that ever since the dawn of democracy, there has never been one development in the greater Sea Point/ Camps Bay area for workers who service those workplaces, but not only the workplaces, but to service the domestic workers in the very affluent suburbs of the city and who have to commute en masse on a daily basis from the Cape Flats including Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Mitchells Plain, Manenberg to Sea Point/ Camps Bay area,” Lucas said.
The matter is expected to be heard simultaneously with the National Minister of Human Settlements’ related appeal.
The date of the hearing is still to be set.
The High Court ruling found that the Province and City had failed to meet their constitutional and statutory obligations.
It also found that the province had acted in bad faith by not approaching the National Minister of Human Settlements to ascertain whether Sea Point had been designated a restructuring zone, so that restructuring capital grant funding could be accessed for the development of social housing at the Tafelberg site.
In a statement, NU said it was important to note that the High Court order setting aside the sale of the Tafelberg site was never appealed or overturned.
Head of NU Law Centre, Disha Govender, said: “Thirty years after democracy, the legacy of apartheid still looms large and the division it created still manifests and is visible.
“The Tafelberg Court Case seeks to hold the Western Cape and City of Cape Town governments accountable in addressing at a systemic level how public land and particularly well-located public land must be valued, used and redistributed to deliver on the constitutional mandate to transform our society, and to ensure a truly inclusive and spatially just city for all. The time is now.”
On April 12, 2024, the SCA upheld an appeal brought by the Western Cape Transport and Public Works MEC and the City of Cape Town against the High Court order, and overturned the judgment.
The City’s acting mayco member for human settlements, Siseko Mbandezi, said the City would be opposing the appeal in the Constitutional Court.
“The Supreme Court of Appeal set aside the decision of the Western Cape High Court insofar as the court found that the City has not done enough to address spatial apartheid.
“The SCA accepted that the City complied with its constitutional obligations and set aside the High Court’s order. Thereby affirming the position of the City that it has a plan to address spatial apartheid and has taken sufficient steps to do so.”
The Western Cape Government said: “There is no comment on the latest development at this stage.”
shakirah.thebus@inl.co.za