Calls resurface for ‘spatial apartheid’ redress in Western Cape

Western Cape housing activist groups Ndifuna Ukwazi and Reclaim the City have banded together to revive calls for the provincial government to address spatial inequality in the City of Cape Town, by building social housing on a Sea Point plot where a public school once stood.

This comes ahead of the provincial government’s appeal of a 2017 high court ruling that reversed the sale of the land to a private company. The application is set to be heard at the Bloemfontein Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on Monday, 20 February.

The civil society groupings have argued that instead of being sold to private hands, the valuable Sea Point land could be developed into social housing that will help address the province’s spatial disparity, which they say often leaves those living on the city’s outskirts disadvantaged.

“We, the workers of Sea Point have been calling for housing in the area since 1996 and we have never been taken seriously,” Reclaim the City leader Elizabeth Gqoboka said in a statement.

“We wanted a place to call home. People are homeless and the Tafelberg site is the only hope. It should be released for housing.”

Read: What happened to Cape Town’s promised affordable housing policy?

Context

The issue began in 2015 when the Western Cape government, under the leadership of then-Premier Helen Zille, sold a 17 000m² plot of land – once home to the Tafelberg Remedial School – to a private school company for R135 million.

Read: Are resident associations being captured by the property industry?

After several years of housing activists fighting this decision, the Western Cape High Court finally overturned the sale. Among the rulings made by judges Patrick Gamble and Monde Samela was that the provincial regulations used to justify the sale of the site were unconstitutional and invalid.

In 2021 the same court granted the provincial government and the City of Cape Town leave to appeal parts of its previous judgment, except for the one reversing the 2015 sale of the property and another identifying Sea Point as being within the boundaries of a restructuring zone.

Read: Radical new housing deal proposed to break apartheid barriers

Social housing

According to concerned civil society groups, several feasibility studies done in prior years support the proposal of building affordable housing on the land. A study done by Ndifuna Ukwazi in 2017 found that the land could accommodate 316 social housing units as well as 121 market-rate homes.

“At the heart of the matter is the government’s obligation to promote equitable access to land and to redress spatial apartheid and injustice through the provision of affordable housing in central Cape Town,” said Disha Govender, head of the Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre.

“It is about the fact that almost three decades since democracy and until the launch of this matter, no affordable housing had been built by the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town in the primary spaces of exclusion and displacement – central Cape Town – and that the actions of the government have left these spaces inaccessible to poor and working-class black (African, Coloured and Indian) people, which is exacerbated by the continued sale of public land.”

Read: Cape Town lacks urgency to build well-located affordable housing, say activists

A feasibility study done by the province also found that social housing on the land was possible. It found that at least 270 units could be housed on the site. However, the province is yet to build on the piece of land.

Moneyweb asked if the provincial government had any appetite to pursue social housing on the highly contested piece of land. In an emailed response, Ntobeko Mbingeleli, spokesperson for Western Cape Provincial Minister of Infrastructure Tertuis Simmers, said: “With regards to the Tafelberg-case, while the matter is before the court the Department of Transport & Public Works as well as the Department of Human Settlements will not be speaking on the matter.”