Cape Town - The battle for the Tafelberg property in Sea Point headed to the Supreme Court of Appeal this week, with the DA-led provincial government arguing that courts should not make the final call on how state resources were spent.
The provincial government and the City have appealed the Western Cape High Court decision, compelling them to redress spatial apartheid.
At the centre of the court case is the Tafelberg site which was sold to a private buyer, the Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School, for R135 million in 2015, despite activists wanting it used for affordable housing. The property located on Main Road is more than 1.7 hectares.
While the SCA reserved judgment, the Western Cape government stuck to its guns that the high court order signalled an intention to usurp the role of a democratically-elected government.
“In short, the order envisages that the Court will assess myriad complex political choices, including the best use of state-owned property; the optimal allocation of resources across housing programmes; and the prioritisation of areas for social housing.
In undertaking this exercise, the Court would, of necessity, have to be apprised of the Western Cape government’s broader housing delivery programme, thereby making the Court the decision-maker in respect of priorities, compromises and choices made in the overall delivery of housing.
In this way, the order signals an intention on the part of the Court to usurp the role of a democratically-elected government.
“The order does this despite the fact that, quite apart from a lack of constitutional authority, the Court possesses neither the administrative nor the technical expertise required to make such assessments. The Court will have to decide, for example, whether it is better to spend the WCG’s limited housing resources on 100 social housing units in ‘central Cape Town’ or 400 low-cost housing units in Worcester.
Such a decision falls outside its competence, in every respect,” said the provincial government.
For its part, the City said it “had no say over whether the land should be sold, who the land should be sold to, what procedures should be followed or if so, for what price it should be sold”.
The City submitted that it welcomed the land for housing purposes but could not pay the commercially determined prices.
“There is no dispute that the legacy of apartheid and spatial apartheid requires redress.
The City agrees that it is so...but there appears to be, from the Applicants’ papers an insistence and elevation that this be corrected with one chosen area being given preference over others around Cape Town and in relation to one kind of housing obligation in preference of others.”
The City further argued that if it were to comply with the structural interdict, it would delay its housing programmes in the foreseeable future.
Housing and civil activist organisation, Ndifuna Ukwazi’s Buhle Booi said the site has been “one for conversation for many years for domestic workers and security workers in Sea Point”.
“It is a beacon of hope that one day there will be affordable housing.”
It is a very important site that could see the redress of spatial apartheid in Cape Town and a site that particularly the working class would have for the first time, places that they can call home. And that is why we are calling for the premier to release that site and build affordable housing.
“There is nothing that is being appealed at the Supreme Court of Appeal that is stopping those in government from releasing that site and building affordable housing. One thing we will not accept is for the site to be sold and given to private entities when we’re in the middle of a housing crisis where the majority of our people are in need of housing. The Tafelberg site should be released as a matter of urgency so that 437 families can call a home in Sea Point. The rental in Sea Point is very exorbitant and very expensive where the working class cannot afford it. That cannot be the state of affairs, Sea Point cannot remain white and we need to advance social justice,” said Booi.
Reclaim The City leader and resident at Cissie Gool House, Nozuko Bhalindela, said they would keep applying pressure for the release of the site to see it being released for social housing.
Ahmed Kathrada House resident and housing activist, Elizabeth Gqoboka, attended Monday’s proceedings.
“I am one of the occupiers and we are here to support our movement. Our support means that we want the court to rule in our favour because the housing that we need is going to be so important. People have been displaced in many areas far from the City,” said Gqoboka.
Cape Times