The Constitutional Court has ruled against the City and Western Cape Provincial government on the issue of affordable housing close to the CBD.
In a landmark judgment that delivers a “damning indictment” of local and provincial authorities, South Africa’s Constitutional Court has declared the controversial 2015 sale of the prime Tafelberg property in Sea Point unlawful, ruling that government officials have fundamentally failed to dismantle the “enduring legacy of apartheid spatial planning”.
The unanimous ruling, penned by Judge Nonkosi Mhlantla, serves as a fierce rebuke to both the Western Cape Provincial Government and the City of Cape Town, with the country’s highest court finding that neither administration has developed a “coherent plan” to provide affordable housing in well-located, amenity-rich urban areas.
Instead, the court noted that both authorities have continued to rely on cheaper land on the city’s periphery, “perpetuating rather than dismantling” the spatial inequalities created under the apartheid regime.
Observing that “a city’s architecture tells the story of its soul”, Judge Mhlantla reflected on how every morning, thousands of Cape Town’s workers must still travel for hours from the urban margins in the pre-dawn darkness. Their daily journey, she described, is “not just a commute – it is a living testament to the enduring legacy of spatial injustice that this case glaringly exposes”.
