Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) says the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) mischaracterised the nature of the case in its application for leave to appeal against the SCA’s decision concerning the sale of the Tafelberg property in Sea Point and the issue of affordable housing.
NU and Reclaim the City (RTC) on Thursday said they had filed for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court against the recent judgment by the SCA in the Tafelberg case.
The sale of the Tafelberg property in 2015 triggered a massive outcry and brought to the fore the debate on how public land is used and disposed of, especially in the context of more than a 365 000 housing backlog and continued segregation and inequality in Cape Town.
In 2020, the province was prevented from selling the Tafelberg site to a private developer, when the Western Cape High Court set the sale aside, declaring it unlawful. The provincial government sought to appeal, with the SCA later setting aside the high court’s orders that found that the province and the City had failed in their obligation to redress spatial apartheid in central Cape Town and which required the province and the City to report to the court on its plan to remedy this.
“NU’s application for leave to appeal points out, among other things, that the SCA mis-characterised the nature of the case.
“This is reflected in the SCA asking the wrong question of whether there is a right to social housing in a specific location instead of asking whether the province and the City have taken reasonable measures to redress spatial apartheid in central Cape Town,” NU said on Thursday.
NU said the province and City were opposing the application for leave to appeal.
Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre head Disha Govender said: “The province and City, in opposing our application for leave to appeal, continue to minimise the significance of central Cape Town, which is a point of origin in our shameful colonial and apartheid history. It is the area which the apartheid government sought to make white only and which remains segregated, with poor working-class people of colour still unable to access it save for the purposes of providing labour.
We ask where is the redress, where is the spatial justice without affordable housing in central Cape Town?”
Mayco member for human settlements Carl Pophaim said the SCA had accepted that the City had complied with its constitutional obligations and set aside the high court order.
He confirmed the City was opposing the application for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court.
Cape Times