SCA rules in favour of province in Tafelberg site case

The Western Cape Government has welcomed the ruling by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) which upheld its appeal in the case of the old Tafelberg School premises.

The tussle for the site in Main Road, Sea Point, has been ongoing for years with housing activists Reclaim the City and Ndifuni Ukwazi (NU) wanting it to be used for social housing.

According to Disha Govender, head of NU Law Centre, they are talking with Reclaim the City about appealing the SCA ruling, since the Constitutional Court's norms allow for a 15-day window to seek leave to appeal.

At a Western Cape Government cabinet meeting on April 18, the judgment handed down by the SCA on April 12 was welcomed.

Premier Alan Winde has urged NU and RTC to work with the provincial government and the City in addressing housing challenges.

“We remain committed to achieving dignified spatial redress by working together. Constructive engagement is in the best interest of all of us. We want to see well-located social housing across our province and this requires all of us working together to achieve this. With this judgment confirming that the provincial government followed the correct processes, I am looking forward to engaging with important stakeholders on how we respond to the significant challenges and opportunities we face in building integrated towns and cities,” said Mr Winde.

Ms Govender said the SCA overturned the Western Cape High Court's decisions, “which found that the Province and City had failed in its obligations to redress spatial apartheid in central Cape Town and overturned other orders that related to the constitutionality and application of laws that deal with the management and disposal of state land.”

In 2015, the Western Cape High Court halted the sale of the Tafelberg school site by the provincial government to the Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School for R135 million. Reclaim the City and Ndifuni Ukwazi have challenged the provincial government's decision to sell the 1.7-hectare site on Main Road.

“The Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School themselves terminated the contract of sale and so this order setting aside the sale was never appealed to the SCA. There isn’t any pending sale of the site. Prior to the SCA judgment the Province had announced that it is exploring what development is possible on the site and called for interested and affected parties to register as such so they can participate in this process. NU and RTC and others who have continuously called for social housing to be built on the site continue to call for this and have registered as ‘interested and affected parties’,” she said.

“The Western Cape Government is currently undertaking an exploratory process to determine how to develop the site, including whether to develop it for affordable housing. It is unclear exactly what this process entails and we have asked for clarity on this. There have been a number of feasibility studies conducted to date demonstrating that social housing can be developed on the Tafelberg site. We remain committed to seeing this happen and will continue to advocate and engage the Province to ensure that social housing on the Tafelberg site is realised,” she said.