Hopes Sea Point school site court case can help spark spatial apartheid redress

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Cape Town – In what has been billed a David versus Goliath clash, the court case involving the future of the controversial Tafelberg school site in Sea Point, which is set to have a far-reaching impact on affordable housing in Cape Town, got under way yesterday. Housing activist groups Reclaim the City and Ndifuna Ukwazi are challenging the decision by the Western Cape government to sell the well-located property to a private buyer, the Phyllis Jowel Jewish Day School. This, in the face of a housing affordability crisis in the city. The Tafelberg site in Sea Point - almost an entire city block - provides a prime opportunity to redress spatial apartheid through the provision of well-located social housing, the activists have argued. They are seeking an order to review and set aside the sale.

The court proceedings are set down until Thursday before Western Cape High Court judges Monde Samela and Patrick Gamble.

Advocate Peter Hathorn SC for the applicants argued that the province and City had violated its obligations by failing to redress spatial apartheid.

“The Constitution places a positive obligation on the province and the City to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within their available resources, to foster conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis.

"The stark reality is that, on our reading of the province and the City’s affidavits, neither claim to have completed a single affordable or social housing programme in central Cape Town in the 24-year period between the end of apartheid and the finalisation of their answering affidavits in 2018,” Hathorn argued.

He said the applicants’ experts stressed the importance of access to well-located land to redress spatial injustice, whether through social housing under the Social Housing Act or otherwise.

Hathorn said former Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille and former Mayco member for transport and urban development Brett Heron had both in the past admitted to the City failing to redress “spatial apartheid”.

Reclaim the City has been advocating for inclusive social housing in Cape Town’s central business district since 2015 and while their campaigning temporarily halted the sale, the City proceeded with the sale of the property in 2017.

Cape Times