ConCourt Confirms DA Preserves Apartheid Map in Cape Town

The Constitutional Court has unanimously ruled that the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape Government failed their constitutional duty to provide affordable housing in well-located areas. By overturning the R135 million sale of the Tafelberg property in Sea Point, the highest court confirmed that the DA-led government actively perpetuates apartheid spatial planning. This ruling forces the city to answer for its systematic exclusion of Black and Coloured families from the urban core.

What does the Constitutional Court ruling mean for spatial justice?

In 2016, the Western Cape Government sold the Sea Point property to the Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School for R135 million. The Constitutional Court has now overturned this sale. The judgment declared that the location of housing is fundamentally relevant to whether that housing is adequate. The court held that reasonable government measures must include affordable housing in and around the CBD, specifically naming Salt River, Woodstock, Observatory and Sea Point.

The court found that the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape Government failed to comply with their constitutional obligations to implement social and affordable housing in these areas. Let us be clear about what this means. The highest court in the land has found that the DA's Cape Town has failed the constitutional test of spatial justice. This is not a technical disagreement about zoning. It is a constitutional indictment of a political project that has governed Cape Town for nearly two decades while preserving the economic and racial geography it inherited from apartheid.

Why Hill-Lewis cannot escape accountability for Cape Town's housing crisis

Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has occupied the mayoral office since November 2021. He cannot present himself as an innocent reformer who just discovered an old problem. He inherited a powerful, well-resourced municipal machine and has had a full mayoral term to direct that machine towards spatial transformation. Instead, he showed no courage, no action and no will. Under his watch, the housing crisis has only deepened.

In 2024, Cape Town's Housing Needs Register contained more than 375,000 applicants. By 2026, that figure ballooned to around 440,000. These are not mere statistics on a dashboard. They are pensioners who may die waiting, children growing up in overcrowded backyards, and workers travelling for hours because they cannot afford to live near their jobs. Mayor Hill-Lewis calls Cape Town a