Cape Town housing activists celebrate landmark Tafelberg court victory

There were hugs and tears of joy at a gathering of housing activists in Cape Town when the Constitutional Court handed down its judgment in the Tafelberg case.

The court found that the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape government were constitutionally obligated to provide affordable housing in and near the city centre.

The group of activists from Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) and Reclaim the City had gathered at the Sea Point Methodist Church to watch a livestream of the judgment.

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The judgment comes after a decade-long campaign by NU and Reclaim the City, challenging the provincial government’s sale of the former Tafelberg School site in Sea Point.

The sale has since been cancelled, and the site is earmarked to be used for government services and social housing for households earning between R3 500 and R22 000 a month.

Buhle Booi, head of political organisation at NU, thanked all the activists who had been involved in the case over the last decade.

The group made their way down the main road to the Tafelberg site, which is less than a kilometre away. They held placards that read “Reclaim the City” and “Land 4 people not for profit”. They sang, “My mother was a kitchen girl”, a song that has become an anthem for Reclaim the City.

“Whether we are poor, black, coloured … we belong in the CBD. We can’t be pushed out to the periphery,” Sheila Madikana, one of the women leading the battle for affordable housing in Cape Town, told the crowd.

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Madikana currently stays in Helen Bowden Nurses Home, which, along with the old Woodstock Hospital, was occupied to protest against the original decision to sell Tafelberg.

“We need to live here where we wake up next to our jobs … We fought this battle, and we won,” said Madikana. “This land belongs to us. We will live here. This is our home.”

Disha Govender, former head of the Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre, said it was a significant victory for housing, not just in Cape Town but across the country.

“They [the province and city] have not fulfilled their obligations to ensure spatial justice, to ensure equitable access to land and, in this case in particular, affordable housing in well-located areas, which is what we have been calling for for long,” she said.

Brett Herron, the GOOD party’s secretary general described the judgement as “momentous” and “affirming the obligations of City and Provincial governments to oversee the progressive realisation of rights conferred by the Constitution”.

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“We note the judgment and are currently studying it in detail,” said Tertuis Simmers, MEC for infrastructure. “A comprehensive media statement setting out our response and the implications of the judgment will be issued in due course.”

The City of Cape Town said in a statement that “the City has made significant progress on affordable housing in this term of office, and welcomes the opportunity to file a report about this”.

“The ConCourt acknowledged that the case record is eight years out of date regarding Western Cape Government and City efforts to meet affordable housing obligations, ruling that fresh reports be filed to update the court record.”

Timeline of the Tafelberg case

2010

The Tafelberg Remedial School moves to a new building in Bothasig, leaving the former school site abandoned.

2012

The Social Housing Regulatory Authority completes a feasibility study on the land, citing its potential for social housing.

2015

The Western Cape Government announces the land will be sold to the Phyllis Jowell Jewish Day School for R135 million. The property was declared “surplus to the government”.

2016

Ndifuna Ukwazi’s Reclaim the City campaign is launched. Activists march to the Tafelberg site and threaten court action. The province tries to engage in a confidential mediation process, but NU rejects this, saying it goes against the principle of open governance. NU obtains a high court interdict, stopping the sale pending a case.

2017

Ndifuna Ukwazi launches a case in the Western Cape High Court (see a detailed timeline of the campaign here.)

2020

The high court rules in NU’s favour, declaring the sale unlawful and that the government has a constitutional obligation to provide social housing. The city and province are ordered to create a combined policy on social housing.

2023

The Western Cape government appeals the ruling in the Supreme Court of Appeal.

2024

The Supreme Court of Appeal overturns the ruling, finding that the government was not required to provide social housing at a specified location, and that in fact the provincial government and the city had sufficient policies in place to provide social housing.

2025

Weeks before a hearing in the Constitutional Court, the provincial government unexpectedly announced that the site would not be sold and would instead be used for government services, as well as affordable housing. The Constitutional Court heard the matter in February.

2026

The province proposes an eight-storey development with 440 open-market housing units and 200 social housing units. Heritage Western Cape rejects the first heritage impact assessment, but approves a second version in June.

The old school building has to be preserved because of its heritage value, but social housing can be built on another part of the site. A land use application has been submitted to the city and public participation processes will follow.

On 2 July, the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the housing activists. The City of Cape Town and Western Cape government must provide detailed reports on their plans to address spatial inequality to the high court.

© 2026 GroundUp. This article was first published here.