13 October 2025
This tent at Wingfield in Maitland is home to about 160 people. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks
An application to evict hundreds of refugees from emergency accommodation at Wingfield in Maitland and Paint City in Bellville has been set down for a court hearing on 13 April 2026.
The City of Cape Town and the national departments of Home Affairs and Public Works filed a joint application at the Western Cape High Court in June and served eviction notices to the occupants of both sites in August. The occupants have opposed the application.
Both pieces of land host large white tents, erected during the covid lockdown to house refugees protesting outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices. The refugees demanded to be resettled in Europe or Canada, citing fears of xenophobia, but resettlement to a third country is not standard practice.
The emergency accommodation was supposed to be temporary, but the tents and their occupants remain on the state-owned land. Despite poor conditions, many of the occupants still refuse offers of assistance or reintegration with local communities.
“The continued unlawful occupation of both sites poses significant and escalating risks, including serious health and safety hazards to both occupiers themselves as well as to the surrounding community,” reads a letter to Judge President Nolwazi Penelope Mabindla-Boqwana from the City’s lawyers.
Thulani Mavuso, spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs, said last week that the department would “have to continue” to bear the costs of the tents, mobile toilets and generators. He said the rental for the tents at both sites costs a total of about R1,089,000 a month.
But in August, Mavuso provided figures that show the average total cost of the properties, including the hiring of tents, toilets and generators, was about R644,000 a month in 2024/25, and R967,000 a month in 2025/26. More than R30-million had been spent on both sites since the relocation.
He said the department cannot help resettle the refugees to third countries and that they should “reintegrate into society”.
Faraja Augustin, who lives at the Wingfield site, fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo at a young age. He experienced xenophobic attacks in 2008 when he was living in Dunoon. He told GroundUp that while some occupiers still demanded to be resettled elsewhere, others required help from Home Affairs to obtain documents.
“Even if you give someone accommodation and no documentation, there will still be challenges. How can you get a job without documents?” he asked.