No-shows at parliamentary briefing on Tafelberg

Housing activists celebrate the Constitutional Court ruling on the Tafelberg site last month. The Western Cape provincial government declined to attend a parliamentary committee meeting on the issue on Wednesday. Archive photo: Matthew Hirsch

The Western Cape government declined to attend a parliamentary portfolio committee meeting on Wednesday to discuss the implications of the landmark Tafelberg judgment.

Last month, the Constitutional Court handed down its judgment in the Tafelberg case, ruling that the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape government were constitutionally obliged to provide affordable housing in and near the city centre.

The judgment came after a decade-long campaign 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 to be used for government services and social housing.

The municipality and provincial government were directed to submit reports to the Western Cape High Court within three months of the judgment, detailing their plans and projects to redress spatial apartheid.

The court gave the parties leave to file further affidavits and, if necessary, enrol the matter again in the high court.

The provincial government was invited to Wednesday’s human settlements portfolio committee meeting. But in a letter to the committee, dated 31 July, infrastructure MEC Tertuis Simmers said they were “in the process of sourcing legal advice on certain aspects of the judgment pertaining to its implementation and we are unlikely to have received the benefit of that advice by 5 August”.

“We would welcome an opportunity to brief the committee once the supervisory order has been discharged and a final determination or order has been made by the courts,” wrote Simmers.

Sello Dithebe (ANC) said the reason given for not attending the meeting was “flimsy and disrespectful”.

Thulani Gamede (MK) said it was a missed opportunity for the provincial government to highlight the challenges it is facing.

Housing minister Thembi Simelane said she would seek a meeting with the province and report back to MPs.

The Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA) was also supposed to present on Wednesday on its plan to deal with blocked housing projects.

Simelane said her department had only received the SHRA presentation late Friday afternoon. She had told them this was unacceptable. “They wrote back this morning to say they wouldn’t be travelling to avoid incurring fruitless expenditure because the presentation has not reached my office timeously.”

In February, MPs were annoyed when they received SHRA’s presentation on the morning of the meeting. The SHRA delegation subsequently left the meeting without presenting.

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