The almost decade-long legal battle in the controversial Tafelberg housing case will head to the Constitutional Court, reports News24.

This was after the court yesterday issued a directive to confirm that it would hear an appeal from housing lobby groups Ndifuna Ukwazi and Reclaim the City against the SCA judgment in the case.

The SCA upheld an appeal by the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town, and set aside two previous court orders declaring the sale of a Sea Point property, known as the ‘Tafelberg’ site, unlawful.

Ndifuna Ukwazi and Reclaim the City have filed for leave to appeal the SCA judgment in the Constitutional Court.

The housing activists wanted the prime Sea Point site to be used for social housing, but the Western Cape Government decided to sell it. 

The date for the hearing is to be set in due course.

In 2020, the Western Cape High Court set aside the sale of the property and ordered the provincial government and the City of Cape Town to ‘address the legacy of apartheid spatial planning in central Cape Town and its surrounds’.

In April, however, the SCA ruled that the sale of the Tafelberg property for private development was lawful.

Ndifuna Ukwazi said they intended to argue that the SCA had erred in its determination of the issues in a number of ways, including that it ‘incorrectly reduced the case to a question of whether there is a right to claim that the Western Cape Government and city have to provide social housing in a specific location, as opposed to interrogating whether the provincial government and city have acted reasonably in fulfilling their respective obligations to redress spatial apartheid’.

It said the SCA incorrectly relied on the ‘pipeline’ of social housing projects and ‘ignored the fact that no social housing had, to date, actually been built in central Cape Town areas since the dawn of democracy, with no explanation as to why’.

Premier Alan Winde's spokesperson, Regan Thaw, said they would not be commenting on the matter.

Full News24 report