GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & City of Cape Town Mayoral Candidate
28 October 2026
The South African Human Rights Commission must be commended for stepping up to block the transfer of 49 properties, including the Good Hope Centre, that the City of Cape Town sought to dispose of in February.
The Commission has asked the High Court to interdict the transfers pending a review of the DA-led City’s decision to get rid of the properties without legally enforceable conditions requiring purchasers to provide affordable or social housing.
It is seeking an order declaring the disposal of the properties unconstitutional, unlawful, irrational and invalid.
The Commission said concerns raised with the City in February about the property sales, given Cape Town’s shortage of affordable housing and persistent spatiaI inequality, had gone unheard. It questioned whether the City had properly considered the properties’ potential to contribute to alleviating its housing crisis before selling them.
The commission’s litigation comes a few months after the City received a snotklap from the Constitutional Court, in its Tafelberg judgement, for unlawfully and unconstitutionally disposing of public land while failing to address its apartheid spatial plan.
The DA does a good job managing the better parts of Cape Town but, clearly, its wriggle-room for pretending that it gives a damn about the plight of 500 000 families needing dignified homes in Cape Town is rapidly diminishing.
With a local government election a few days away, people voting for Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis will be doing so with their eyes open: They will be voting to maintain Cape Town’s unequal status quo.
The GOOD Party would go a step further than the intervention the Human Rights Commission is requesting from the Cape High Court.
A cornerstone of its election manifesto has been to put an immediate stop to all proposed sales of public land.
When half a million families don’t own land or have a dignified place to live, publicly owned land must be used for public good.
In a City which for the past 20 years has rigidly ensured that no public housing is developed in what were once Whites-only suburbs, this particularly applies to well-located land.
Because where people live matters.
Media Enquiries: media@forgood.org.za