GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Member of Provincial Parliament & City of Cape Town Mayoral Candidate
16 September 2026
With two weeks left to report to the Constitutional Court on its “management” of the affordable housing crisis in Cape Town, the Mayor is talking up a storm about densifying the Southern Suburbs, with no actual plans in place, while the City has quietly signed an eight-year lease extension for King David Mowbray Golf Club.
In July, the Constitutional Court ruled that the sale of the Tafelberg School site in Sea Point to a private developer was unlawful in the context of Cape Town’s housing crisis and continuing segregation.
The court ordered the City and Western Cape Province (both DA-run) to submit a report under oath by end-September detailing their affordable housing record, plans, and concrete steps to reverse spatial injustice by providing low-income housing in well-located areas.
Modern Cape Town was shaped by colour-coded forced removals, with more displacement taking place here (+150 000) under the Group Areas Act than in any other South African city.
Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs, Atlantic Seaboard and inner-city surrounds were particularly impacted, and swiftly gentrified, with excellent profits for speculators and developers.
These are today among the most expensive areas to live in the country, the cost of property effectively pricing the vast majority of people of colour out of the market.
With Cape Town having developed no social or affordable housing in such areas over the past 32 years, choosing to build all subsidised housing where people of colour already live, the Group Areas Act effectively remains extant in a radically unintegrated and unequal city.
This retention of Cape Town’s White core, to which the City continues to deliver a superior basket of services, is among the leading factors behind middle-class semigration from other South African cities to Cape Town – which has, itself, greatly increased property values, further inhibiting opportunities for integration.
By resisting the principle of integration for 32 years, the City has re-instilled a climate of entitlement in the middle-class who fear that the arrival of people of colour in their neighbourhoods will drive up crime while driving down the value of their properties.
Cape Town today has a shortage of nearly 500 000 homes. There are said to be approximately 100 000 new arrivals in the city per year, the vast majority of them working-class people of colour.
To put these numbers into context, Cape Town managed to deliver just 1 226 subsidised homes in the 2024/25 financial year, including People’s Housing Projects and the provincial project at Forest Village– all of them far away from neighbourhoods previously reserved by law for White people.
When the City of Cape Town first identified the potential for a mixed-use development, including affordable housing, on land it leases to King David Mowbray Golf Course, in 2021, it was a critical signal of intent to re-shape the fabric of Cape Town.
Five years later, this week, a new eight-year lease was signed with the golf course.
This accords with the DA strategy of big announcements about land releases and promises of developing social and affordable housing, followed by more announcements. Creating the impression of intent while kicking the can down the road, as the housing need swells.
Besides not building houses in well-located areas, the City is guilty, through its inaction, of heightening fear of integration in the middle-class, including fear that the values of their properties might decline.
It should have long demonstrated by now what integration with a little creativity can look like… that it is not about developing ghettoes in the suburbs… that the sky won’t fall on anyone’s head – and property prices won’t plummet, either.
By forcing the City and Province to account for its adherence to the apartheid spatial plan, the Constitutional Court is doing Capetonians a favour by exposing them to the truth and the extent of the crisis.
In November, when Capetonians vote for a new City government, they’ll have the benefit of knowing what they’re voting for. For the past or for the future.
Media Enquiries: media@forgood.org.za