Human rights commission takes Cape Town to court over auction of 49 municipal properties

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has accused the City of Cape Town of failing to consider the pressing need for affordable and social housing when it auctioned off 49 municipal-owned properties earlier this year, and has asked the Western Cape High Court to stop any further steps in the sale and transfer of the sites.

In an application for an interdict, the commission wants the court to declare the City's decisions to sell the properties unconstitutional, unlawful, irrational or invalid, to set them aside and to send the matter back to the City for reconsideration. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said the City will oppose the application.

In an affidavit filed on 5 October, SAHRC commissioner Philile Ntuli said the commission learnt of the planned auction in January and was concerned that the City had not imposed enforceable conditions requiring affordable or social housing, and that the public participation it relied on for most of the properties was outdated - for one property it dated back to 2010.

The commission asked the City on 29 January for information on the properties, the legal basis for selling them and any assessment of the impact on housing and spatial planning. The City replied on 12 February that it had complied with the Municipal Finance Management Act and the Municipal Asset Transfer Regulations and that no municipal department had asked to keep any of the sites. The commission says the reply did not adequately address its concerns and one of the two web links supplied was dead.

At an online meeting on 20 February, Hill-Lewis told the commission that the City envisaged the land would ultimately be used for housing development, and that the City does not have the money to deliver affordable housing while the private sector does. According to the affidavit, he also said no formal conditions of sale would be attached to the auction. He declined a request to postpone the auction, citing reputational and fiscal damage to the City, and said attaching conditions would be detrimental to market enthusiasm.

The auction went ahead on 26 February, but the sales are not final: due diligence has not been completed, the City's Immovable Property Adjudication Committee must approve each sale, and only three high-value disposals - the Good Hope Centre, a truck stop property in Epping and a site in Century City - need a final council vote. The commission says transfers should be halted because a review may be rendered ineffective once a property changes hands.

In a statement on 29 October, Hill-Lewis called the application electioneering ahead of the 4 November local government elections and said the SAHRC was behaving like a political party rather than a Chapter 9 institution. He said the 49 sites include 28 residential-zoned properties in areas such as Mitchells Plain, Maitland, Goodwood, Kraaifontein, Somerset West and Durbanville, while commercial and industrial sites in Atlantis, Delft and Parow would create jobs, and that land sales have raised R628-million this term. The City has until early December to file its answering papers and no court date has been set.