Today, Friday, 2 October 2026, marks the expiration of the three-month deadline set down by the Constitutional Court in the landmark Adonisi v Minister for Transport and Public Works (Tafelberg) judgment ([2026] ZACC 29).
By order of the apex court, the Western Cape Provincial Government and the City of Cape Town must file comprehensive, sworn reports with the High Court detailing their policies, completed projects, ring-fenced budgets, and future plans for affordable social housing in central Cape Town, Sea Point, and surrounds.
For thirty years since the fall of apartheid, not a single state-funded social or affordable housing unit has been completed in the Cape Town CBD or Sea Point. Instead, well-located public land has been systematically hoarded, leased for nominal sums to private entities, or slated for commercial sale—while working-class Black, Coloured and Indian residents continue to be displaced to the urban periphery or subjected to violent evictions.
The Singabalapha Precedent: A Decade of Displacement
The Singabalapha in Observatory has been living outside St Peters Square for the last 7 years. This case is not an isolated incident; it is the lived reality that the Constitutional Court’s Tafelberg judgment now seeks to address. In 2019, residents occupied Arcadia Place, an vacant home for the aged in Observatory. They were evicted on 2 October 2019, a date that eerily mirrors tomorrow’s deadline, and forced to live in tents on the pavement outside the vacant building. When the City attempted to remove them using by-laws and fines, the residents fought back, securing an interdict in 2020 that blocked evictions, confiscation of property, and harassment. This is an ongoing matter between the City and Singabalapha (represented by NU) to find a suitable site for alternative accommodation on well-located public land.
The Constitutional Directive
In its historic 2 July 2026 ruling, the Constitutional Court affirmed that well-located public land is a “constitutional instrument” to redress spatial apartheid under Sections 25(5) and 26 of the Constitution, rather than a commercial asset to be monetised. The Court declared that both the Province and City breached their constitutional duties by failing to adopt and implement a coordinated, reasonable policy for inner-city affordable housing.
Under the supervisory interdict, tomorrow’s filing under oath must reveal whether the state has genuinely shifted its approach or remains committed to paper promises and bureaucratic delays—the same tactics that left Singabalapha residents living in tents on a pavement for years.
Read more:
Tafelberg saga lands up in Concourt
Cape Town’s Good Hope Centre sale faces legal challenges after Tafelberg ruling
