Press Release 20 February 2024
Yesterday, 19 February 2024, Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) applied to the Western Cape High Court to intervene as amicus curiae (friend of the court) in a significant case concerning the historic District Six neighbourhood in Cape Town.
The main application, launched by six families residing in Searle Street, District Six, on April 5, 2023, seeks to direct the state to expropriate their home to protect their security of tenure.
The applicants, descendants of original District Six occupants threatened with forced removals during apartheid, have resided on the property since at least 1928. Despite their historical ties to the land, the property was sold by the Order of the Sisters of the Holy Cross to Mr. Etienne Du Toit in 2014, who resides outside of Cape Town and intends to renovate it for residential rental investment. Legal attempts to interdict and set aside the sale were unsuccessful, putting the applicants at risk of eviction through gentrification.
According to Dr Jonty Cogger, attorney representing NU:
“The main application is a sad reminder that the echoes of apartheid linger in District Six, haunting the memories of forced removals that displaced over 60,000 Coloured and Black residents by 1982. The 1966 declaration of District Six as a “White Group Area” marked the initiation of a relentless wave of evictions, with families torn from their homes and scattered to racially segregated peripheries. The irony lies in the applicants surviving forced removals during apartheid, only to face a new threat of displacement through gentrification nearly 30 years after democracy. The state’s failure to safeguard their security of tenure forces them to relive the trauma of dispossession, emphasising the ongoing struggle for property equality in South Africa.”
Despite legislative changes post-apartheid, Cape Town’s urban form remains segregated, with housing values and access to finance reproducing racial and class disparities. The phenomenon of gentrification – characterised by a paradigm shift in housing from social to financial asset, the privatisation of homeownership, and the growth of housing finance – has only perpetuated historic dispossession. This financialisation disproportionately benefits higher-income groups, leading to unequal property values, limited market activity at the lower end, and exclusive housing finance practices, contributing to ongoing spatial and racial inequalities in Cape Town.
If admitted as amicus curiae, NU will seek to assist the court with information demonstrating the intertwined historical and contemporary challenges that contribute to the continued displacement of poor Black (African, Coloured and Indian) people and the perpetuation of spatial apartheid.
Read NU’s amicus application here.
Read the Searle Street Families’ application here.