Press Release for Immediate Release: 06 October 2026

In a press statement (“CITY CONDEMNS LATEST CYNICAL ATTEMPTS TO DELAY TRANSNET’S CULEMBORG EVICTION – 5 Oct 2026”), the City of Cape Town and Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security, Ald JP Smith, launched an aggressive attack on 266 indigent residents seeking leave to appeal an unprecedented eviction order to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in the Transnet matter (Oliphant and 265 Others v Transnet SOC Ltd).

Seeking leave to appeal is a legal right, not a delay tactic. The High Court refused leave to appeal, and a petition to the Supreme Court of Appeal is the lawful next step. Under section 18 of the Superior Courts Act, the eviction order is suspended while that process is pending. We did not “stop” the eviction. The law did. The applicants are the 266 residents; NU Law Centre acts as their legal representative. 

    • Concurrent Constitutional Court Orders: 
      • The City is simultaneously under a binding ConCourt order (Adonisi/ Tafelberg) to report on dismantling spatial apartheid. Its 2 October 2026 filings show zero completed social housing units in the CBD core.
  • Criminalising the Poor: 
      • The City conflates extreme poverty and landlessness with inherent criminality, reducing entire communities (Transnet, Cissie Gool House, Ahmed Kathrada House) to criminals. There are no constitutional prerequisites for housing, health, or dignity.
      • Crime must be addressed, but not by making families homeless. We take the safety concerns of cyclists, road users and surrounding residents seriously, and we condemn violence of any kind. 
      • Policing and the prosecution of individual offenders are the proper tools, and they are the City’s duty. Describing an entire community as criminal, and citing metropole-wide statistics, is not evidence against these 266 people. Courts must assess each occupier’s circumstances, and blanket punishment of a community is neither lawful nor effective. 
      • It relies solely on unverified claims: related to proximity. Taken to its conclusion, this logic means that everyone living in an area with crime statistics is a criminal. By that standard, no one in South Africa is innocent
  • The Real Delay: Reluctance to provide Alternative Accommodation
      • The real delay in the eviction proceedings (where the respondent will be rendered homeless by the eviction)  is the City of Cape Town’s refusal to provide alternative accommodation, as per the Commando judgment, and the Singabapahla matter which have dragged on for years, amongst many other cases in which Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre represented evictees and in others where we did not represent evictees.
  • The Human Reality
    • This is about people. The Transnet site is home to 266 people, including children, older persons and people with disabilities. Many have lived there for many years, (some as long as 20 years), work in the area and have nowhere else to go. 
    • A mosque stands on the site.
    • Section 26 of the Constitution and the PIE Act say no one may be evicted without a court considering all relevant circumstances, including where people will live afterwards. 

The question the City has not answered: where will these residents go? 

The Constitutional Court’s decisions in Grootboom and Blue Moonlight make clear that the City must plan for and provide temporary emergency accommodation to people facing eviction into homelessness. The City is also under a Constitutional Court order, Adonisi/Tafelberg, to report on redressing spatial apartheid.

A City with significant public land and substantial budgets cannot claim helplessness, while evicting people from well-located land near jobs and transport, nor should it attempt to scape-goat anyone in order to misdirect the public from its responsibilities.

Public land must be used for public good, not peripheral banishment. Undo Spatial Apartheid NOW.

Notes

The Transnet Culemborg Matter : Citation: Nosiphiwo Oliphant and 265 Others v Transnet SOC Ltd, The City of Cape Town, and Minister of Home Affairs (SCA Case No. / WCHC Case No: 2025-063967). Link to Application for Leave to Appeal: https://jumpshare.com/share/5wwSJ3Byr6ipkfCqMxHq

Status: Following an eviction order handed down by Wille J on 21 July 2026 and a subsequent refusal of leave to appeal on 28 September 2026, the Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre filed an application for leave to appeal directly to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on 2 October 2026 on behalf of 266 indigent, homeless residents at the Culemborg site. The appeal targets the High Court’s unprecedented order authorising eviction and demolition without directing the City of Cape Town to provide emergency accommodation, threatening immediate homelessness. 

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