People are waiting for houses not promises. This is the sentiment shared by the Head of Political Organising and Campaigns at housing lobby group, Ndifuna Ukwazi, Buhle Booi. He was responding to the City of Cape Town recently submitting a comprehensive affordable housing progress report to the Constitutional Court.
On July 2nd 2026, the Apex Court issued a judgement stating that the municipality and Western Cape Government failed to address spatial Apartheid. A supervisory order was also issued instructing the respective governments that three months from the initial judgement being handed down, that it must file reports in the high court detailing how they plan to deal with pipeline projects and use public land to develop affordable housing.
“What the court had ordered them to do is not to speak to pipeline projects. It was to speak to how they are planning to address the pipeline projects. But they’re headed to court again to say that this is the pipeline that we have, we have a vision,”
In the city’s report, it highlighted a 41% decline in national funding since 2017 to continue its affordable housing projects. Booi noted that the city is referencing sights that will be used for affordable housing. However, it’s on record that since 1994, not a single social housing home was built in central Cape Town.
“The city will equally say that there’s a decline in terms of national funding which we agree with because less than 2% of the national budget of human settlements is going to social housing. But the city then pretends as if there is no other mechanism in so far as dealing with this question of funding for financing social housing.”
