While the DA says its track record in the Western Cape proves its governance model works, its delivery record in working-class townships and on inner-city affordable housing is facing renewed scrutiny.
That image is now being tested by two sworn court filings and renewed public debate over conditions in Cape Town’s working-class townships.
The GOOD Party says the DA’s own sworn reports to the Constitutional Court confirm a long-standing complaint from township residents: that DA governance works well for some communities but not for others.
In compliance with a Constitutional Court order in the historic Tafelberg matter, Premier Alan Winde and Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis filed reports under oath detailing progress on affordable housing in well-located areas.
Nine years after the litigation began, neither the province nor the City has completed a single affordable housing project in Cape Town’s CBD, Salt River, Woodstock, Observatory or Sea Point, according to GOOD Secretary-General Brett Herron.
According to reports Winde has admitted that there has not been affordable housing projects completed in the CBD since 2017.
Mayor Hill-Lewis claims “substantial progress” in his report, but his own annexure betrays him.
Herron, who is also the party’s mayoral candidate for Cape Town, says the details tell the real story.
“Salt River Market, the City’s furthest-advanced site, is at demolition and foundation stage. Construction of housing is targeted for early 2027,” Herron said.
“Bloemhof Street, Pickwick Street and New Market Street had their original 2017 bidding processes cancelled in 2019. Seven years later, new consultants have been appointed but none of the sites have broken ground.”
“Pine Road and Dillon Lane, social housing projects started in 2012, announced in 2017 with planned 2019 construction starts, have evidently been cancelled.”
“Woodstock Hospital has been occupied by people in need of housing for 10 years. After five years of repeated studies, the City now says only that it is investigating disposal strategies,” he added.
“Upper Canterbury Street has been dropped from affordable housing altogether and moved into the general property disposal pipeline – this well-located public land will now be sold on the open market.”
For Herron, this is not a bureaucratic delay, it is a political choice that entrenches apartheid spatial planning.
“The Tafelberg School case wasn’t about money or process. It was about apartheid spatial redress and whether governments should be obliged to use their land and resources to undo apartheid planning,” he said.
“The people who were promised housing in the inner city nine years ago must sit down and wait – again. Their governments have now put that failure in writing, under oath, before the highest court in the country.”
Both Winde and Hill-Lewis blame insufficient national funding.
But the Constitutional Court anticipated that excuse and dismissed it in advance, ruling at paragraph 161 that budget constraints do not excuse inaction – they trigger an obligation to raise funding.
GOOD says neither report explains why the province and City won’t use their own revenue, balance sheets or reserves while waiting for national grants.
That is exactly what has ignited fierce debate online.
For months, X has been flooded with viral threads comparing life in Cape Town’s townships with Johannesburg and Durban townships.
Users posting from Khayelitsha, Delft, Gugulethu and Langa describe high crime, overcrowding, extortion rackets and shacks that flood in winter, questioning the DA’s claim that it runs the best metro in the country.
The debate has also sharpened focus on internal migration.
Many young people defend their move from the Eastern Cape to Cape Town as economic necessity, arguing that even informal settlements offer better access to water, electricity and schools than neglected rural villages.
Opposition parties fire back that Cape Town is the most spatially segregated and expensive city for a young black job-seeker, with townships pushed to the periphery while inner-city public land sits empty or is sold to private developers.
Nationally, DA Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers previously boasted that “DA-run municipalities continue to set the national standard” and that “Cape Town remains best-run metro in SA,” citing the Ratings Afrika Municipal Financial Sustainability Index where Cape Town scored 71 against an average of 36 for other metros, with Drakenstein, Hessequa, Overstrand, Saldanha Bay and Swartland ranked top five.
“Where the DA governs, residents benefit,” Simmers said.
The DA has responded, acknowledging criticism but defending its record.
In a statement, the party said it recognises that it could do more to accelerate affordable housing and improve conditions in townships, but insisted it is doing its best under constrained national funding and a growing population driven by in-migration.
The party said Cape Town maintains roads, delivers reliable water, provides consistent refuse collection and invests in infrastructure at a level unmatched by other metros, and that its inner-city housing projects have faced legal delays and planning appeals but are now progressing.