In a propaganda piece seeking to explain declining housing delivery numbers, published by an online news site on May 18, 2026, Western Cape MEC for Infrastructure Tertuis Simmers blamed national government under-funding.
He also, profoundly, pointed out that it costs more to build a two-bedroom 40 square metre home in 2026 than it did to build a one-bedroom 27 square metre home 22 years ago.
In order to sustain these arguments Simmers didn’t mention that the province recently forfeited R821.5m in funding specifically allocated for housing due to not being willing or able to spend it.
That’s R664.3m earmarked for the construction of free basic houses plus R157.2m earmarked for informal settlements upgrading in the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years.
By leaving out these facts, the MEC’s argument is a classic case of the DA-led province and City of Cape Town’s politics of deflection: Take credit for the good stuff, including the natural splendour and pristine suburbs, while blaming all the other stuff on national government (of which it is, incidentally, part).
It’s a one-size-fits-all disclaimer rolled out to wash its hands of pressing issues affecting the daily lived experiences of poorer people, from housing to public transport to the culture of gangsterism…
I sought to reply to Simmers’ looseness with a set of numbers, because numbers do not lie. But the news site that published his nonsense has evidently declined to publish my reply.
Here are the numbers Simmers didn’t state: To begin with, over the past six years, the Western Cape’s housing delivery numbers have dropped from 8,038 homes in 2019/20 to 3,046 homes in 2024/25.
To put those 3,046 homes into context, the current Western Cape demand database (popularly known as the waiting list) contains over 680,000 names, about 450,000 of whom are “waiting” for a home in Cape Town.
Shocking as it is, the waiting list is but one part of the real housing crisis. It excludes residents who, for various reasons, do not qualify for a free home.
By under-delivering affordable housing the Province effectively restricts access to the middle-class for new entrants, condemning them to continue living in the squalor and danger of the ghettoes.
Given the equation of growing housing need and slowing delivery, a well-run province would not forfeit a single cent in unspent funding. It would, in fact, raise additional capital to meet the crisis as it is constitutionally obliged to do.
What do the numbers say? That the Western Cape has chosen to spend R2B in discretionary funding over the past six years to fund the City of Cape Town’s parallel police force, known as LEAP, and assigned another R1.14B to the programme in the 2026/27 medium-term budget.
In the same period, it assigned no discretionary funds to housing; on the contrary, it had to forfeit the R821.5m due to its failure to deliver.
Instead of improving conditions we elect to spend our money on policing ghettoes – with quarterly crime statistics pointing to very limited returns.
In terms of the South African Constitution housing is a concurrent function between the National and Provincial spheres of government. Metropolitan municipalities have been given agency to run their own housing delivery programmes and not rely entirely on Provincial Governments. (Unlike policing, which is a function of National Government.)
The Western Cape will never meet the demand for public housing on the MEC’s argument that the scale of development is limited to the funding envelope provided by the national Government.
Better political choices must be made to augment funding and deliver the variety of housing typologies: BNG, Informal Settlement Upgrades, Social Housing and First Homes.
If we think of housing as essential infrastructure – which the Western Cape appeared to do when it placed the housing function under the Infrastructure Department – the availability of rent stabilised housing should be augmented by developing new public rental housing stock. Long-term borrowings can be used to finance the build, and rental income to service the finance and fund maintenance.
Apartheid provinces and cities used to do this, exclusively for white South Africans. The funding model therefore exists.
Over the past few years, the Province and City have sought to take the edge off the mounting housing crisis by regularly making announcements of grand affordable housing plans, often relating to the same projects. These promises push the current bottleneck of unfunded social housing projects to eighteen. The next blame game is loading…
From a government with a stable majority, a balanced set of financial statements, relatively good audits and qualified professional administrators – which claims to be well run – citizens are entitled to demand more than excuses for under-delivery. Whose purpose does this clean, well-run government serve?
The Western Cape’s dismal housing failures, and its retention of the inherited colour-coded spatial planning template that defines Cape Town, in particular, rest on political choices made by the Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town which are the direct developers of public housing.
* Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Western Cape Member of Provincial Parliament.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL.
Brett Herron
iol.co.za
