In the wake of the South African Property Owner’s Association (Sapoa’s) landmark legal victory against the City of Cape Town over the 2025/26 budget, growing calls have emerged demanding that the City refund property owners for the contested charges that have been levied upon them since 1 July 2025.
In a notice to its members today, Sapoa chief executive officer, Neil Gopal, stated that Sapoa did not, for several reasons ask the Court to order a refund of any of the impugned charges paid by residents.
“When Sapoa launched the legal challenge in July 2025, serious consideration was given to also asking the Court to order the City to refund any of the impugned charges already paid by residents. This was decided against for a number of reasons,” he says.
“Firstly, it would be extremely difficult to ask the Court to order such a refund. When a court grants an order, it must be able to ensure that the order is properly complied with. The court would have had great difficulty in ensuring that the City indeed refunds every resident, making contempt proceedings, in the event that the City fails to comply with the order, nearly impossible.”
READ ALSO: Western Cape High Court rules City of Cape Town’s fixed charges unlawful
Risk of an unfunded City budget
Secondly, he says, ordering a refund would have left the City with an unfunded budget, in the sense that revenues which it anticipated receiving, would not only have to be forfeited, but reimbursed to residents. This would be contrary to the provisions of the Municipal Finance Management.
This Act provides, among other things, that, even though an adjustment budget may be tabled, municipal property rates and tariff charges may not be increased in a year. “The City would therefore have been faced with a significant revenue shortfall,” says Gopal.
“None of the other parties to the litigation asked for such relief either. GOOD Party, who had intervened in the matter, also did not ask for such relief. Accordingly, in the event that the City applies for leave to appeal the judgment, there can be no cross-appeal to request a refund, as the relief had not previously been sought by any party and subsequently denied by the Court.
City of Cape Town must drop unlawful tariffs whether it appeals or not
In other related developments, Brett Herron, secretary-general of the GOOD Party and member of the Western Cape Parliament, stated that should the City of Cape Town choose to appeal last week’s full-bench Western Cape High Court judgment, which declared its fixed cleaning, water and sanitation tariffs unlawful, such a move would not suspend the binding effect of the ruling. This is in accordance with the legal advice he received.
“The court ordered the City to dump its unlawful charges by the end of June, which is also the date by which the City must adopt its 2026/27 budget. Whether the City appeals the judgement or not, it has no option but to drop the unlawful tariffs until a superior court overturns the judgement. This will certainly not happen before the end of next month,” says Herron.
In a letter addressed to the City’s legal representatives today, the GOOD Party requests urgent transparency from the City regarding its budgetary intentions to mitigate the risk of legal delays.
Citing case law including Release Mandela Campaign v State President (1988) and Zuma v Downer and Another (SCA 2024), the GOOD Party warns that should the City be wrongly advised that launching an appeal will enable it to ignore the full-bench judgement, it could be tripped up afresh by an application to the court for an order putting its original order into effect pending the appeal.
“The upshot is that for the City’s next budget and tariff policy, it would be unlawful to impose the fixed tariff fees for cleaning, water and sewage, as they would violate section 74(2) of the Systems Act, in accordance with the ratio of the Full Court,” says Herron. “This means that even if the City does intend to seek leave to appeal and pursues an appeal against the Full Court’s order, in that period the City cannot, in law, again impose the impugned tariffs on the residents of Cape Town,” says Herron.
“Aside from these legal principles, it would be highly inappropriate and irregular for the City to do so. If the SCA or Constitutional Court ultimately upholds the Full Court’s judgment and order, and rules against the City after a few years, Capetonians may be denied effective relief against the unlawful imposition of charges in the interim.”
Reversal of charges
Herron says, should the City be advised to accept the court judgement and order, as it should, the City is required by law and the Court’s order to take steps to remedy the consequences of its unlawful conduct.
“The effective remedy is to reverse these unlawfully imposed charges. Ordinary residents of Cape Town cannot be expected to have paid unlawfully imposed charges. Our client calls on the City to explain how it will go about reversing the unlawfully imposed charges. This could include crediting municipal accounts.”
He said the letter respectfully requested a response from the City on this matter of considerable public interest by Friday.
