104 Darling Street: Two Decades After Grootboom, the Promise of Housing Remains Empty

Today, GOOD Party Councillors stood in solidarity with Ndifuna Ukwazi and residents of 104 Darling Street, better known as the Irene Grootboom House (IGH), who are facing an eviction by the National Department of Public Works. We say public land must be used for public good.

Just this week, in a response to parliamentary questions posed by GOOD Secretary General and MPL, Brett Herron, the Western Cape MEC Tertuis Simmers confirmed that there are 431,902 people on Cape Town’s housing waiting list.

Despite this glaring crisis, the National Department of Public Works is pursuing its application in the Western Cape High Court to evict around 30 long-term residents of 104 Darling Street, some of whom have called the building home for over 20 years. The case has now been postponed for the second time, with a new court date set for 29 June 2025.

The trauma of displacement still hangs heavily over the families, especially as many have previously been subjected to the violence and indignity of eviction. Worse still, no meaningful engagement has occurred between the Department, the City of Cape Town, or the affected residents to find alternative accommodation.

GOOD stands in solidarity with these and many other residents facing similar threats of eviction, like those living in the Woodstock Hospital and the Helen Bowden Nurses Home in Sea Point. These three occupied public buildings are now home to about 2,000 Black and Coloured people. We reject the vilification of these communities through inflammatory language like “hijacked buildings”, especially by those who have never set foot inside. These properties are more than just buildings, they are homes.

This moment is tragically symbolic. It was the 2000 Grootboom Constitutional Court judgment that confirmed that the state has a duty to progressively realise the right to adequate housing for all. That judgment, named after Irene Grootboom herself, has since become one of the most widely cited social rights rulings in the world. And yet, here we are, with the State once again trying to displace the very people the judgment was meant to protect.

The state has not only a legal duty, but a moral obligation, to honour the Grootboom legacy, not in words, but in action. Housing is not a privilege. It is a right. And public land must serve that right. We must meaningfully engage poor people who have created homes for themselves after having been failed for decades by all three levels of government.

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