By Akani Nkuna
The GOOD Party is seeking legal advice on whether to take further court action to force the City of Cape Town to refund residents for fixed water, sanitation and cleaning charges declared unlawful by the Western Cape High Court.
In a statement on Monday, GOOD secretary-general Brett Herron said the city had collected a significant amount of money through an unlawful tariff scheme introduced from July 2025, and that residents should be refunded for charges already imposed.
“[T]he unlawful tariff scheme targeted groups of people for extra payments they simply cannot afford, including those who have inherited property or whose property values have escalated exponentially due to gentrification or development,” he said.
“If the mayor were allowed to charge residents whatever he wishes, it would effectively force members of these groups to consider downgrading their accommodation – the diametric opposite of development.”
The statement follows a Western Cape High Court ruling on 30 April declaring the City of Cape Town’s fixed charges for city-wide cleaning, water and sewerage unlawful and invalid.
The full bench — Judge President Nolwazi Mabindla-Boqwana, Judge André Le Grange and Judge Katherine Savage — found that the charges imposed in the city’s 2025/26 budget were inconsistent with the Constitution, national legislation and the City’s own Tariff By-law.
The court set aside the charges with effect from 30 June 2026.
The case arose from applications brought by the South African Property Owners Association and AfriForum, with GOOD later admitted as an intervening party.
The applicants challenged the city’s introduction of fixed charges linked to property values, arguing that they amounted to property rates or taxes rather than service fees.
The city argued that the charges were lawful tariffs under its Tariff By-law, developed in terms of the Municipal Systems Act, and were not property rates or taxes.
Herron said the tariffs undermined “struggling families” and disregarded the municipality’s progressive framework of “consumption-based tariffs and targeted low-income households”.
He said GOOD was considering its legal options, including a possible cross-appeal or a further application for just and equitable relief, to ensure that residents were not left carrying the cost of unlawful charges.
He said that further appeals by the city could drag the dispute into the 2026/27 financial year, leaving residents to bear the financial consequences.
“Residents are entitled to honest billing, lawful tariffs, and accountability for charges already imposed on them — not political spin, ill-though-through over-charges, and manufactured crises,” Herron said.
Following the ruling last week, Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said the judgment would not affect the tariff structure for the current financial year, because the court had set aside the charges only from 30 June 2026.
He said one implication of the ruling was that fixed charges could increase for low-income households while decreasing for more affluent households if the city was forced to move to a flat-charge model.
Hill-Lewis said the city would study the judgment before deciding on its next steps.
“The point of using property value is to determine fixed charges was to precisely to protect lower and middle-income homes. The only alternative to this is for everyone to pay a flat charge regardless pf whether they are low income or affluent,” Hill-Lewis said.
INSIDE POLITICS
