Centre for Environmental Rights – Advancing Environmental Rights in South Africa

On 18 June 2010, the Constitutional Court delivered judgment in an application by the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality (the City) for the confirmation of an order made by the Supreme Court of Appeal, declaring Chapters V and VI of the Development Facilitation Act 67 of 1995 unconstitutional and thus invalid.

The Court held that the powers to consider and approve applications for the rezoning of land and the establishment of townships are elements of “municipal planning”, an exclusive municipal function assigned to municipalities by section 156(1) of the Constitution read with Part B of Schedule 4. Consequently, Chapters V and VI of the Act were found to be constitutionally invalid as they assign exclusive municipal powers to organs of the provincial sphere of government.

In order to mitigate any disruptive effect that an order of invalidity might have on past and future developments, the Court suspended the order of invalidity for 24 months to allow Parliament to rectify the defects in the Act, or to pass new legislation. Further, the order imposes a condition prohibiting development tribunals from hearing new applications for land developments within the jurisdictions of the City and the eThekwini Municipality, as these municipalities were shown to have the capacity to exercise the contested powers. However, the tribunals are entitled to finalise all pending applications in these jurisdictions. The declaration of invalidity will not have retrospective effect if it comes into force.

The full media summary and judgements in both the Concourt and the SCA are available here.