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The City of Tshwane has confirmed that it has no immediate plans to levy property rates at the appropriate punitive scale in the numerous illegal developments in and around Pretoria, despite its dire financial situation.
That means other property owners will continue to subsidise them by paying more, since the amount of revenue the city budgets for is spread proportionally among the paying owners.
This comes as the city is trying to delay the court-ordered payment of around R1.5 billion in salary increases for municipal staff outstanding since 2022, because it does not have the money to do so.
By failing to categorise illegal developments – where owners of thousands of formal houses are not paying property rates – as non-permitted use, the city is ignoring its own rates policy, says Rates Watch director Ben Espach.
Lex Middelberg, councillor for the Republican Conference of Tshwane, points out that the city is acting inconsistently, since it had recategorised the illegal Afrikaner settlement Kleinfontein to non-permitted use, which sets its rates tariff at 7.5 times that of normal residential property.
In July last year Moneyweb further reported that the Tshwane city council had approved the implementation of such penalty rates on 713 property owners identified by the administration for illegal land use and failure to take remedial action.
Responding to an enquiry from Moneyweb, Tshwane MMC for Human Settlements Alderman Aaron Maluleka says:
“The city has not adopted a position to automatically recategorise illegal developments as ‘unpermitted
use’ for property tax purposes.”
“The city’s approach is guided by the principles of legality, fairness and proportionality, particularly in cases where residents acted in good faith and were misled by third parties.”
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