SAPOA honours Cape Town as best-run metropolitan municipality despite legal action

South African Property Owners Association (SAPOA) CEO, Neil Gopal, has defended their decision to honour the City of Cape Town (CoCT) as the “Best Metropolitan Municipality” at their gala dinner of the SAPOA Convention 2025, despite taking legal action against the City over its budget.

At the convention, the overall winners of the Municipal Performance Awards were announced, representing the best of all the provincial winners. SAPOA said that these municipalities have demonstrated exceptional performance, innovation and service delivery.

SAPOA’s membership currently comprises more than 90% of the country’s commercial and retail property industry, including some of the largest property-owning companies in South Africa.

The CoCT won the Best Metropolitan Municipality at the dinner, and their win comes amid the association's challenge over its tariffs and budget.

SAPOA is taking on the City’s fixed tariffs and their decision to link certain fixed charges to property values.

In its replying affidavit, SAPOA slammed Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, accusing him of unfairly portraying property owners as being wealthy enough not to feel the impact of the tariffs.

In its court application, SAPOA is asking for the three tariffs in the Budget, namely the Cleaning Tariff, the Fixed Water Charge, and the Fixed Sanitation Charge be declared unconstitutional and invalid.

Initially, Hill-Lewis, in response to SAPOA’s court action, said that if SAPOA got their way, it would lead to a R4.2bn budgetary shortfall if all three fixed tariffs were set aside.

However, despite this legal action, Gopal said that they wanted to honour the City as the case has no bearing on the matter.

“Ratings Afrika's criteria to determine the best-run municipalities in SA places Cape Town as the best-run municipality,” he said.

“They are two separate matters. We have not at any stage in our legal argument stated that the CoCT is not run effectively.”

Gopal explained that there were a number of criteria used in the assessment of selecting the City as the best-run metro.

“Ratings Afrika's proprietary scoring model, the Municipal Financial Sustainability Index (MFSI), is a well-recognised and well-respected index. The MFSI is a scoring model that evaluates six financial components, namely the operating performance, liquidity management, debt governance, budget practices, affordability and infrastructure development of a municipality, and scores these components out of 100."

In response to winning the award, Hill-Lewis said: “We're very grateful for SAPOA's recognition of Cape Town as SA’s best metro. We are building a City of Hope for all residents, where our investments in basic infrastructure uplift dignity and help our whole society thrive.”

SAPOA's case against the City, and the case of AfriForum, is expected to be heard in the Western Cape High Court in December. 

Hill-Lewis previously said that he has been advised that the two applications will be heard together by the same court, but are not consolidated and, as such, remain separate applications.

AfriForum seeks to have the budget declared invalid until the end of the 2025/2026 financial year, 30 June 2026, “to allow the City to rectify the defects”.