Over the past year, I have come across one zoning dispute after another. A luxury block of flats in Sea Point and a place of worship and instruction in Sandton, to name two. An owner wants to do something new with a piece of land, the neighbours object and the debate grinds through the system for years. By the time a decision arrives, both sides are exhausted and often neither is satisfied.
Some of the cases are nearing a decision. One in Johannesburg has been running for nearly 20 years and returns to the Municipal Planning Tribunal this month. In Cape Town, residents who won their appeal took the fight to the high court in August because construction never stopped. Whether the plot holds a block of flats or a place of worship, the fight usually comes down to who gets the final say and why it takes so long to get there.
Every piece of land in South Africa comes with rules about what you are and aren’t allowed to do on that erf. Zoning tells you what the land can be used for. On top of that sit development controls, like how tall you may build and how many parking bays you need.
Some properties also carry conditions in the title deed, often written when the suburb was first laid out. If an owner wants to change any of these, they apply to the municipality; neighbours can object. In Johannesburg, the Municipal Planning Tribunal (MPT) weighs it up and decides.
The Sandton case concerns Erf 131 Duxberry on Coleraine Drive, owned by the Sandton Islamic Association (SIA), which runs a place of worship and instruction there. In 2006, one of two neighbouring plots was rezoned for a place of worship. In 2016, after objectors appealed to the province, both plots were rezoned “Educational” with strict conditions: a maximum of 160 people at any service and 100 students, at least 83 parking bays on site, no parking on the surrounding public roads, no outdoor sound amplification and no vehicle or pedestrian access from Vincent Avenue at the back (City of Johannesburg Amendment Scheme 13-9836).
In 2019, the SIA applied to rezone the property again and remove several conditions, asking for up to 200 people at a service and 120 students. The tribunal first sat on the matter in March 2026 but spent hours debating who qualified as an objector or intervener and never reached the merits. At a second sitting on 22 September, the SIA presented its proposal and the Sandton Planning and Land Use Compliance Association (Spluca) began its argument before time ran out. Spluca and five households whose properties share a boundary with Erf 131, the grouped as the Association for Residents Rights (ARR), will finish their arguments on 27 October, seven years after the application was lodged.
The neighbours’ complaint is that the conditions aren’t being followed. the ARR states in its heads of argument that Friday attendance regularly exceeds 500 people against the 160 allowed and that overflow parking and noise break the conditions.
A wider group from the surrounding suburbs formed the Spluca in July this year, focused on traffic safety and security. Residents say a pedestrian gate at the back of the property is in use, despite the condition against access on that side. Both groups describe the expansion as incremental: each application looks modest on its own but together they add up to something the neighbourhood was never designed for.
Spluca has since lodged a compliance complaint asking the city to inspect on a Friday at 12.30pm, when overflow parking happens.
The SIA’s lawyers argue that the use has been lawful on this land since 2006, so the tribunal must start from that baseline and not from an imaginary empty residential plot.
SIA co-chairperson Yunus Suleman said in a Salaamedia interview: “It’s not necessarily an expansion. It’s an upgrade.” The plan is to replace what is a converted house with a purposebuilt, soundproofed building that has 118 on-site parking bays and an engineered entrance off Coleraine Drive. He accepts that Fridays are busy, says the SIA provides traffic pointsmen and points to the free borehole tap it has opened to neighbours during water outages.
The city’s planning department recommended approval with the cap kept at 160 and the building limited to two storeys. The Johannesburg Roads Agency raised no objection, subject to conditions.
The SIA’s traffic engineer accepted that the Friday midday service causes congestion for a short period.
The objectors’ town planner accepted that this kind of use in a residential area is generally regarded as compatible. The two sides are not that far apart on the facts. Where they differ is on whether the neighbours can believe that any new conditions will be enforced. If conditions on paper haven’t prevented crowded verges until now, why would new conditions work any better?
Residents who were there at the time say far more objections were lodged than the 151 the city acknowledged. Residents who have studied the city’s hearing pack say its list of the 151 objectors skips from number 74 to number 101, so the details of 26 objectors are missing.
The SIA disputes the residents’ figures. Its co-chairperson says there are only three valid objectors and that many of the people raising concerns weren’t living in the area when objections closed in November 2019. When a case takes seven years, the neighbourhood that objected is not really the neighbourhood that will live with the decision. More than 150 residents later petitioned to join the hearing as “interveners”. Only five completed every step, including payment. They say they haven’t been told whether they’ve been accepted or how they may participate. Residents also say city officials gave conflicting guidance, with one telling them an affidavit was required and another saying it wasn’t. That is a failure by the city and it serves no one, including the applicant, who has waited seven years for a decision.
On St Johns Road in Sea Point, Cape Town, residents won an appeal in December 2025 when Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis overturned the tribunal’s approval of the Solomon Brothers Group’s plans, yet construction carried on because separate building plans approved in 2024 remained valid (Cape Argus). The developer says it is building legally. Why should anyone outside the suburbs care? Because zoning is part of what you buy when you buy any property. When you pay for a house, you pay for the bricks and a reasonable expectation of what will happen around them. If the plot next door can change from a house to a busy school or a block of flats, that changes your daily life and, eventually, what the next buyer will pay you.
The SIA’s co-chairperson calls the idea that values fall near a facility like his “absolute nonsense” and says prices around the site have risen over 20 years, while residents point to the Friday traffic as the thing buyers will notice.
Neither side has put independent sales data on the table. Owners also have rights to use their land, and our cities need more housing and community facilities close to where people live. A city where every neighbour can block every change will never densify or become more affordable. Whatever the outcome of the cases, the principle is the same. Zoning is not a suggestion. The law sets out the rights attached to a plot. An owner who wants to use land differently must apply, show why the change is justified and accept the conditions that come with approval. Neighbours are entitled to object but neither side gets to decide the outcome on its own. That is the tribunal’s job.
For the system to be trusted, the city must do its part too. A seven-year wait and objections that residents say went missing do not make for a reasonable process and conditions mean little if nobody checks whether they are being met.
For homeowners, the lesson is that next time a site notice goes up on your street, read it. The law gives you a say in what happens next door but only if you use it.