As Daily Maverick has reported, digital nomads occupy short term-rentals along the Atlantic Seaboard, much to the ire of residents, who feel they are being priced out of accommodation in the city as owners rent out apartments and homes to digital nomads who spend weeks working remotely.

Advocacy project Inside Airbnb reported there were about 25,816 listed rentals on the short-term rental platform by 28 December 2024, largely concentrated along the Atlantic Seaboard, in the southern suburbs and along the city’s coast.
While these nomads often appear on social media taking in the city’s tourist attractions and entertainment venues, there is a downside: activists claim the housing crisis in the city is worsened by these visitors. Writing in Daily Maverick, Ndifuna Ukwazi’s Zacharia Mashele and Buhle Booi say this drives up rental prices, making it difficult for locals, particularly low- and middle-income households, to secure affordable housing.

In a wide-ranging interview with Daily Maverick this week, Hill-Lewis said he agreed with sentiments that short-term rentals need to be taxed “appropriately”.
“You can’t come into a very tourism-rich market and basically run a small hotel… if you’re running a permanent Airbnb, that’s what it is, but you’re not taxed like a hotel, you’re taxed like a private house,” he said.
The mayor said a process was under way to convert “permanent Airbnbs where people are not just renting out a room or renting out their granny flat” from residential to commercial tariffs.

“I think that’s only fair,” he said, adding: “There has to be an equal playing field.”
He explained that he could not tell developers of major hotel chains that they needed to pay business tariffs in the city because they run hotels while others who run operations like these on a much smaller scale do not.
Processes in the City’s revenue department were under way to change these tariffs for those for whom this is a main business.

“So, for me, that’s about an equal playing field, no questions asked there.”
Hill-Lewis is not the only government official to add to the discussion about short-term rentals and their impact.
The issue was raised in Parliament in October 2024. Senzo Nkala, the tourism department’s director of policy planning and strategy, told MPs on the tourism oversight committee that the department was looking into regulatory frameworks, including an approach to short-term rentals.

He said that when the department did consultations on the Tourism White Paper, for the development and promotion of tourism, there was an intention to support long-term rental markets and prevent large property owners from monopolising housing supply for short-term rental purposes, which can lead to rising rental costs and the displacement of long-term tenants.
According to the Parliamentary Monitoring Group, Nkala said that during consultations, estate agents had raised concerns about unregulated short-term rentals. They had complained that property owners bought a number of properties for short-term rental use without involving agents, leading to neighbourhood disruptions such as noise and nuisance complaints.
The department, Nkala said, intended to start extensive consultations with key stakeholders, focusing on how threshold-based rules could be implemented to balance market access with regulation and public interest.

In its impact report on Cape Town, short-term rental platform Airbnb said it had “long led calls for short-term rentals to be regulated”, and that regulation would help provide policy certainty for hosts and guests, and create a level playing field for all operators.
In September 2023, the department and Airbnb also signed a memorandum of understanding, which includes a national registration system and a national database for short-term rentals in the country to “provide transparency into the short-term rental market”.

“While taxing short-term rental owners like commercial properties may be a step towards regulating the market, it does not address the root issue: the unchecked prioritisation of short-term profits over the right to housing,” said Jonty Cogger, an attorney at Ndifuna Ukwazi.
He told Daily Maverick that without stronger protections for tenants, better rent controls and a commitment to well-located, affordable housing, “Cape Town will continue to cater to tourists and digital nomads at the expense of its own residents… the City must act urgently to ensure that housing serves people, not just profits.

A legislative amendment to give effect to a Constitutional Court ruling that sections of the Refugee Act are unconstitutional by denying asylum seekers' rights will be put before Parliament by March, the Department of Home Affairs has said.
On Tuesday, the department briefed the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs on how it would respond to the ruling.
Last December, the Constitutional Court confirmed the Western Cape High Court's ruling, delivered by Deputy Judge 

President Patricia Goliath.
The Scalabrini Centre applied to the High Court for a declaratory order that subsections and the Regulations of the Refugee Act are inconsistent with the Constitution and invalid.
They argued the minister of home affairs - at the time it was Aaron Motsoaledi - the director-general of the Department of Home Affairs and the chairperson of the department's Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs created a system whereby asylum seekers, who failed to renew their visas within one month of the date of expiry, were deemed to have abandoned their applications for asylum unless they could satisfy the standing committee there were compelling reasons for their failure to renew their visas timeously.

They also argued this was inconsistent with international law, the Constitution and Refugees Act's principle of non-refoulement, meaning "one fleeing persecution or threats to 'his or her life, physical safety or freedom' should not be made to return to the country inflicting it".
Scalabrini also contended the impugned subsections were irrational and arbitrary and, therefore, unconstitutional, serving no legitimate government purpose in that they disqualified asylum seekers from the very system designed to protect them.

The courts agreed.
At a meeting last month, parliamentary legal services advised the committee it should invite Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber to brief the committee on what steps the department proposed to take to address the judgment.
The department notified the committee it is busy drafting the Refugees Amendment Bill, which is currently being consulted among the department's different branches.

The draft bill will then be submitted to the department's executive committee for approval to submit to Schreiber.
The department does not believe that it must submit the bill for public comment, as it is mandated by the Constitutional Court. It will also request the Presidency to waive a Socio-Economic Impact Assessment.

The department will request the Office of the Chief State Law Advisor to certify the bill, before it goes through the normal Cabinet process. The department was confident it would introduce the bill to Parliament by the end of March.
The Refugees Act was not the only immigration law to be found to be unconstitutional by the apex court last December.
The court found it is unconstitutional that the Immigration Act requires parents in South Africa on spousal visas to leave the country to reapply for a visa when theirs expire due to an end to their spousal relationship.

The court suspended the order of invalidity for 24 months, but ordered parents would be allowed to stay in South Africa while they apply for their new visas. If the legislation is not amended by the deadline, that provision would be read into the law.
Parliament's legal services advised the committee it would be preferable the legislation be amended to avoid a situation where the courts take over Parliament's legislative function.
Legal services also advised the department should brief the committee on how it intends to address the court ruling.

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