As members of Cape Town's municipal planning tribunal can now effectively serve for life (as revealed in Part 1 of this series), Daily Maverick interrogates the tribunal's lack of official employment records, the basis of its apparent property 'development-above-all-else' policy, and why it is withholding a critical legal opinion for which ordinary Capetonians have paid.

To catch up on Part 1 of this series, "Members for life - the capture of Cape Town's planning tribunal," click here.

Theatre of unrecorded baselines

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On Monday 8 December 2025, at around 7.45am, an email landed in the inbox of Jill Fabing, the deputy information officer for the municipality of the City of Cape Town.

"Dear Jill," the email began, "This is not mandatory information required from [a municipal planning tribunal] member to be kept on a city record. We therefore do not have such information or a record."

The sender was Jaco van der Westhuizen, manager of development policies, processes and legislation in the development management department of the City of Cape Town's spatial planning and environment directorate. Wrapped up in his lengthy title, as Fabing was well aware, lay Van der Westhuizen's role as administrator and record-keeper of the aforesaid municipal planning tribunal (MPT), the highly influential yet somewhat obscure body that decides on all category 1 land use applications -- rezonings, subdivisions, permanent departures and removals of restrictive title deed conditions, to name the most common examples of the type.

It wasn't her place to comment on such things, but Fabing may also have...