Lesufi’s shacklands plan nothing new, and harks back to apartheid days
Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s approach cannot withstand the levels of inequality in SA
Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s public statements about the pending demolition of informal settlements in the province may be part of a bid to secure voter support for the upcoming local government elections, as some analysts have suggested.
However, the essence of the premier’s approach was already present in several draft policy amendments and strategies at municipal level, circulated for public comment earlier this year.
These all ignore the informal settlement approach agreed to in the December 2024 white paper for human settlements, which, though rushed, was nevertheless the culmination of extensive consultation (and generous voluntarism) in the human settlements sector.
Running as a thread through the City of Johannesburg’s proposed amendments to its 2018 Land Use Management Scheme and its draft Informal Settlement Policy is an approach that echoes the premier’s statements. This approach labels certain informal settlements legitimate and others not. This is coupled with a bid to freeze the informal settlement situation by preventing new land occupation through repressive means, which Lesufi’s provincial initiative takes to the extreme.
In various iterations the differential treatment of informal settlements and the repression of informal settlement formation were practised by the apartheid government. Today, no-one would dispute that urban land occupations were a necessary response to the exclusion and inequality deliberately produced by the apartheid regime. Opposition to the state’s approach to informal settlements formed an undisputed part of anti-apartheid activism.
These approaches contradict SA’s constitution and the post-apartheid laws and policies that bind the executive arm of the state. SA’s growing inequality complicates matters. Our income inequality tops that of all other countries, and it is reinforced by a wealth inequality that is superseded only by Brazil and Indonesia. SA’s resultant urban land and housing affordability challenge explains households resorting to an uncomfortable, yet often hope-filled, life in old and new land occupations.
Informal settlements are an expression of SA’s growing urban inequality. The premier’s response to this evident fact is a public warning that demolition teams will arrive at 400 unnamed informal settlements methodically, “one informal settlement at a time”. These operations will be unannounced and carried out at 2am. In this undertaking, we’re told, the provincial government will partner with municipalities and their law enforcement agencies.
Disturbingly, this mirrors the apartheid government’s response to Cape Town’s shanty towns at the height of apartheid in 1974. The apartheid state sought to differentially freeze the informal settlement situation through a cut-off date for “coloured squatters”, while ruthlessly tightening its squatting prevention legislation for black Africans living in land occupations and all new land occupations by so-called coloureds.
Legislative amendments permitted the state to tear down shacks and banish unwanted individuals, including women, children and officially unemployed men, to the homelands. Two years later, the state conceded to losing this battle, which was essentially against human dignity and urban life. The failure to gain control over the squatter situation represented a crack in the apartheid edifice that contributed to the gradual crumbling of the apartheid state.
Lesufi’s threat of demolition is directed at two categories of informal settlements deemed illegitimate — “new” informal settlements, with the assumption that it is feasible and desirable to freeze the situation; and those “occupied by undocumented foreign nationals”. Under apartheid logic, the equivalent scapegoats blamed for the proliferation of informal settlements were those deemed to belong in the homelands.
Lending the division of informal settlements an official ring is Lesufi’s statement that “unregistered” or “unauthorised” informal settlements will be demolished. With this statement, he suggests there is an official status of authorisation or registration that some informal settlements enjoy while others don’t. Yet in Johannesburg no system of authorisation or registration exists, though the intention to move in this direction is clear.
The 2024 review of Johannesburg’s 2018 Land Use Scheme, published for public comment until March this year, contains the basis of a differential authorisation system. It proposes a category called “transitional informal settlement area” as a land-use zone that would be the preserve of those informal settlements identified as “suitable for incremental upgrading”.
The rezoning to this official status would take up to three years after an initial notice in the provincial gazette. The city’s draft Human Settlement Strategy 2040 sets the goal of ensuring the declaration of transitional informal settlements by 2040. Yet even if approved soon, differential authorisation of informal settlements under this proposed instrument will come into existence only a few years from now, and cannot underpin Lesufi’s current undertaking.
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However, by not including any land use recognition for those informal settlements not yet assessed for suitability for upgrading, and those found to be unsuitable for upgrading, the Land Use Scheme provides what the premier needs, assuming it is approved. Omission of such a zone continues to render these occupations invisible to planners, the land market and everyone operating in the land use scheme.
The implicit assumption is that “unauthorised” land occupations can be made to disappear from the urban landscape. The omission also ignores that assessments for non-suitability for upgrading are contested through engagement, protest and in courts, and at times made redundant through technological and other innovations.
Johannesburg’s draft Informal Settlement Policy, which was out for public comment until June, also contains differential recognition. Here it is in the form of a freeze. The draft policy requires the city to provide formal recognition to informal settlements based on whether an informal settlement predated “the existence of this policy” (subsequent land occupations will not be registered) and whether it corresponds with the municipality’s profiling records.
Informal settlement freeze
Essentially, the city aims to freeze the informal settlement situation on the day it approves its draft Informal Settlement Policy, dealing with any new occupations or extensions through law enforcement. For this, the draft policy foresees a “working partnership” with communities. Even if legitimacy and integrity of law enforcement were a given, this is not an approach that can withstand the levels of inequality in SA.
In addition to the content, the timing of Lesufi’s undertaking is problematic, as much as that of the current municipal informal settlement policy and land use zoning reviews. After the final approval of the white paper for human settlements in December 2024, the national Upgrading of Informal Settlement Policy is under review. Lesufi’s approach may have found fertile ground among the drafters of this review. It has not yet reached the public consultation stage, and vigilance will be needed when it does.
Municipal operational guidelines and amendments to land use schemes are important. However, any provincial and municipal review initiatives must await the final, agreed outcome of the national Upgrading of Informal Settlement Programme review and align their approach accordingly.
Huchzermeyer is a professor in the school of architecture & planning at Wits University and director of the Centre for Urbanism & Built Environment Studies.
Related:
Lending official ring to demolitions
Photo: Premier Panyaza Lesufi. Source: Veli Nhlapo.
| Themes |
| • Demographic manipulation • Displaced • Displacement • Housing rights • Land rights • Local • Local Governance • Low income • Public policies |
