In post-apartheid South Africa, inadequate land reforms vis-a-vis inequitable distribution and the slow transformation of its management systems (especially within urban nodes) continue to fuel unlawful occupation of land, a study commissioned by the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements (GDHS) has found.
The study was undertaken by law firm Mdhluli, Pearce Madzikwa and Associates and called the Vulnerability Assessment Report for Unlawfully Occupied Pieces of Land in Region G in the southern area of the City of Joburg. This region comprises land in areas such as Zuurbekom Farm, Protea Glen, Lehae Township, Lawley, Ennerdale and Vlakfontein among other areas.
The study found that unlawful land occupation was getting more complex as more people strive to access land and housing as a result of increasing poverty, insecure tenure, urbanisation, population growth and migration.
Consequently, it warned that if the state (through its provincial and local government entities) does not directly and timeously confront these challenges, the unlawful occupation of land and the development of new informal settlements will increase exponentially; and will make it more difficult to achieve the progressive realisation of the right to land and housing as enshrined in the Constitution.
The report comes in the light of recent developments where the GDHS has been experiencing an increased number of land invasions, especially across Region G.
This brazen increase and the complex nature of unlawful land occupations in the area directly contrast with balancing the rights to security of tenure by poor and disadvantaged people mainly and GDHS’ plans to ensure that state and provincial land is not unlawfully occupied, the report says. In one of the areas where settlers erected shacks that were later demolished during the lockdown period which raised the ire of human rights bodies, journalists found that as opposed to poor and homeless people, some of the empty shacks were in fact erected by middle-class people among which were policemen and correctional services officials who were trying to secure additional land to build houses.
The study also confirms that “the modus operandi of some unlawful occupiers and the trends of some invasions are not as a result of desperate people trying to access shelter, but some criminal elements and even politicians who used the opportunity to gain financially and advance their political interests to their support base”.
“It was also established that citizens from South Africa’s Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal regions, Lesotho, Malawi and Mozambique were behind the occupations.
“The core causes and factors identified for the increase in unlawful occupation cases in Region G include access to infrastructural connectivity and socio-economic infrastructure; their proximity to business and financial nodes and facilities including factories, industrial plants and agricultural holdings in these areas; the non-secured nature of the state land; high unemployment rates of occupiers; residents dire socio-economic conditions, density of nearby informal settlements; and rising frustrations with the City of Johannesburg’s lack of provisioning accommodation for poor and indigent people.
“It must be noted that while policies and other legislations are in place to effectively manage land and human settlements in South Africa, rapid urbanisation is creating enormous pressure on urban land in Gauteng (being the nation’s economic hub). It is further bred by the slow pace of proactive and co-ordinated municipal and departmental policies and strategies that provide for speedy land delivery, management and development.
“In the absence of these actions, informal settlements and land invasions as seen in Region G in Johannesburg will continue to grow in numbers and complexity.”
Further, Region G’s unlawful land occupation incidents hamper efforts to release land in a planned manner and result in “queue jumping” for the housing subsidy and land redistribution,” the study found.
The study also cautions that the government, while strongly discouraging the unlawful occupation of land, does not believe that the only solution lies in evictions.
Hence, the evictions of people from these unlawfully occupied pieces of land in Johannesburg’s Region G, for example, are a last resort and should only be considered when other possible alternative solutions have been explored.
This includes: sensitising organised groups of landless people on legal and secure land tenure issues; carrying out meaningful engagements with unlawful occupiers using key stakeholder participatory focus group discussions; using local politicians such as councillors to disseminate, promote and facilitate the implementation of sustainable land access strategy; design and roll-out anti-land occupation dissemination campaigns and actions within hot spots and other vulnerable communities.
The study recommends that the City of Johannesburg be encouraged to work diligently and continuously with the Region G’s Public Order Policing Unit to assist in removing unlawful occupants and their erected dwellings before they metastasise; using overt and covert means to engage with the security cluster operatives or law enforcement agencies including SAPS and the JMPD to obtain records and identify unlawful occupation instigators or syndicates timeously.
It also recommends the establishment of an early warning system that establishes the identities, modus operandi of the instigators, corrupt politicians and other criminal elements involved in unlawful occupation; and implementing a land invasion logbook that records unlawful land occupation incidents, trends and photographic evidence.