A Christmas Gift for the Poor from the Constitutional Court

23 December 2024
Abahlali baseMjondolo

A Christmas Gift for the Poor from the Constitutional Court

Ordinarily the poor do not have much to celebrate at Christmas other than the sense of community we have built in conditions of oppression. Year in and year out we continue to be excluded, exploited, and repressed by the state and the capitalist system, with elites and the middle class often pushing for us to be removed from well-located land and neighbourhoods to human dumping grounds.

This year we received a valuable gift in the form of the judgment delivered by the Constitutional Court of South Africa in the matter between the City of Cape Town and the residents of Bromwell Street (Commando & others vs the City of Cape Town) on 20 December. This judgment by the highest court in the country affirms our dignity and the right for the poor and working class to access the cities.

The key issue before the court was whether or not poor and working-class people have a right to live in the cities and to refuse forced removals to human dumping grounds. In 2016 residents of Bromwell Street were evicted from their homes as a result of the ongoing gentrification of Woodstock. The City offered them ‘temporary emergency housing’ far from the city.

The residents contested this, and in 2021, the Western Cape High Court ruled in favour of the residents and found that the City’s emergency housing programme and its implementation were unconstitutional. Last year the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned that ruling. The Constitutional Court has now ordered the City to develop an emergency housing policy that accords with the Constitution and to provide Bromwell residents with nearby accommodation within six months, pending which they may not be evicted.

This judgment is a clear material victory for the residents. It is also a clear affirmation in this judgment of the right of poor and working-class people across the country to live in the cities and not to be forcibly removed to human dumping grounds. It is a valuable contribution to the struggle for more just cities, cities open to all. As Charnell Commando, the first applicant in the case, said after the judgment: “We achieved something big – not only for Bromwell Street, but for everybody.”

South Africa comes from a difficult and terrifying past. One part of the denial of the dignity and equality of black people is that laws were passed to ensure that black people were forced to live outside of the cities. The residents of Bromwell Street were one of the few black communities that managed to remain in the cities during apartheid.

After apartheid, the new government allowed all people with money to live wherever they could afford to live but tried to evict poor people from urban land and building occupations and either leave them homeless or take them, sometimes at gunpoint, to human dumping grounds even further out of the cities than the apartheid townships.

We fought a huge struggle to resist evictions and forced removals, and as a result, many thousands of families were able to remain in the cities. Many more people have since been able to develop an urban life, and there have been significant changes in policy, including commitments to upgrade shack settlements where they are rather than to force people out of the cities.

However, the struggle for the right to the cities is ongoing and faces constant pushback from corporate developers, middle-class residents’ associations, and other groups. We are always mindful that although Irene Grootboom won a very significant case in the Constitutional Court in 2000, when she passed away in 2008, she was still living in a shack. Victories won in court are not always won in reality, and some municipalities have a history of ignoring court judgments in favour of the poor.

However, this judgment is a major and concrete win for the residents of Bromwell Street and an important confirmation that, across the country, the law requires that the poor and working class must be treated with dignity and be welcome in the cities. Apartheid was notorious for taking people to human dumping grounds in the middle of nowhere. It is outrageous that thirty years after the end of apartheid we are still struggling to put a final end to this form of oppression.

As we celebrate this victory, we also remember Aunty Brenda Smith from Bromwell Street, who did not live to see the judgment.

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