Mercury: Uplift slums, don’t destroy them

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3928976

Laws to reduce tenure security for millions in informal settlements have increased fear and uncertainty, writes Marie Huchzermeyer

July 12, 2007 Edition 1

The passing of the Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act by KwaZulu-Natal was preceded by seven years of slum eradication rhetoric.

Since the launch of United Nations Millennium Development Project in 2000, which includes a goal to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, President Thabo Mbeki has mandated the national Department of Housing to work towards achieving “shack-free cities”.

The aim to eradicate informal settlements by 2014 has since been a controversial element of housing politics at national, provincial and city level throughout South Africa.

One hundred million slum dwellers, the target of the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG), was a mere 10% of slum dwellers globally in the year 2000.

Why was this modest goal to improve the lives of some slum dwellers translated into slum eradication or elimination? Why are provinces not preparing legislation to ensure improvement of the lives of slum dwellers?

The culprits are not only the government for having misinterpreted a global commitment. UN-Habitat, the UN’s Human Settlement Programme, officially refers to the slum Millennium Development Goal as the “Cities Without Slums MDG”.

Many governments have failed to differentiate between the normative principle of the slogan, that cities should not have slums, and the operational target of improving the lives of 10% of slum dwellers.

Instead, tragically, the slogan became the target, namely to eradicate slums – through mass evictions in Zimbabwe in 2005 and Abuja, Nigeria, in 2006 and through slum elimination legislation in South Africa in 2007.

Measures taken in most provinces to eradicate informal settlements are not constitutional. Illegal evictions are rampant, be they through the use of force, in the absence of court orders, or in contempt of court interdicts.

Rights

Very few informal settlement dwellers have access to legal representation and can fight for their rights in the courts. And yet, numerous court records exist to prove the proliferation of illegal and unconstitutional slum interventions.

To improve the lives of slum dwellers in this country requires, in the first instance, strengthening and enforcement of the legislation that prevents illegal evictions. Any new legislation must focus on ensuring that the state fulfils its constitutional obligations in relation to the right to housing, and in particular, as required by the Grootboom Constitutional Court ruling in 2000, in relation to those living in intolerable conditions.

New legislation should mandate: (a) the recognition of informal settlements and other so-called “slums”, (b) emergency preparedness and (c) participatory upgrading as promoted by UN-Habitat as “best practice”, with relocation as a last resort.

Chapter 13 of the National Housing Code provides the methodology and funding for such intervention, including rehabilitation of informally occupied but unsuitable land.

This may be land that is waterlogged, threatened by floods, unstable owing to mine or refuse dumps or geotechnically compromised owing to steep slopes, clay or dolomitic soils.

Instead, the KwaZulu-Natal legislature has approved legislation that, while mentioning the progressive realisation of the right to housing in passing, introduces draconian measures to remove the phenomenon of informality from the urban landscape and to prevent it from re-emerging in any possible form.

Owners of informally occupied land are mandated to institute evictions within a period stipulated by the municipality, and owners of vacant land are mandated to prevent informal occupation through measures such as fencing off areas and posting security guards.

Tenure

These measures were contained in the notorious 1951 Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of the apartheid govern-ment. They were unacceptable then, and remain so today.

According to UN-Habitat (and Cities Without Slums, for that matter), the first and most important measure for improving the lives of slum dwellers is to ensure security of tenure, that is to put an end to evictions.

While the new Act does not recognise tenure insecurity as a criteria for identifying slums (whereas UN-Habitat does), by approving it the provincial legislature has overnight reduced tenure security for millions of slum dwellers, increasing fear and uncertainty and thereby worsening their lives.

Many official “hearings” were held before the Bill became law, although none of the objections that were raised were taken seriously by the legislature.

The process and content of the Act, as well as experience of tenure insecurity and illegal interventions, have increased the mobilisation of slum dwellers.

Slum dwellers are the real experts of poverty – and they are rightly living in fear because of the Act.

The Act undoubtedly is not in the interests of slum dwellers. It does not recognise insecurity of tenure as a problem and deepens the insecurity of slum dwellers as a first step to eliminating slums.

By prohibiting and preventing unlawful occupation of unutilised land or buildings, the Act pushes responsibility for sheltering the poor on to already under-housed people – relatives and acquaintances living in formal but already overcrowded units.

What KZN has also still not learned from Brazil, despite years of dialogue between the two countries on the issue, is that slums, as embarrassing as they may be to city managers, must be understood as temporary relief to the housing crisis, and improvements must involve the occupants rather than displace them. Instead, the Act signals scepticism about the viability of improving or upgrading slums.

In its preamble, it suggests that formal housing projects require protection from slums, ignoring the reality that slum dwellers are, more often than not, threatened by housing developments, for which they make way, or to which they are forcefully removed, and which have little relevance to their lives and economies.

The Act requires fundamental revision (and renaming) so as to centre on the protection of poor communities from state and market-driven displacement.

This is particularly pertinent in the wake of the 2010 soccer World Cup. The Act needs to be sensitive to what it really means to improve the lives of slum dwellers.

# Marie Huchzermeyer is with the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits University