Mercury: Slums Act hearings begin in Durban

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4700038

Slums Act hearings begin in Durban

November 07, 2008 Edition 1

Tania Broughton

DANCING and singing, a crowd of red-T-shirt-clad shack dwellers descended on the Durban High Court yesterday to hear legal argument in their attempt to have the KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act deemed unconstitutional and scrapped from the law books.

“Phansi, Slums Act, Phansi,” their T-shirts and banners proclaimed as they blew vuvuzelas and chanted freedom songs outside the court building at the start of the two-day hearing.

The shack dwellers – under the umbrella of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement – claim the Act’s avowed objective is “slum eradication” through large-scale forced evictions, with little or no consultation and prevention of new informal settlements.

They say this flies in the face of the constitution, national laws and policies which give people rights to housing and propose shack settlement upgrades.

In argument before KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala yesterday, Abahlali’s advocate, Heidi Barnes, submitted that the Act was irrational and repressive, and threatened to infringe the rights of some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.

Barnes said the reality in Durban was that evictions and shack demolitions took place frequently, without following the provisions of legislation laid down to guide evictions.

“People are frequently left homeless,” she said.

Barnes said that when the Act was promulgated, people living in shacks wondered what had happened to government promises of shack upgrades.

She argued that the provincial government did not have the competence to pass the Act because it dealt with land issues, not housing. But the government defended its legislation, arguing that when interpreted in its proper context it was designed to improve the lives of those living in slum conditions and to ensure that slums and slum conditions did not proliferate.

In documents before the court prepared by advocate Jeremy Gauntlett, the government argued that the Act was “reasonable and rational”.

“The assertion that the Act will result in massive evictions and wide-scale homelessness is unfounded,” Gauntlett said.

Judgment is expected to be reserved.