Housing and Prosperity: Panel Discussion on White Paper

Preface

Housing and prosperity constantly occupies the minds of the majority of South Africans. On 20 June 2024 INSITE hosted a panel discussion assessing the pros and cons of the draft Human Settlements White Paper. The National Department of Human Settlements produced this White Paper. Which it had put into the public domain already in 2023 for comment and input. There was considerable criticism¹Royston, L Mahlangu, S and Mohapi T 2024 New white paper on human settlements threatens a core constitutional right, Daily Maverick. of the draft. Partly for its content and also that the Department had not given sufficient time and opportunity for interested parties and organisations to make their comments.

Paul Hendler (INSITE), Nomzamo Zondo (Socio-Economic Rights Institute), Kashiefa Achmat (Housing Assembly) and Patrick Bond (University of Johannesburg) comprised the panel. Vuyo Futshane (Workers World Media Productions) moderated the discussion. The audience also made two inputs.  Yolande Hendler (Habitat International Coalition) and Gita Goven (ARG Design) addressed themselves to specific aspects and implications of the draft.

If you would like to view a trailer of the video recording of this discussion, alternatively the full video recording, please click on the relevant button at the foot of this post.

Vuyo Futshane, moderator

Background to discussion

In June 2024, just prior to the hosting of the panel discussion, the by then widespread criticism of the draft Human Settlements White Paper created an opening for civil society organisations to make further inputs. ²Van Donck, M 2024 Re: Human Settlements White Paper, correspondence to P Hendler. Following these inputs the Department published the Human Settlements White Paper in the Government Gazette on 31 January 2025, ³Isandla Institute, 2025 Isandla Institute Facebook Post. making it a fait accompli.

The panel discussion included substantive critique of the intellectual framework and assumptions implicit in the draft White Paper. Criticism that it recommended qualifying (and thereby constraining) the tenure rights of squatters and tenants (through reviewing the Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act). That the Human Settlements Departments of the various spheres of government had minimal (token) consultation with working class communities. That the Department drafted it  within the constraints of neo-liberal austerity. That, as a consequence housing in post-apartheid South Africa remained segregated. Albeit along class lines but closely reflecting racial demographics. This reality undermines housing and prosperity for the majority of South Africans

The gazetted White Paper

The language of the gazetted White Paper ⁴Department of Human Settlements, 2025 White Paper for Human Settlements, Government Notice 5801, Government Gazette, 31 January. has replaced the curtailing of the right to housing (expressed in the earlier draft). It now emphasizes facilitating controlled squatting. At the same time it speaks of a regulatory framework that will restrict the right to housing and related public benefits to certain categories of citizens and non-citizens. The Department justifies this ‘in line with Constitutional provisions’. It reflects ‘government moving beyond the previous state-centred paradigm of housing unit delivery’ (page 33).

This is congruent with the approach in the draft White Paper. Thus the gazetted White paper takes us no closer to the housing and prosperity aspirations of the majority.

Linked to the above point is that the gazetted White Paper identifies the following state functions.

• ‘Creating and guarding conditions for self-provisioning of housing by low income households…..
• Developing mechanisms that protect against harmful downward raiding while allowing a market to advance.
• Curbing exclusionary and unsustainable excesses in the upper end of the housing market’ (page 49)

Discontinuities/continuities with draft

At face value this could be congruent with advancing housing and prosperity. These functions imply taking state regulatory intervention to shape housing and land markets. Which are bound to come up against resistance from private financiers and developers articulating a neo-liberal free market ideology. In addition, the above three functions are likely to require targeted direct state participation.  In order to fund and implement key housing and non-residential aspects of the human settlements process. But nowhere does it articulate a strategy for achieving this aspiration…..

The White Paper’s policy statement on spatial transformation (page 53) implies a multi-departmental approach.  Although it identifies neither the types of ‘solutions’ nor the ‘partners’. The Department will embed the legislative framework in long term planning and spatial integration through municipal integrated spatial human settlement plans. Provincial departments will oversee these. The various departments at all spheres of government  will implement the system of national development planning within the framework of a 30 year (2024 to 2054) national human settlements sector plan (page 54). How this differs from the current municipal, provincial and national spatial development frameworks is left unexplained. As is the enforcement mechanism across different spheres of governance in the context of austerity budgets and ideological entrepreneurialism. As such, talk about housing and prosperity remains just that, talk.

Occluding housing and prosperity

The gazetted White Paper also no longer emphasizes (as in the earlier draft) the lead role of sustainable human settlements in creating housing and prosperity for all. Instead, it is more narrowly focused on adequately housing the citizenry in sustainable settlements (pages 57 to 62). It also commits to creating ‘the conditions for a non-exploitative and regulated rental sector to thrive and ensuring a thriving subsidised social housing sector contributes to this’ (page 49).⁵The White Paper claims that the Department delivered 141 634 social/rental/institutional housing units between 1994 and 2024 (page 17), without providing a source reference for this – Social Housing Regulatory Authority sources showed only some 37 517 units by the end of 2021 (INSITE, 2021 ‘Final Base Line Report’, National Rental Housing Strategy and Policy Project, for The Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA) and the National Department of Human Settlements, page 284 (confidential, obtainable on request from SHRA).

New subsidies

To this end the White Paper proposes a subsidy for slabs for backyard rental housing. It proposes rebates on municipal utility costs and subject subsidies for affordable rental housing. Rebates and subject subsidies apply to households whose income/expenditure relationship requires these subsidies in order to make housing affordable for them. The White Paper identifies Community Residential Units (CRU) and municipal housing as the responsibility of municipalities. This is to provide decent shelter for social groups subject to shocks (like the lockdown). And it commits to refurbishment and rehabilitation of this municipal-managed stock over a 10–year period. Notwithstanding its policy position on rental, it emphasises the user-pays principle (for rental) (page 64).

At the same time its definition of ‘sustainable human settlements’ (page 113) includes ‘access to social services and economic opportunities within reasonable distance’. This implies that it still sees human settlements and housing as linked to broad-based prosperity,⁶On page 48 it reads ‘continue with subsidization of human settlements …..to ensure that government-subsidised programmes contribute to sustainable and inclusive economic growth’.. Albeit not playing the necessary driving role. Like the draft White Paper, it simply assumes that sustainable human settlements will ‘happen’ as intended by the policy statements.

The Ministry of Human Settlements as well as the National Department of Human Settlements and its officials assume the above frame of reference in their policies, strategies and practices.  In other words, enable people to help themselves and housing and prosperity will follow inexorably.

Strategic ambiguity?

Therefore, while the gazetted White Paper modifies the language of the earlier draft, the significance of the words (signifiers) is ambiguous about the extent of the right to housing, housing’s role as an asset class in a broader political economy and the shift of focus towards housing products whereas the White Paper’s stated emphasis is the human settlement process rather than the housing product. Given this contradiction between human settlements and housing and the ambiguities in respect of the right to housing and housing assets in a broader political-economy context, the issues raised in the panel discussion remain relevant to a serious assessment of the gazetted White Paper as a framework for housing and prosperity.

Structure of article

This article is a synopsis of the panelists’ and audience participants’ inputs, as well as some final comments from some of the panelists. The synopsis is structured according to the names of those making the inputs and comments.

I presented an overview and critique of the draft, emphasizing the housing and prosperity angle, followed by Nomzamo Zondo from the Socio-Economic Rights Institute, who highlighted the advances made in the draft but underlined the critical shortcomings from a legal human rights perspective.

Kashiefa Achmat, from the Housing Assembly gave us a perspective on the meaning (or meaninglessness) of the draft for grassroots, working class communities, for whom housing and prosperity seems a distant dream. And Patrick Bond, from University of Johannesburg, reflected on the first post-apartheid White Paper in 1994, and the ANC’s Housing (later, Human Settlement) policies, and how these undermined housing and prosperity for the majority.

This post provides a summary of my own as well the various positions on the draft White Paper of individual panelists, as I understand them within the framework of what I was saying. I think these reflections are still useful in relation to the gazetted White Paper on Human Settlements.

Paul Hendler – emphasizing housing and prosperity.

My opening presentation was based on the assumption that the draft White Paper – like its 1994 predecessor – is based on interpellating citizens as entrepreneurs. In other words, the hidden, often unsaid intention is to facilitate the emergence of a new South African identity. Namely, citizen-entrepreneurs who help themselves without burdening the state with welfare payments that it cannot afford. This is because the state casts itself as an entrepreneur. That has to cut its cloth according to its means. I think this is a useful way of understanding the function of the state’s human settlements policy in the context of limited budgets and public housing delivery functions.

The Human Settlements Departments of the various spheres of government, are the state apparatuses that articulate and promote the identity of entrepreneur-citizen. This identity is  based on the state’s homeownership and social housing strategies. In terms of these strategies a house is a tradeable asset through which entrepreneur-citizens can climb the housing ladder to prosperity. They buy cheap and sell dear on the secondary housing market. At the same time public and private entrepreneurs invest in social housing, located in specially legislated restructuring zones.

Social housing and integration

Social housing is to facilitate the integration of previously segregated areas. Thereby overcoming ethnic/racial and residential/workplace segregation, in the form of densified and compact city centres. This is the state’s human settlement strategy to achieve housing and prosperity as the basis for an authentically non-racial and non-sexist society over time. The problem is that time is longer than rope…… The gazetted White Paper places far more emphasis on rental housing and social housing, without any further budgetary commitments, but expanded public funding is critical for growing the social housing sector.

Thirty years have shown that this housing and human settlements strategy at best benefits only a minority of homeowners. Most of these are already in the established luxury housing market segment. There are also a limited number of other newcomers who are able to climb out of their poverty hole and progress to owning progressively higher-valued housing assets. Furthermore, social housing represents only one per cent of the total residential rental market units. Therefore it has had virtually no practical impact on integration. Given the failure to integrate urban residential and non-residential development on scale, it is unsurprising that we still see an apartheid landscape of segregated living places as well as the segregation of work and living places, a fact to which the gazetted White Paper refers.

Homeowners in theory

The human settlement strategy’s impact is the development of a relatively small homeowner entrepreneur class. And a far larger pool of people who through unemployment and low wages are unable to get access to secondary housing markets. The top earning four per cent of households are clearly the main beneficiaries. While further down the ladder there are likely to be success stories of accumulation-through-homeownership.

On paper, according to national census income statistics 43 per cent of households would qualify. With 39 per cent purchasing in the following market sub-segments. The high-end market segment (R900 000 to R1,2 million) (representing three per cent of potential owners). The conventional segment (R600 000 to R900 000) (representing seven per cent). And the affordable segment (R300 000 to R600 000) (29 per cent). As one goes down the housing ladder one enters the lower value segments. It is likely that there are also real affordability constraints given the extent of families supporting semi-employed and unemployed members.

Homeowners in reality

Just over 1,9 million homes were bought and sold between 2008 and 2019. Of these 677 000 were recorded in the luxury segment (costing above R1,2 million and representing four per cent of the market). The 116 000 transactions recorded in the entry segment should be excluded. (Houses there often sell for values below their historical construction costs and are invariably funded from informal – rather than mortgage – loans).

This leaves some 1,1 million transactions in the high-end, conventional and affordable segments. It is unclear whether these are multiple transactions for the same households. If so this would reflect their climbing the housing ladder. Or whether these are largely single owner-occupier transactions.⁷Many first-time home buyers during this period reportedly have remained owner-occupiers rather than entrepreneur-traders of their assets. To achieve wealth accumulation there needs to be sufficient and frequent reselling (churn) by owners at significantly higher prices, as they move up the housing ladder.

Either way they indicate the emergence of a homeowner class amongst previously excluded (largely black working class) households. The extent of this is unknown due to a dearth of empirical data in both the draft and the gazetted White Paper. To assess the strategy’s success in enabling housing and prosperity for these households requires further data which is absent from the draft White Paper.

The excluded majority

The banks’ affordability criteria excludes a majority 57 per cent of households from home loans. At least eight per cent of households still live in informal structures. The draft White Paper’s estimate of the extent of informal housing is likely to be an underestimate. And it makes no estimate of overcrowding of formal housing, itself a factor in the conditions that undermine the state interpellation of entrepreneurial identity. The draft White Paper does not address the limited – if not inadequate – housing conditions and tenure of these 57 per cent of households.  This is because of its neo-liberal assumption of entrepreneurialism.

Unemployment and income poverty characterizes this swathe of households. Which calls into question the very assumptions on which the draft White Paper is predicated. A different set of assumptions, namely state-led development, is required to make a homeownership strategy succeed in achieving housing and prosperity. Such a strategy was successfully implemented in Singapore. The same can be said of the gazetted White Paper’s aspiration for rental housing. Such a strategy was successfully implemented in Hong Kong.

Power of class politics

The route to this state intervention development is through the power of class politics. The organised citizenry needs to wield this power over the state itself. This implies the emergence and development of extra-parliamentary forms of social organisation. These  can begin to build and sustain that power through elections and holding representatives accountable. But this situation that does not pertain at present in our society of fragmented citizens. However, there are some pointers in this direction.

The continuing land invasions and self-building of houses shows an extensive organisation of backward and forward linkages in the business of informal housing delivery. Other examples of social organisation independently of the state are in the field of community food production, such as in the Eastern Cape Xolobeni community⁸Peacock, T and Essa, Z 2021 Lessons from 14 years of sustained activism in Xolobeni. and the Phillipi Horticultural Association near Cape Town.⁹South African Faith Communities Environment Institute, 2017 The importance of the Phillipi Horticultural Area.

Nomzamo Zondo – right to housing and prosperity

Opening the door for evictions?

The inputs form the Socio-economic Rights Institute (SERI) to the draft White Paper centred around how far to go to implement the constitutional right to adequate housing. According to SERI there is a tension between the administrative duty of the state and the section 26 constitutional right to housing. The tenor of the draft White Paper was to move the focus away from housing to Human Settlements. And it displays a diffidence towards evictions. It ignores the provisions in section 25 of the Constitution that explicitly focuses on protecting the security of tenure of certain categories of people unlawfully occupying other’s land and also providing restitution for historical dispossession and redistribution through expropriation.¹⁰Dugard, J 2018 Unpacking Section 25: is South Africa’s property clause an obstacle or engine for socio-economic transformation?

‘Iron fist in velvet glove’

SERI also made the point that the the draft White Paper does not seriously observe the Constitutional injunction for progressive realization of the right to housing and a home. The draft White Paper’s call to stop informal settlements from arising is expressed in legal terms. But this is the iron fist in the velvet glove. Because, stopping the establishment of informal settlements happens through violently resisting attempts by otherwise homeless people to construct affordable homes. To stop the proliferation of informal settlements it is decisive to act against land invasions. And this requires taking away legal protection against eviction. The draft White Paper ignores the requirement, established through jurisprudence, of the provision of alternative accommodation before legally issuing an eviction order.

The draft White Paper accepts the reality of landlessness and poverty. And it acknowledges the failures of service delivery and governance. But it then went ahead to criminalise the social production of shelter. It neglected data on women ownership of land and housing as well as well as demographics reflecting land and housing ownership by race, class and gender identity.¹¹The gazetted White Paper devotes several pages to addressing housing racial, class and gender identity-based housing inequities. It promised to have an empowerment and transformation plan. But its consultation process was too short to be meaningful.

Addressing these problems with the draft White Paper requires alliances across fields to support communities and practitioners trying to assist them in their development towards having housing and prosperity.

Kashiefa Achmat – living without housing and prosperity

Paul Hendler and Nomzamo Zondo raise issues that are highly relevant. Adequate rental accommodation for working class communities remains inaccessible. Well located areas are inaccessible for working class residents requiring housing. Even those properties that are up for sale or auction. Cape Town has a waiting list of some 600 000 including some people with disabilities for whom high-rise apartments are inappropriate. They have to rely on backyard rental and the stock provided by small landlords in townships. In the limited rental stock there is overcrowding. In Mannenberg there are in some cases between 40 and 50 people occupying a house. These tenants have been paying rent for ever. But still have no title deeds to these properties. And there is little if any repair and maintenance.

Many people have made permanent homes out of their rented backyard units. But the draft White Paper is unclear about benefits accruing to both the landlords and the tenants of these units. (As mentioned earlier, the gazetted White Paper has proposed a subsidy for a slab on which to erect the backyard rental units – often these are wooden wendy houses).

Transitional housing and developers

Transitional housing in theory could be an option for people being evicted from the street during cold winters. But there is little mention of transitional housing in the draft White Paper.¹²Transitional housing is mentioned twice in the gazetted White Paper. To date transitional housing in Blikkiesdorp is infested with gangsterism. The very high crime rate in these transitional projects has got to be addressed. Instead of just dumping poorer and unwanted people there. The extent of crime in these areas is so great that it is dangerous for activists to move around in these communities. While law enforcement always accompanies city officials. The construction mafia is part and parcel of the criminality in these areas.

Developers are not interested in the communities. But they go to the social housing sector where they build units quite quickly and often these are incomplete. There should also be sufficient space for a small garden through which residents could contribute to their own food security. And this could be an advance in the struggle for housing and prosperity. There is no transparency of the waiting lists for housing and no accountability. Sometimes housing budgets are not fully spent. Communities should know about funds that are sent back to the government for this reason.

Social housing and community agency

While social housing is on everyone’s lips unemployed people cannot afford social housing. With social housing I can afford to pay the rent today. But what happens when I am unemployed or retired? Even household recipients of a SASSA grant are unable to afford to pay social housing rental levels. Instead the city uproots people and moves them to peripheral parts of Cape Town. Instead, land needs to be bought and houses built where people are currently living. And alternative materials used to help make the housing affordable. Often there are vacant tracts of land that could serve this purpose. The state can refurbish vacant buildings for residential accommodation. In practice owners deliberately run down these buildings. And then they sell them cheap and through redevelopment make a considerable profit.

Communities are currently not equal participants in informal settlement upgrading.¹³The gazetted White Paper aspires to explore social facilitation (‘meaningful participation and engagement with communities’) (page 55). Instead, NGOs – like Isandla and Development Action Group (DAG) – do not bring to the attention of communities what is available in respect of alternative building materials. Instead, there is a top-down way of operating where the state and NGOs force ‘solutions’ on communities.¹⁴The gazetted White Paper considers ‘AI-powered engagement tools’, using on-line surveys, interactive mapping and virtual townhalls in addition to in-person meetings (page 55). In the absence of genuine consultation with and participation by communities, the implemented ‘solutions’ will lead to conflict.

Communities and activists are tired of waiting for government to resolve their housing problems and to lead them to housing and prosperity. Different movements need to speak to each other. And spread information to other areas. Community agency is a critical factor in addressing these problems. And organisations need to build linkages and collaborate between different sectors. Grassroots organisations should integrate different approaches into a broader set of strategies for housing and prosperity.

Patrick Bond – undermining housing and prosperity

Patrick Bond gave a historic overview of the 1994 White Paper and the ANC’s housing policies since then. He referred to the Constitutional Court Grootboom judgement,¹⁵SAFLII, 2000 Government of the Republic of South Africa and Others v Grootboom and Others, Constitutional Court. which ruled that the state must constitutionally have a comprehensive and adequate programme to realise the right to housing, included in which was the obligation to provide alternative accommodation for people in urgent need.¹⁶Joubert, P 2008 Grootboom dies homeless and penniless, Mail and Guardian.

(The fundamental constitutional value of human dignity is the foundation of the court ruling, and its interpretation of section 26[2] of the constitution, the obligation of the state to take reasonable and other measures within available resources to ensure access to land and housing, section 28 1[c], the rights of children to adequate shelter and safety, and interpreting section 26 [2] to perforce include plans and procedures for immediate relief under desperate circumstances, such as those suffered by Mrs Grootboom et al in the informal settlement of Wallacedene in the 1990s).

Limited state funding

Patrick  highlighted the problem of limited funding for housing since 1994. The Reconstruction and Development Programme had proposed five per cent of the national budget to be allocated to housing but the reality was that since then housing share of the budget ranged between 1,1 and 1,4 per cent. Since 1994 the metropolitan centres of Cape Town and Johannesburg contained the greatest housing assets by value.  And outside these conurbations there is a distinctive falling off in housing value. Both between and within cities and towns this has amplified the segregation of housing as asset class. This reflects an economic type of apartheid residential segregation. Where housing of extremely low asset-value is concentrated in majority black working class residential areas.

Debt funding

Linked to the above-mentioned segregation is the fact that there has been excessive reliance on mortgage debt to fund private home ownership. Since the opening up of the market in the post-apartheid era real interest rates (except for the lockdown period in 2021) have risen by four percent. This reliance on debt is not only to fund home ownership. Also it is to purchase other household consumables.¹⁷Cf. James, D 2015 Money from Nothing – Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa, Stanford University Press. Patrick explained how informal housing and other consumables are financed through debit orders on social grants.

Ajay Banga, the President of the World Bank, while previously executive chairman of Mastercard, instituted a credit card system for beneficiaries of SASSA grants. Cash Paymaster Services managed this during 2017 and 2018. Beneficiaries’ credit card debt was settled through debit orders on their SASSA accounts….. The Black Sash challenged this problematic ‘service’ in the courts, and then through street protests. But it shied away from active defaulting. Patrick juxtaposed this with the strategy of bond boycotts in South Africa during the 1990s and the more recent organised defaulting on student debt in the United States.

Yolande Hendler – producing housing and prosperity

Yolande Hendler reflected on the challenges identified in the global discourse on housing. The commodification of housing, including the financialisation of housing; and, housing falling off the United Nations road map because of ‘corporatism’. Corporate economic classes have captured many state governments. She posed the question, what are the opportunities given this global context? She explained that the fact that housing is a bread-and-butter issue is what guides Habitat International Coalition (HIC), which represents hundreds of grassroots structures globally. HIC affiliates want to know how to advance the idea of social production of habitat. Which in South Africa is exemplified by the Peoples Housing Process and the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme.

Social production

The language of ‘social production of habitat’ draws from experiences in Latin America. In her opinion these are more relevant than historical examples of state provided accommodation through the ‘Asian Tigers’ (Singapore and Hong Kong, referred to in my presentation). The National Department of Human Settlements is aware of this contemporary discourse. As are NGOs like Development Action Group and Isandla who promote Housing Support Centres to facilitate the social production of habitat.¹⁸My viewpoint is that the underlying issue is not the commodification of housing (inevitable under a regime of capital accumulation) but rather the question of condensing dominated class interests in state policies. The implication is how to influence the wielding of state power in favour of the dominated classes. Ultimately what is required is not NGO professionalization but a popular political party, because ‘Power does not yield without a struggle’ (Frederick Douglas).

Gita Goven’s – denying housing and prosperity

Gita Goven, of urban design company ARG, related a story about their attempts to design and implement a project for improving the lives of people living in the informal settlement of Kosovo, near Cape Town. The point of this story was that little has changed over the years for these people – and other informal settlement dwellers – because the democratic state has betrayed them.

Gita’s and her colleagues’ involvement started in 2007, 18 years ago. The people living in Kosovo had moved seven times, shunted from pillar to post. Gita and her colleagues designed a catalytic project based on densifying an existing settlement and providing alternative housing – still located within the settlement and its environs – for those required to move. The design was based on practical experience in neighbouring Langa, where design practitioners had delivered 10 units in the space of two months.

Innovative affordable design

The project in Langa involved a box of participation services plugged in to the back of the units. The units had  shared walls and were made of innovative materials. These provided a quadrant of 32 square meters. This provided a roof over peoples’ heads and services. People did not have to venture to a shared toilet at night and to be exposed to the dangers of criminal assault. They radically reduced the cost of this rudimentary form of shelter, compared with a conventional RDP/BNG structure. Yet in the last seven years they delivered little more than 350 units out of 10 000 planned. This was largely because of lack of support from the authorities. Now they have claimed that there is not enough funding for the services.

So here was an opportunity to shift the lives of hundreds of poor households, at marginal unit cost. But it didn’t happen due to the state failing to support the funding of this. The consequence is that these households have been left living in unspeakable conditions. Rather than being helped on the way to housing and prosperity. Gita left us with the question, ‘what are we going to do?’

Conclusion – political struggle for housing and prosperity

The gazetted White Paper has delinked human settlements and housing from the goal of a non-racial, non-sexist, prosperous society. It  has removed the burden on the human settlements sector, of being the panacea for the poverty, unemployment and inequality challenges. At the same time it has returned human settlements and housing into a conceptual and policy silo. This is despite its commitment to an intergovernmental framework of relationships that in combination could – and should – address the poverty, unemployment and inequality challenges.

The draft and the gazetted White Papers avoid the more fundamental questions of decisive public and state intervention. These are the creation of money (funds), and municipalities as public developers partial to social goals. Municipalities should be operating directly as development practitioners. These goals are about the shaping of the (rental and ownership) housing and land markets. Mechanisms for this include price controls and other instruments (like land parcel consolidation and swopping). The state has leverage to use public land to enable inclusive housing projects.

Strategically, the human settlement’s sector could contribute to housing and prosperity through these strategic interventions. But neither the draft nor the gazetted White Paper articulates a state intervention strategy. This is required to develop affordable housing with secure tenure in sustainable human settlements.

References

• 1
  Royston, L Mahlangu, S and Mohapi T 2024 New white paper on human settlements threatens a core constitutional right, Daily Maverick.
• 2
  Van Donck, M 2024 Re: Human Settlements White Paper, correspondence to P Hendler.
• 3
  Isandla Institute, 2025 Isandla Institute Facebook Post.
• 4
  Department of Human Settlements, 2025 White Paper for Human Settlements, Government Notice 5801, Government Gazette, 31 January.
• 5
  The White Paper claims that the Department delivered 141 634 social/rental/institutional housing units between 1994 and 2024 (page 17), without providing a source reference for this – Social Housing Regulatory Authority sources showed only some 37 517 units by the end of 2021 (INSITE, 2021 ‘Final Base Line Report’, National Rental Housing Strategy and Policy Project, for The Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA) and the National Department of Human Settlements, page 284 (confidential, obtainable on request from SHRA).
• 6
  On page 48 it reads ‘continue with subsidization of human settlements …..to ensure that government-subsidised programmes contribute to sustainable and inclusive economic growth’.
• 7
  Many first-time home buyers during this period reportedly have remained owner-occupiers rather than entrepreneur-traders of their assets. To achieve wealth accumulation there needs to be sufficient and frequent reselling (churn) by owners at significantly higher prices, as they move up the housing ladder.
• 8
  Peacock, T and Essa, Z 2021 Lessons from 14 years of sustained activism in Xolobeni.
• 9
  South African Faith Communities Environment Institute, 2017 The importance of the Phillipi Horticultural Area.
• 10
  Dugard, J 2018 Unpacking Section 25: is South Africa’s property clause an obstacle or engine for socio-economic transformation?
• 11
  The gazetted White Paper devotes several pages to addressing housing racial, class and gender identity-based housing inequities.
• 12
  Transitional housing is mentioned twice in the gazetted White Paper.
• 13
  The gazetted White Paper aspires to explore social facilitation (‘meaningful participation and engagement with communities’) (page 55).
• 14
  The gazetted White Paper considers ‘AI-powered engagement tools’, using on-line surveys, interactive mapping and virtual townhalls in addition to in-person meetings (page 55).
• 15
  SAFLII, 2000 Government of the Republic of South Africa and Others v Grootboom and Others, Constitutional Court.
• 16
  Joubert, P 2008 Grootboom dies homeless and penniless, Mail and Guardian.
• 17
  Cf. James, D 2015 Money from Nothing – Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa, Stanford University Press.
• 18
  My viewpoint is that the underlying issue is not the commodification of housing (inevitable under a regime of capital accumulation) but rather the question of condensing dominated class interests in state policies. The implication is how to influence the wielding of state power in favour of the dominated classes. Ultimately what is required is not NGO professionalization but a popular political party, because ‘Power does not yield without a struggle’ (Frederick Douglas).