informal settlements
Manyane Manyane|Published
Socialist shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo has accused the government of failing the poor and marginalised by lacking political will to address land reform and treating informal settlement and rural residents as temporary “vote banks” and “human waste”.
The movement said urban zoning, gentrification, and profit-driven development continue to exclude South Africa’s poor, forcing marginalised communities out of cities and into under-serviced peripheral areas, which mirrored apartheid-era spatial segregation.
As South Africa approaches the local government elections on November 4, the severe consequences of historic segregations, slow municipal policy implementation, and poor urban planning are taking centre stage.
The assessment by spatial planning experts and bodies such as the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) emphasised that many local municipalities continue to struggle with spatial injustice, operating within deeply fragmented, racialised boundaries left behind by the apartheid era. Despite decades of democratic governance, post-apartheid spatial planning has faced significant hurdles in reversing these entrenched geographic divisions.
While frameworks like the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) were enacted to dismantle the apartheid urban footprint, systemic prevent true spatial transformation.
According to Abahlali baseMjondolo, this is due to a deficit in political determination to resolve land distribution issues.
“People live or build in dangerous places not because of choice, it is because of the lack of the political will to address the land question. It is because the poor and marginalised who live in informal settlements and in the rural areas do not count in the eyes of the government.”
“Our dignity does not matter. We are just banks for votes. We are not treated as human beings but we are treated as human waste that is supposed to be dumped in the human dumping areas where there are no services,” said spokesperson Thapelo Mohapi.
He said zoning policies are driven by profit rather than the well-being of the poor, adding that an example of this is seen in the City of Cape Town, where residents were displaced to make way for business interests and relocated to peripheral areas such as Wolwerivier and Blikkiesdorp.
“The government must not speak about the people without the people. Nothing about without us. We are the ones that are suffering and we know how to get out of the suffering. We are the steward of our own struggle. This notion that people who are coming from shack settlements cannot think for themselves and have their own development must come to an end.”
“People who live in informal settlements can think and they are citizens in this country. The government must stop hiring the so-called experts to think and finish on our behalf. They know nothing about poverty. We know how to get out of the poverty we are facing. The government must work with the people in order to solve the challenges that people are facing,” Mohapi said.
According to data and built-environment assessments tracked by the South African Council for Planners (SACPLAN) and urban planning experts, the slow pace of spatial redress is driven by several systemic factors.
Frequent political turnover, motions of no confidence, fragmented municipal coalitions heavily disrupt long-term infrastructure planning, according to SACPLAN.
Furthermore, the movement said, technical decision-making within planning departments is frequently undermined by political interference and the appointment of senior management based on non-professional criteria rather than technical expertise.
Addressing the South African Planning Institute’s (SAPI) 10th Planning African Conference in Cape Town recently, Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane also highlighted that historic segregation forces low-income households to live on urban peripheries, far from employment hubs and vital resources. She said this geographic separation burdens families with high commuting costs and strains municipal infrastructure budgets.
Poor urban zoning and inadequate spatial planning have directly transformed heavy rainfall into catastrophic natural disasters across South Africa, most notably in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).
This also accelerates water and electricity crises by placing unsustainable demands on outdated infrastructure and creating disconnected urban footprints.
Asked how SALGA ensures that infrastructure funding is prioritised for historical backlogs in vulnerable areas rather than maintaining wealthy suburbs, spokesperson Motaletale Modiba asked to be given more time to respond saying they are currently facing heavy workloads.
Asked what specific and measurable metrics does the Department of Cooperative and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) use to evaluate whether a municipality’s Land Use Scheme is successfully achieving spatial justice and spatial resilience as mandated by SPLUMA, spokesperson Pearl Maseko said she would revert, but could not respond by the time of publication.
Human rights organisation Lawyers for Human Rights said there is a need to rethink South Africa’s planning framework, adding that the zoning process at the heart of SPLUMA is not appropriate for the realities of South Africa.
“While the strict demarcation of land use may be desirable, it is only feasible in well-resourced areas. The reality in townships and informal settlements is that land use is mixed, reflecting the informal and poor nature of these areas. Municipal bylaws which provide ‘one-size-fits-all’ regulations across vastly different socio-economic environments are inappropriate. They penalise the poor for failing to comply with impossible standards,” said attorney and researcher David Dickinson, who said the long-term solution to these problems is economic development and economic equality.
He said the inappropriate planning and bylaw regimes in place do not correspond to the lived realities of much of the population, and that they entrench disadvantage and criminalise the poor majority.
The Department of Land Reform and Rural Development said section 24 of the SPLUMA requires municipalities to adopt a single Land Use Scheme covering their entire municipal area, adding that this is an important reform intended to replace fragmented and historically unequal town planning arrangements with a unified system of land use management.
“SPLUMA provides for intergovernmental support and monitoring, with the provincial government having an important role in supporting municipal implementation. Where non-compliance persists, the appropriate response must be determined within the constitutional framework governing municipal autonomy, provincial monitoring and support, and intervention where legally justified. The department is further reviewing provisions relating to land use scheme enforcement as part of the proposed SPLUMA amendments.”
manyane.manyane@nationalmg.co.za