The struggle for in situ upgrading of informal settlements: a reflection on cases in Gauteng

Abstract

The Department of Housing released a new Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme in 2004 that makes in situ upgrading of informal settlements possible with minimal disruption to residents' lives. To date, the new programme is not necessarily the municipalities' choice when intervening in an informal settlement. This paper reflects on the treatment of informal settlements in current urban discourse and practice in South Africa. It presents the case of three informal settlement communities in Gauteng Province that have struggled for recognition of basic principles of the informal settlement upgrading programme. Their requests have been met with great reluctance by local government. Through these cases, the paper points to some of the critical re-skilling and capacity-building areas that are needed before local government can roll out the informal settlement upgrading programme at scale.

1. INTRODUCTION

Informal settlements−or settlements of the urban poor that result from unauthorised occupation of land, usually with non-adherence to land use and building regulations−occupy contested spaces in South African cities – physically, legally and in public discourse. This paper tries to make sense of this contestation, highlighting the inconsistencies between informal settlement reality and perceptions that dominate intervention. This inconsistency is mirrored in the discrepancy between progressive national policy and technocratic local government practice in Gauteng Province. At a time when it is increasingly legitimate to officially label shacks or informally constructed homes a threat not only to the value of individual properties but also to cities' ability as a whole to attract international investment, it is important to reassess government's obligation in relation to the poor and their position in South African cities.

Challenging the dominant perceptions of informal settlements, this paper points to the benign and often positive role that informal land occupation plays in shaping South African cities. It also highlights the extent to which this form of land occupation is driven by human needs rather than by the market processes that determine formal urban development patterns. From this portrayal of informal settlements as the uncommodified, human face of South African cities, the paper points to the stresses and conflicts experienced as a result of the non-implementation of progressive government policy (in particular Chapter 13 of the Housing Code; Department of Housing [DoH], 2004b) in Gauteng. In particular, local government thinking in two metropolitan municipalities is unpacked in relation to the refusal to consider in situ upgrading of three informal settlements. This is not intended as a criticism of the officials involved, who are merely trying to make sense of contradictory instructions from above. Instead, the aim is to illustrate the urgent need for sensitisation and re-skilling in the urban development sector, be it municipal and provincial managers and their officials or those of the implementing agencies who are increasingly tasked with carrying out housing development (Johannesburg Social Housing Company [Joshco], Thubelisha Homes, etc.).

International literature (see UN-Habitat, 2003; Payne & Majale, 2004) has identified two key areas through which to unlock the upgrading and inclusion of slums (informal settlements as defined above qualify as ‘slums’ in the international terminology): on the one hand, institutional and regulatory change; on the other, governance. For South Africa, a 2004 review of the legal framework (Roux, 2004) during the conceptualisation of the new Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme (DoH, 2004b) found that it is indeed possible to undertake participatory in situ upgrading of informal settlements in South Africa, as per international best practice. However, the motivation to do so does not exist. Thus ‘addressing the problem of mindsets’ was identified as an important prerequisite for Informal Settlement Support (Huchzermeyer et al., 2004).

Three years later, this paper suggests that, without a significant campaign to change mindsets, informal settlement intervention is not breaking the new ground intended in the national housing policy refinement in 2004. Instead, motivation to eradicate or eliminate informal settlements through their removal has intensified. Given the South African context of institutional restructuring, legal and regulatory reform from 1994 to 2004 in response to the Constitution, including the introduction in late 2004 of the dedicated Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme (DoH, 2004b), this paper identifies mindset change currently as the main intervention required to unlock in situ upgrading of informal settlements. This expands and gives meaning to what UN-Habitat (2003:5) identifies under ‘failure of governance’ as ‘the lack of genuine political will to address the issue’. Alarmingly, subsequent to the drafting of this paper in 2006, the KwaZulu-Natal Premier enacted the ‘Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act’ in August 2007, despite numerous submissions that highlighted its unconstitutionality and its contravention of the principles of the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme and internationally recognised best practice. At the time of going to print, a High Court judgement was pending on a civil society challenge to the enactment. This paper highlights not only key areas of mindset-change and capacity-building required by those dealing with informal settlements on the ground, but also key areas where mayors', city managers' and Provincial leaders' commitments to global competitiveness (and in Gauteng the provincial government's commitment to a global city region) need to be synchronised with democratically derived national and local commitments to improving the lives of poor people.

2. THE BENIGN ROLE OF UNPLANNED LAND OCCUPATION IN THE SEGREGATED CITY

South African cities are hugely inadequate – shaped by discriminatory and repressive apartheid planning and further expanded by powerful and far from equitable market processes, driving apartheid's planned inequality and exclusion even deeper, and effortlessly overriding attempts at urban democratisation and integration (see Turok, 2001). While never welcomed, informal land occupation by the poor has not been entirely ineffectual in shaping the city. If it was not for the struggle of poor informal occupiers of land, the high-income suburb of Hout Bay in Cape Town would still contain no independent black low-income residents (other than those renting in ‘servant's quarters’) (see Nathan & Spindler, 1993). But the overcrowded low-income enclave in Hout Bay remains an exception, as post-apartheid town planning and urban management has failed to restructure the city into a more equitable habitat in which South Africa's diverse social groupings can coexist and income disparities gradually close (as acknowledged in DoH, 2004a). Where legal battles have led to the acceptance that informal settlement residents should be given rights to an area they have invaded, the subsequent formal development stamps out any evidence of organic or people-led (‘informal’) processes, instead duplicating as far as possible the segregated, low-density urban planning form and typology inherited from the apartheid state (Huchzermeyer, 2004b).

The tone of the government's current campaign against informal land development and informal house construction by the poor suggests that it is dealing with a sinister, undesirable, pathological and criminal process. Terminology otherwise applied to life-threatening epidemics and violent crime is officially used: ‘eradication’ (Palitza, 2005−quoting the Minister of Housing), ‘elimination’ (Provincial Government of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007) and ‘zero tolerance’ (City of Johannesburg, 2002:89; Spadework Consortium, 2000, cited in Huchzermeyer, 2004a). This aligns with the continued fixation with orderly and segregated development in South African cities (see Huchzermeyer, 2003b).

Informal settlement ‘eradication’ is often justified with reference to the normatively inappropriate ‘Cities Without Slums’ campaign of the Cities Alliance, a joint programme of UN-Habitat and the World Bank, also incorporated into the Millennium Development Goals (UN-Habitat, 2003). The South African Minister of Housing was quoted in the media as stating that the country's plan to ‘eradicate’ informal settlements by 2014 is ‘in line with United Nations Millennium Development Goals’ (Palitza, 2005). Internationally, Millennium Development Goal Target 7 is increasingly referred to as the ‘Cities Without Slums’ target (see Tabaijuka, 2005:5). This international campaign has glaring inconsistencies. Its official target of ‘significantly improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020’ (United Nations, 2000:5), if reached−which is widely acknowledged to be unlikely (see UN-Habitat, 2005)−would affect only 10 per cent of the world's growing slum population of the year 2000, and would not achieve cities without slums (Bazoglu, 2005). Several countries' governments, South Africa's included, interpret the Millennium Development Goals to mean eradication of slums, rather than improvement of the lives of those living in them. While perhaps well intentioned by governments, the eradication process is feared by slum residents and often results in worsened life conditions due to the distance of the relocation sites from schools and livelihoods and the harsh way evictions and relocations are carried out, disrupting social networks, livelihoods and schooling, and in some cases even access to basic necessities such as water and shelter (see Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions [COHRE], 2005).

The Cities Without Slums campaign would not be used as a reference by South African decision-makers if it did not resonate with the dominant internal political and bureaucratic thinking. The interpretation that the task of hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup requires the elimination of informal structures in order to welcome international spectators is shaping approaches in high offices of provincial and local government. This thinking is distant from contemporary policy in Brazil, a country to which the South African government, business and academia look for south−south comparison, inspiration and partnership. In response to market-driven fragmentation of its cities, Brazil has embraced informal land occupation as a process that can yield desirable results in terms of land use and land distribution. In 1988, an amendment to the Brazilian Constitution introduced an innovative legal provision that transfers ownership rights to informal occupants of private land after a period of peaceful and uncontested occupation of 5 years (Fernandes & Rolnik, 1998). Thus, unlike the case in South Africa, de facto use of the land in Brazilian cities has influence in the planning process. Although far from ideal, Brazilian cities are visibly shaped by informal processes driven by the poor, as much as they are by the market. Time and again, Brazilian urban scholars are surprised by the harsh control maintained over the South African urban environment, particularly Johannesburg, many years after apartheid (E Maricato and R Rolnik, personal communication, Brazilian urbanists; M Souza, personal communication, Brazilian urban geographer; E Fernandes, personal communication, Brazilian urban planner and lawyer; various visits to the University of the Witwatersrand, 2003–2006.). They question the widespread unwillingness by local and provincial government to recognise informality as a process that can positively shape urban space.

3. INFORMAL LAND OCCUPATION AS HUMAN-NEEDS-LED DEVELOPMENT

Unlike the illegal, exploitative and extremely profitable informal landlordism and corrupt land allocation practices that shape informal settlements or ‘slums’ in Kenya (Mwangi, 1997), informal land occupation in South Africa takes a relatively benign and uncommodified form. Shacklordism, or the informal supply of rooms to rent, while re-emerging since its eradication by the civic movement in the early 1990s (see Cross, 1994), is as yet not dominant in South African informal settlements. By and large, ‘informal settlements’ represent not only ‘basic needs’ (the limitations of Maslow's 1943 concept of a ‘hierarchy of needs’ are widely accepted – even by the business management fields that have made most use of the concept; see Business Knowledge Centre, 2002), but also universal human needs: community, individual and cultural expression, shelter and home-making, access to a livelihood and access to schooling. Therefore, in contrast to formally planned and established neighbourhoods that express a wide range of market interests, ‘informal’ settlements in South Africa's cities portray primarily a human face (although to varying extent articulated by the market, i.e. not entirely independent of it, as argued by Ward & Macoloo, 1992).

Settlements driven by human need have proliferated over the past 12 years. The ‘human face’ of South African cities, far from representing an ‘epidemic’, is strained or contorted by increasing poverty and deepening inequality (see Republic of South Africa, 2003). Unlike formal property owners, the residents of these settlements play no active part in the socio-economic processes that deepen inequality: they are excluded from the formal process of land subdivision and land-use control, and from the distorted land market it underpins and which is so much adorned and guarded by all who play their economic cards in this lucrative game (the author of this paper not excluded). The South African political economy requires citizens to believe that playing these cards is a universal human need. Those who do not or cannot participate are not to be tolerated; their human-needs-led settlements will be ‘eradicated’ over the next 8 years. If this plan is carried through without a significant budgetary and bureaucratic reform to ensure massive urban land release and subsidised housing delivery, these people will be displaced into the hands of exploitative landlords inadequately subdividing derelict buildings while the construction of shacks, even in the backyards of formal township housing, becomes strictly prohibited.

As much as the unplanned settlements must be recognised as a benign expression of human need, community organisation in South African ‘informal’ settlements must also be recognised as a primarily human endeavour. While there is evidence that community leaders are corruptible and occasionally enrich themselves, the situation is far from that in the famous favelas of Rio de Janeiro, which are ruled by drug-dealing gangs (see Souza, 2005). South African informal settlements are not controlled by violent and exploitative gangs. They are organised by voluntary, largely non-party political civil society organisations that seek to make a positive contribution to urban development – the Landless People's Movement, the Federation of the Urban Poor, civic organisations, or the more recent Abahlali movement in Durban (Huchzermeyer, 2004b; Khan & Pieterse, 2006; Pithouse, 2006). Far from promoting informal settlements, they seek recognition of the existing situation and a solution that best responds to the residents' needs. This is interpreted by local governments as a disruption to planned or orderly development (as in the case of Protea South in the City of Johannesburg, discussed in more detail below). These community organisations seldom pose a party political challenge. While occasionally withholding their vote in an attempt to draw attention to non-delivery of housing in acceptable locations, they refrain from openly criticising the political economy that to a large part is to blame for the conditions that these organisations represent. The few supporting non-governmental organisations that serve such organisations are largely bound by the rules of donor funding – they consciously refrain from open criticism, instead seeking partnerships with the state. The community-based organisations establish themselves in existing informal settlements (as do the drug lords in Brazil; Souza, 2005), but seldom lead new land invasions. The invasion process in South Africa is as yet poorly understood. The history of many informal settlements points to gradual word-of-mouth processes that arise directly out of a desperate need for accommodation (Huchzermeyer, 2003c, 2004b, 2006a).

While there has been evidence of political party involvement in land invasions (Huchzermeyer, 2003c), land invaders seldom set out to confront or to make political statements. They seek out land where resistance is likely to be least, and they avoid media attention. Informal settlements insert themselves on unused land – former racial buffer strips, undeveloped land between more recent formal township developments, on the edges of new townships, on land allocated for public or commercial facilities that shows no signs of ever being developed for its official purpose, and on unused and unprotected ‘natural’ land (often not immediately suitable for development). As officially recognised in Brazil, the informal occupation process improves the effectiveness of land use, increases urban densities and decreases segregation, while challenging urban planners to move beyond modernist ideals of technical expertise-driven urban development (Bolaffi, 1992). If, instead of attempts at eradication, the Brazilian legal provision of transfer of ownership after 5 years of peaceful occupation (see Fernandes & Rolnik, 1998) were applied to private as well as publicly owned land in South Africa, there would be effective pressure to revise inappropriate spatial standards (which supply under-used invadeable land), to align sectoral capital budgets so as to ensure that land allocated for public facilities does not lie unused, and to ensure that environmentally sensitive areas are appropriately used and protected. At the same time, a large number of informal settlements would have to be given permanent rights to the occupied land and be upgraded in situ, provided that any geotechnical or other risk to the inhabitants can be mitigated. Coupled with a quota system or affirmative action for affordable housing in suburban areas (see Huchzermeyer, 2003a; Smit & Purchase, 2006), the state could start taming the dragon that was bred and raised by the apartheid state and fattened by weakly reformed post-apartheid urban planning: the urban property market.

4. SIGNS OF STRESS: CONFLICT AND CONTRADICTION IN THE INFORMAL SETTLEMENT INTERVENTION PROCESS

The increase beyond 190 informal settlements in the City of Johannesburg jurisdiction over the past decade (COHRE, 2005, citing City of Johannesburg, 2004) has largely occurred without drawing public attention. Increasingly, however, city officials are tasked with implementing ‘zero tolerance’ – preventing the construction of new shacks within existing as well as newly forming informal settlements – and, by ‘eradication’, ensuring that no informal settlements will exist by 2014 (City of Johannesburg Officials, Region G, personal communication, 19 July 2006). This task is carried out in a largely unparticipatory, top-down fashion that takes little cognisance of the diverse survival strategies of informal settlement residents (COHRE, 2005). The stress caused by the prospect of losing a precarious livelihood and social network has resulted in growing despair and outrage by informal settlement residents, and increasingly in organised, legal and non-violent protest action (Pithouse, 2006).

Housing policy at national level underwent a revision after the first 10 years of democracy (DoH, 2004a). The continued ‘peripheralisation’ and segregation of low-income settlements (Mabin, 1995; Sihlongonyane & Karam, 2003; Huchzermeyer, 2003a, 2003d), low-density sprawl and deepening urban poverty were concerns that policy revision sought to address, as was the absence of a dedicated policy instrument for informal settlement upgrading. The revised ‘housing programme’ or policy, which includes as Chapter 13 of the Housing Code an ‘Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme’ (DoH, 2004b), was appropriately termed ‘Breaking New Ground’. While practitioners and analysts have found the new Housing Programme to be largely in continuity with previous policy (Charlton & Kihato, 2006), the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme explicitly calls for a ‘paradigm shift’ (DoH, 2004b, cited in Huchzermeyer, 2006b) and indeed puts forward a radically different approach to dealing with informal settlements. Government subsidies under this programme are neither calculated as a standardised amount per household, nor are to be drawn down on the basis of individual households' housing subsidy eligibility. Instead, grant funding for land, infrastructure and community facilities is applied to the community as a whole (with the exception of the individualised or household-linked subsidy in the fourth phase of the programme for improving top-structures or houses). The funding mechanism is therefore inclusive of those previously not qualifying for subsidies under the national housing subsidy programme. The programme requires an investigation by the municipality into the feasibility of in situ upgrading and assumes that relocation is necessary in some cases, but only as a last resort. Its principles and funding apply to the in situ development as well as the development of the relocation site. It makes available funding for immediate provision of basic services, for community empowerment and participation in decision-making, for the provision of basic community facilities (not only infrastructure and housing), and for assistance with relocation where this is required. In an attempt to ensure that the benefits of upgrading are not reaped by the market through a process of down-raiding1 or gentrification, it encourages alternatives to individual freehold tenure that would be less desirable to the middle class (DoH, 2004b). The opportunities and constraints of the programme are discussed in detail in Huchzermeyer (2006b).

The Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme responds to concerns about housing rights violations raised in a number of court cases since 2000 (the year of Grootboom, the landmark housing rights case in the Constitutional Court), and is welcomed by human rights organisations (see COHRE, 2005). The programme was launched through a pilot project in each of the nine provinces. In the Eastern Cape Province, the Duncan Village pilot project (Buffalo City Municipality, East London) has been completed and the municipality is moving to scale on implementing the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme (C Sam, Director, Development Planning, Buffalo City Municipality, personal communication, 12 September 2006). However, cities such as Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni (the former East Rand), and Ethekwini (Durban), while professing to upgrade informal settlements in situ, do not apply the principles and funding mechanisms of the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme. Instead, they deal with informal settlements in the conventional project-linked subsidy approach (based on subsidy eligibility of individual households), resulting in relocation or at best disruptive ‘shack shifting’ or rollover upgrading, mostly with the displacement of non-qualifiers of the housing subsidy. Thus city officials consciously or unwittingly act as servants of orderly development, global competitiveness and the market, rather than as implementers of the transformative aspects of the Constitution (see De Vos, 2001) and of progressive policy and legislation that has been developed to ensure the realisation of constitutional rights.

The City of Johannesburg has a track record of poor performance in court, having lost many housing rights/eviction cases brought against it to date (COHRE, 2005). However, of the over 190 informal settlements in the city, only a small proportion of communities affected by plans for orderly development have legal representation. On the larger map of the city, these cases have very little impact. Therefore, despite damning declarations by judges about the municipality's violation of the constitutional right to housing, the City of Johannesburg can still demonstrate to its desired investment partners in global agencies and corporations that its commitment lies squarely with ensuring global competitiveness. Its discourse, which requires the eradication of what appears to be the greatest threat to the property market (shacks), is more powerful than constitutional obligations.

Translated at the level of a mayoral priority relocation project, Lehae (meaning ‘home’ in Sotho), in Region G of Johannesburg (to the south of Soweto and Lenasia), the possession of corrugated iron sheets is strictly prohibited (City of Johannesburg Officials, Region G, personal communication, 19 July 2006). Preventing the use of corrugated iron or so-called ‘zincs’ for backyard letting or informal trade stalls means cutting off a lifeline. Whereas these ideals of urban orderliness have been unimplementable in most new developments, City of Johannesburg officials are proud to show that the Mayoral project, Lehae, with a mixture of differently coloured houses (each colour intended for relocatees of a particular informal settlement) is ‘free of zincs’ even a few months after the first occupation. Faced with the prospect of being moved to a sterile and socially controlled/engineered, colour-coded environment, devoid of livelihood opportunities, resistance to relocation should not come as a surprise, particularly when communities become aware that an Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme exists but is not being implemented.

5. THE NON-IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INFORMAL SETTLEMENT UPGRADING PROGRAMME: CASES FROM GAUTENG

Over the past 3 years, four informal settlement communities have had legal representation by the public interest law department of Webber Wentzel Bowen (WWB): Harry Gwala in Ekurhuleni, and Eikenhof, Thembelihle and Protea South in Region G of the City of Johannesburg (WWB, 2005). The author's insight into their struggle for in situ upgrading stems from her voluntary collaboration with WWB's lawyer, particularly on the cases of Harry Gwala, Thembelihle and Protea South (legal representation of Eikenhof resulted in an improved relocation deal to Lehae, to which the community has agreed; WWB, 2005). The experience in these cases has been that city officials (both from the City of Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni Metro) dug in their heels and clung to the dictates of orderly development. They have used a wide variety of reasons to justify relocating the informal settlements through the project-linked subsidy, rather than apply (or even consider application of) the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme. Unlike Ekurhuleni Metro, the City of Johannesburg has also consistently withheld information about development plans from the communities (WWB, 2004–2006a, 2004–2006b).

The three settlement communities have peacefully occupied the land for over a decade. From this base they are able to access schools, livelihoods and public transport – Thembelihle is embedded in a relatively suburban area of Lenasia with good schools and close to the Lenasia CBD; Protea South provides direct access to good schools, a railway station and industrial areas; and Harry Gwala is adjacent to the established Wattville township, which has schools, and is also within walking distance of the domestic and industrial job market in surrounding suburbs and industrial areas. All three settlements provide access to natural amenities – the Leeupan water body in the case of Harry Gwala, a river and areas for urban agriculture in Protea South, and vegetable gardens as well as Lenasia's public parks in the case of Thembelihle. All these informal settlements present geotechnical challenges – dumping, undermining, dolomitic soils – and are therefore to be removed. In all three cases, the relocation sites present disadvantages in terms of access to schooling, livelihoods and the job market, public transport and recreational amenities. A large proportion of their residents fear, and therefore resist, relocation because it threatens livelihood, schooling and community networks, and not least their home. Since 2001, they have been organised through the Landless People's Movement, which seeks a solution to these fears (M Mnisi, Convenor, Landless People's Movement, Protea South, personal communication, 27 March). Through the legal representation, the community organisations have become aware of the national Department of Housing's new Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme, and they agree with its principles and approaches – immediate provision of basic services, inclusion of all residents, minimal disruption to livelihoods, community empowerment, community participation in decision-making, development of community facilities, alternative forms of tenure, and so on (DoH, 2004b). They would like the feasibility of in situ upgrading to be investigated rigorously (as called for by the programme), and if relocation is found to be necessary for some or all of the residents ‘as a last resort’ (as stated in the programme), they would like the same principles and approaches to be applied to the relocation (as required by the programme).

While detailed case studies of these settlements would provide deeper insight into the contradictions of local government intervention, this paper focuses only on the arguments put forward by local authorities for relocation. These arguments are indicative of the dominant understanding and interpretation of informal settlements, and reveal important aspects of re-skilling or mindset change that need to be addressed in order for the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme to be rolled out. Informal settlement relocation has been motivated on two separate fronts. One relates to the characteristics of the occupied land, the other to the perceived requirements for occupation of newly developed areas.

Reasons for relocation that relate to land are twofold: the physical characteristics of the land and the designated land use. The former applied in all three settlements. Land may be deemed unsuitable for low-income housing because of its geomorphology – steep slopes, high water table, situation below the flood line, instability due to dolomitic soil, refuse deposits or undermining. However, the argument that land is unsuitable for upgrading is largely founded on the low levels of funding available for low-income housing (as per the project-linked capital subsidy). Such land usually can be developed, but at a varying cost, due to required engineering interventions. More than a decade of stringent cost constraints on low-income housing through the standardised project-linked subsidy allocated on the basis of individual household qualification, of which the land and engineering component was capped to a minimal amount (see Huchzermeyer, 2003d), has led officials to rule out the possibility of rehabilitating or improving land for development. In response to this problem, access to additional funds for land rehabilitation has been made possible since 2004 through the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme, which does not standardise the subsidy per household and explicitly sets no limit on the subsidy amount for land purchase and land rehabilitation that can be applied for (DoH, 2004b).

For Thembelihle and Protea South, dolomite is put forward as the reason for relocation (High Court of South Africa, 2003; Joshco, 2006). For Harry Gwala, unsuitability for upgrading is argued on account of a combination of shallow undermining, an industrial dump, the fact that part of the occupied land lies below the sewer mains, and the existence of various servitudes (Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, 2004–2005). The legal representative questioned these grounds for relocation through consultation with relevant experts and authorities (WWB, 2004–2006b). For Thembelihle, the expert finding was that large parts of land that are low-risk dolomite are indeed upgradable in situ, provided the necessary water precautionary measures are taken (SRK Consulting Engineers and Scientists, 2004), and costs for this can be covered by the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme. While the municipality finally undertook, on this basis, to investigate the feasibility of in situ upgrading (City of Johannesburg, 2005), official pronouncements are still that the entire Thembelihle community will be relocated to houses of one particular colour in Lehae (City of Johannesburg Officials, Region G, personal communication, 19 July 2006). The project-linked capital subsidy registration and application is therefore proceeding, with a clear message to the community that, despite an official undertaking to the contrary, the decision to relocate is final.

For Protea South a very fraught official process led the municipality to undertake geotechnical investigations only in mid-2006, long after various announcements about the development had been made, plans drawn up and indeed a ‘decant camp’ (a term widely used for temporary relocation areas) constructed near the settlement. Since 2003, an official City of Johannesburg billboard has graced the entrance to Protea South, stating that 3200 sites are to be developed here. This meant that one-half of the 6400 households would have to be moved. In April 2005 the Gauteng Member of the Executive Committee for Housing made an official announcement at Protea South that none of the residents would be moved, as all could be housed in the area (WWB, 2004–2006a; M Mnisi, personal communication, 27 March 2006). A subsequent announcement was that one-half of the residents would be moved to Lehae, some 10 kilometres to the south (M Mnisi, personal communication, 27 March 2006). In May 2006, Joshco−the implementing agents for City of Johannesburg−stated that only 1600 new sites could be developed in Protea South, with the implication that 4800 households would have to be moved (Programme Manager, Joshco, personal communication, 16 May 2006). In June 2006, an announcement was made that instead of being relocated to Lehae, Protea South residents would be moved to Doornkop, some 8 km to the northwest (M Mnisi, personal communication, 4 June 2006). More recently, an announcement was made that, due to the prevalence of dolomite, only 329 households could remain at Protea South (M Mnisi, personal communication, 13 September 2006), which meant that the remaining 6000-plus households would be relocated−all of this without any attempt to implement the principles and measures of the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme, including immediate provision of basic infrastructure, and empowerment and participation of the residents in the decision making (WWB, 2004–2006a).

For Harry Gwala, the claim that relocation was necessary because of undermining was refuted by the legal representation through a consultation with the relevant Ministry (WWB, 2004–2006b). Considering the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme, the servitudes were found to be suitable for urban agriculture or sports fields, which could be demarcated through a participatory layout planning process that would involve some internal relocation and densification of parts of the settlement. The argument that parts of the settlement lie lower than the sewer mains, thus necessitating expenditure in the form of a sewerage pump, was also found to be irrelevant, given that the funding regime of the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme is tailored precisely to such situations (WWB, 2004–2006b).

Secondly, the unused land may be suitable for development, but assigned for non-residential land use. In the same period as the legal representation of the three settlements, and at a time when the Venezuelan government is taking steps to expropriate land from two golf clubs in Caracas to make space for low-income housing (Campbell, 2006), the Mshenguville informal settlement in Soweto made way for a golf course (City of Johannesburg Officials, Region G, personal communication, 19 July 2006). The Eikenhof informal settlement (also represented by WWB in resisting relocation to a former relocation site that was further away; WWB, 2005) made way for a cemetery.

The relocation of Harry Gwala, Thembelihle and Protea South was being argued for by the respective municipalities on various fronts. Possibly the least defensible grounds, even if the Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme did not exist, related to the need to occupy newly established relocation sites. For Harry Gwala, it was argued that the threshold for a school needed to be created in the Chief Albert Luthuli relocation site 13 km to the northeast. The relocation of the Harry Gwala informal settlement to Chief Albert Luthuli, it was argued, would ensure there would be enough people for the municipality to apply to the Department of Education for the construction of the school on the designated (unused) site (Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, 2004–2005; letter dated 15 December 2004). For Thembelihle, the earlier (and successfully disputed) planned relocation to Vlakfontein was argued on grounds that the sites there happened to be ready for occupation (High Court of South Africa, 2003). In the separate case of Mandelaville informal settlement, with less successful legal representation, ‘urgent’ relocation to Sol Plaatjie was justified (among other reasons) on the basis that there was ‘a high risk of “land invasion” on the relocation site’ (Wilson, 2006:543, citing High Court of South Africa, 2001). All of these indicate the planners' and officials' treatment of informal settlement communities as figures on a chessboard, to be moved around in order to solve problems (caused by poorly conceived orderly planning) elsewhere. The idea of colour-coding houses at the relocation site according to settlement origin, as in the case of the Lehae relocation site for the Mshenguville, Eikenhof, Thembelihle and Dlamini Camp informal settlements (City of Johannesburg Officials, Region G, personal communication, 19 July 2006), is indicative of chessboard treatment not only of entire communities but of individual households. The view of the author's class of largely formerly disadvantaged MSc Housing and MSc Development Planning students at Wits University, who participated in a field trip to Lehae, was that this resembled apartheid-era social engineering (class discussions, Habitat Planning Theory, School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 19–21 July 2006).

6. CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR CAPACITY-BUILDING WITHIN GOVERNMENT

The tension between the market and constitutional rights of poor households has been evident in South African cities over the past 12 years. Whose role is it to mediate this tension and to moderate the pervasive demands of the market? The struggle against the exclusionary dictates of the market and for constitutional rights is fought, consciously or not, by informal settlement communities themselves−in very few cases with legal support that provides reference to constitutional obligations and progressive policies of the state, and mostly ignored, dismissed and or labelled disruptive by local government. Increasingly, the few socially oriented not-for-profit organisations remaining in the sector of urban land and housing, encouraged by their donors, seek partnerships with governments and the private sector, thus compromising the extent to which they are willing to give voice to the informal settlement struggle for space in the city. The informal settlement communities' lack of power in this battle for a space in the city is evidenced by numerous evictions and relocations and the minimal impact of informal land occupation on the formal structure of the post-apartheid city.

Local government officials on the ground face the difficult task of balancing the human-needs-driven demands of informal settlement communities with those of the discourse of global competitiveness, which is increasingly legitimised by South Africa's task of hosting the 2010 Soccer World Cup. The decision to free the city of shacks by 2014, if not 2010, in order to welcome the international soccer spectators, is a real instruction to local government officials, who refer to this dictate from above, rather than to the constitutional rights of those affected. If government has any intention to roll out its new Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme, officials must be sensitised to the obligations placed upon them by the transformative South African Constitution, and understand that the demands of global competitiveness are subordinate to these obligations. This sensitisation must be informed by a deeper understanding of the spatial legacy of the apartheid city, orderly development and the market. It also calls for a deeper reform of urban planning beyond orderly development, so as to provide the tools to give South African cities a human face that is not contorted by repression and exclusion.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southern African Housing Foundation Conference & Exhibition, Cape Sun, Cape Town, 9–11 October 2006, and is available online (http://abahlali.org/ and http://web.wits.ac.za/Academic/EBE/ArchPlan/Research/informalsettlements/).

Notes

¹‘Down-raiding’ refers to a process through which beneficiary households sell at low prices to a higher income class that recognises the benefits of good location, makes further improvements and sells into a market that is no longer accessible to those for whom the state-funded intervention was originally intended.