The KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, 2007 (the "KZN Slums Act") was a provincial law dealing with land tenure and evictions in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.‘From shack to the Constitutional Court’: The litigious disruption of governing global cities
by Anna Selmeczi, ''Utrecht Law Review'', April 2011

The Act

The Slums Act was a highly controversial Act supported by the Provincial Government of KwaZulu-Natal as a response to

housing Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether i ...

conditions. Its stated purpose was to eliminate substandard housing conditions by giving the provincial Housing MEC authority to prescribe a time in which it would be compulsory for municipalities to evict unlawful occupiers of

slums A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily in ...

when landowners failed to do so.Slum law evictions ruled to be unlawful, Business Day, 15 October 2009
/ref> It also forced private landowners to evict shack dwellers. It was meant to be replicated in all other South African provinces.So what difference does it make? Socio-economic rights and democratising development in South Africa
, Peris Jones, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 27 April 2011 The Act was widely criticised by civil society organisations and academics who said it was in conflict with the

South African Constitution The Constitution of South Africa is the supreme law of the Republic of South Africa. It provides the legal foundation for the existence of the republic, it sets out the rights and duties of its citizens, and defines the structure of the Gover ...

and PIE Act and who considered it to be repressive and anti-poor legislation.

Constitutional Court of South Africa judgment

The road to the Constitutional Court

Abahlali baseMjondolo Protest the Slums Act at the Constitutional Court

The squatters' movement

Abahlali baseMjondolo Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM, , in English: "the residents of the shacks") is a socialist shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which organises land occupations, builds communes

took the government to court to have the Act declared unconstitutional. It lost in the

KwaZulu-Natal High Court, Durban The KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court of South Africa is a superior court of law with general jurisdiction over the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The main seat of the division is at Pietermaritzburg, while a subordinate local s ...

but then appealed directly to the

Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ...

. Abahlali baseMjondolo argued that the province was mandated to deal with housing rather than

land tenure In common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "tenir" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individual ...

and that the act dealt with

evictions Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee (often, the prior owners who defaulted on a mortgag ...

and slum eradication rather than the provision of housing. They also argued that the act was vague and gave too much power to the provincial government that was in conflict with section 26 of the constitution that deals with housing and eviction rights.

The Act judged unconstitutional

On 14 October 2009, the South African Constitutional Court found the law to be in conflict with the Constitution and struck it down. Costs were awarded to Abahlali baseMjondolo. According to the judgement, the legislation would have allowed for the possibility of mass evictions without the possibility of suitable alternative accommodation and would have therefore violated the Prevention of Illegal Evictions Act (PIE Act) and South Africa's Constitution.

Intimidation and violence following the judgment

It was reported that following the judgment members of the movement were publicly threatened for their comments criticising the Slums Act. It has also been argued that the judgment was a key factor in the armed attack on Abahlali baseMjondolo in the Kennedy Road shack settlement in

Durban Durban ( ) ( zu, eThekwini, from meaning 'the port' also called zu, eZibubulungwini for the mountain range that terminates in the area), nicknamed ''Durbs'',Ishani ChettyCity nicknames in SA and across the worldArticle on ''news24.com'' from ...

in September 2009.

Significance of the judgment

The Slums Act is one of the best known judgments by the Constitutional Court in South Africa. It has been argued that after the judgment the state abandoned its plans to eradicate shack settlements by 2014.Tokyo Sexwale's Failed Apprenticeship
SACSIS, 2010

2007 KwaZulu-Natal Elimination & Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act
* ttp://abahlali.org/node/5183 Video: 'From Shacks to the Constitutional Court'br>Slums Act digital archive‘From shack to the Constitutional Court’: The litigious disruption of governing global cities
by Anna Selmeczi, ''Utrecht Law Review'', April 2011
How People Face Evictions
Prof. Yves Cabannes ''et al.'', Development Planning Unit, University College of London (DPU/UCL), May 2011

by Mikelle Adgate, Scot Dalton, Betsy Fuller Matambanadzo, ''Perspectives on Global Issues'', Fall, 2008
Interview with Mnikelo Ndabankulu in ''The Guardian'' (UK)

Mnikelo Ndabankulu Mnikelo Ndabankulu lives in Durban, South Africa. He was the spokesperson for Abahlali baseMjondolo up until May 2014 and appears in the film '' Dear Mandela''. Early life He was born in the town of Flagstaff on the Wild Coast and now lives in ...

, 2009
Cities with ‘Slums’: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right To The City In Africa
by

Marie Huchzermeyer Marie Huchzermeyer is an academic and public intellectual at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Books * Huchzermeyer, M., (2004). ''Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlement ...

, University of Cape Town Press, 2011
Constitutional Court more pro-poor than the government
Pierre de Vos, ''Constitutionally Speaking'', 2011 *

, (2011
''Cities with ‘Slums’: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right To The City In Africa''
University of Cape Town Press, Cape Town * Anna Selmeczi, 201
"We are the people who do not count": Thinking the disruption of the biopolitics of abandonment
PhD Thesis * Mark Hunter & Dorrit Posel, 201
Here to work: the socioeconomic characteristics of informal dwellers in post-apartheid South Africa
''Environment & Urbanization Copyright'' Vol 24.(1), pp. 285–304. DOI: 10.1177/0956247811433537 *
What He Has Been Jailed For, Has Never Been Achieved": A Film Review of Dear Mandela
by Charles F. Peterson, ''The Journal of African Philosophy'', Vol.5, 2012

References

{{Abahlali baseMjondolo South African legislation Urban planning in South Africa Housing in South Africa 2007 in South African law