A number of organisations have expressed concern about the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Amendment Bill.
They said while there might be a legitimate need to refine aspects of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act (Pie Act), several of the proposed changes risked undermining its core protective purpose.
The organisations raised this concern after human settlements minister Thembi Simelane presented the bill for public comment last week. Simelane said the government was undertaking the process to review and strengthen the laws governing illegal occupations and evictions.
The organisations are Ndifuna Ukwazi, Abahlali Basemjondolo, Reclaim the City, Inner City Federation, Rent Control, General Industries Workers Union of South Africa, Abahlali base Freedom Park, the South African Federation of Trade Unions and the Socio-Economic Rights Institute.
They said the introduction of offences in the bill for those who “incite, arrange, organise or permit” occupation signalled an alarming shift towards the criminalisation of landlessness.
“The breadth of this provision creates a clear and present danger that it will be used to target community organisers, activists and even occupiers themselves, as well as the organisations of the poor,” the organisations said.
They said the threat of jail time and fines of up to R2m for people working to organise, support and develop occupation amounted to a direct attack on organisations for the poor. It reintroduced, through the back door, a punitive approach to occupation that the constitution sought to dismantle.
“In a society where millions occupy land out of necessity, such criminalisation is both unjust and impractical, and it risks further entrenching marginalisation while burdening an already strained criminal justice system,” the organisations said.
They said the introduction of the bill came at a moment of profound national housing crisis with more than about 3.7-million families without housing, a number that was growing by 178,000 every year.
“For millions of people, occupation is not a choice, but a necessity born of exclusion from land and housing markets that remain structurally inaccessible to the poor and working class of this country.”
The organisations said the Pie Act was one of the most important legal protections available to poor and working-class people.
“The Pie Act gives substantive effect to this right by ensuring that evictions are not carried out arbitrarily and that courts are required to weigh the full social, economic, and human context of each case.”
They said the constitutional and legislative framework governing evictions must also be understood against South Africa’s history. Under apartheid, laws such as the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act criminalised occupation and enabled the forced removal of black and working-class people without regard for their dignity or circumstances.
“The democratic constitutional order deliberately rejected this approach. Section 26 and the Pie Act inverted this legal logic by recognising that occupation may arise from necessity and by requiring that occupiers be treated with dignity and respect.”
The question was not whether the law should be made more efficient in securing evictions, the organisations said, but whether it continued to give meaningful effect to the constitutional rights to dignity, equality and access to housing.
Any amendment that weakened protections against eviction into homelessness, that criminalised occupation and activism, or that diluted the obligations of the state, would be an alarming step backwards from the transformative vision of the constitution, they said.
TimesLIVE
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