Programme News
29 April 2013
(News)
When a decision to eradicate hostels around Tshwane was taken, the “good news” was welcomed by those who lived in the hostels and the community alike.
These included hostel dwellers in Mamelodi, Atteridegville and Soshanguve townships.
This was not an isolated project with the provincial government also promising to set the ball rolling to eradicate hostels in Soweto and the...
29 April 2013
(News)
The Tshwane municipality and the Gauteng Department of Housing and Human Settlements have spent millions of rand of ratepayers’ money on a block of apartments that do not meet building requirements fit for people to live in.
In one of the most glaring examples of how corruption and mismanagement in the city affects people desperate for housing, the municipality and the province paid...
29 April 2013
(News)
The Supreme Court of Appeal will on Thursday hear an appeal against a judgment by the Land Claims Court over the Baphiring community in North West, which is seeking to regain title to what it says are its ancestral lands.
This comes at a time when the government has spent R69bn on land reform since 1994, with only about 8% of the targeted land redistributed. The government had initially planned...
24 April 2013
(News)
One of South Africa’s most expensive land claim cases, involving the world-renowned ecotourism MalaMala Game Reserve, is to be considered by the Constitutional Court.
The current landowners value the land, which covers about 13,000ha, at just over R900m, or R70,000 per hectare.
The Mhlanganisweni community wants an order to return the land to them, and for the rural development and land...
10 April 2013
(News)
A sewerage plant supplying the community of Rockville, north of Pretoria, is leaking. But its reconstruction is being contested in court.
The community, through Lawyers for Human Rights, is in court because they say they were not consulted on the project and the plant began working before it had a water licence.
The current water plant was first built in 1983, when the community was still under...
9 March 2013
(News)
It is a matter of grave concern when judges ignore the laws of our country. Unfortunately, despite a significant improvement in South African law relating to evictions — through legislation and Constitutional Court decisions — the courts often fail to extend these protections to poor and vulnerable people.
Millions of South Africans do not have access to adequate housing....
13 February 2013
(News)
Foreign nationals will no longer be able to own land in South Africa once government’s land policy is finalised and passed into law, Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti said on Tuesday.
"All people who are foreign nationals will not own land, but will lease land on a long-term basis," he said.
Nkwinti was responding to a question during a "dialogue" with farm workers in...
7 February 2013
(Press release)
The Constitutional Court has given judgment in a case concerning the constraints placed on municipalities when entering land on which people’s homes are situated.
The applicants’ homes are situated on land owned by the Rustenburg Local Municipality. These homes were dilapidated and the municipality employed a contractor to carry out work on the land as part of a housing development...
28 January 2013
(Press release)
South Africa has again been gripped by images of violence, anger and looting in the wake of a decision by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Richard Baloyi and the Municipal Demarcation Board to merge two municipalities near Sasolburg in the Free State. By Thursday, four people had been reportedly killed and many more displaced after a week of violent protest against the...
9 January 2013
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights is urgently calling on the people evicted from Schubart Park in Tshwane in September 2011 to register as former residents next week.
This is the second registration period and the last chance to register. Those that fail to register and are identified as former residents will be unable to access alternative accommodation and return to their homes in the Schubart Park...