The poor pay the cost for Joburg’s inner-city overhaul

Gentrification aggressively displaces the poor, causing the most vulnerable among us to be rounded up and tossed onto the streets.

Johannesburg’s central business district (CBD) is ground zero for this phenomenon in SA. Johannesburg is currently experiencing state-sponsored revitalisation, giving it the ability to market itself as a "world-class African city" with lucrative opportunities for private developers.

However, behind the facade of luxury apartments and trendy bars are 60,000 people with insecure tenure and unsafe housing.

Following the fall of apartheid, black Africans moved in large numbers to the once-prohibited downtown. White residents and nearly all businesses quickly escaped to the gated northern suburbs. Two decades later, the young – often white – middle class is fleeing those cosy suburbs. The CBD, once designated a "no-go zone", due to its reputation as overcrowded, violent and black, is now an appealing urban renewal neighbourhood.

Tens of thousands of destitute South Africans live in the CBD’s abandoned high-rises and industrial buildings, making a home for themselves and their families out of virtually nothing. These occupiers are low-wage workers, the unemployed and refugees. They are the thankless and invisible labour that support Johannesburg’s daily functioning: car guards, domestic workers, cleaners, taxi drivers and informal traders. Today, the occupiers’ lives and homes are in the most danger as the city and developers trample on their human rights and render them disposable, to make room for wealthier residents.

The film, The Road Home, highlights the struggle and legal victories of Chung Hua Mansion’s occupiers. Typical of Joburg’s inner-city, the 250 Chung Hua residents occupied the building for years because they could not afford rental prices and had no alternative place to live. The latest research indicates that nearly half of the people living in the CBD earn less than R3,200 a month and can only afford monthly rent less than R900.

In 2009, the Chung Hua Mansions were sold to Changing Tides Property Development, which immediately shut off residents’ electricity and water. Soon after, the occupants were subjected to a violent and illegal police-led eviction, during which their possessions were destroyed. The Chung Hua occupiers, with the assistance of their lawyers at Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI), brought an urgent application to the Johannesburg High Court. The court confirmed that the eviction was illegal and the occupiers had the right to return to the building.

Under South African law, an eviction can occur only by way of court order. A court grants an eviction order only once it is satisfied the eviction is just and equitable, determined by examining all the relevant and personal circumstances of the case. If the eviction will render the occupants homeless, the municipality must provide temporary alternative accommodation.

While the City abdicated its legal responsibility to provide emergency accommodation, Changing Tides illegally evicted the occupants seven times over the course of six years. Yet, the community united in an effort to survive amongst the compounded trauma of repeated violent expulsions, personal property loss, and dangerous living conditions. The Chung Hua occupiers re-entered the building after each ousting, determined to rebuild their lives and continue their struggle for their right to housing.

Under dire and precarious circumstances, in 2015 the residents and SERI turned to a new strategy: suing the mayor, city manager and director of housing for contempt of court. The threat of direct legal accountability propelled the City into action. Almost immediately, the City offered safe, proximate, alternative housing to the residents.

The Road Home illustrates the significance of SA’s court system in protecting the rights of the most vulnerable. However, the challenges faced by the poor cannot be solved if the City responds only to lawsuits and individual eviction cases.

The detrimental consequences of gentrification require broader, well-coordinated policies by the state – particularly providing guaranteed affordable housing.

Until this happens, residents on the brink of homelessness and SERI’s human rights lawyers will continue to strategically use the law to the keep a roof over their heads.

• Allen-Gessesse is a Harvard Law School Fellow volunteering with Seri’s litigation department, and Mtshiyo is a candidate attorney at Seri.