Time and again the conviction surfaces from various quarters that certain homes can and should be demolished without adherence to the provisions carefully crafted in the transition from apartheid to democracy.
The provisions in section 26 of the constitution of 1996, elaborated in the Prevention of Illegal Eviction & Unlawful Occupation of Land (Pie) Act of 1998, are mindful that never again should a bulldozer arrive, unannounced, and an inhabitant be left in the street.
There are three legal offences under the Pie Act. One is the soliciting of a fee or payment for organising or permitting occupation of land without the owner’s consent. Another is eviction without a court order, and the third is interference with those carrying out their duties in accordance with the act, including mediation.
According to the Pie Act, evictions must follow a fair process that includes a court order and time for legal representation. If occupation has exceeded six months, an order for eviction can be granted only after considering whether “suitable alternative accommodation or land" is available.
From 2004 to 2009, then housing minister Lindiwe Sisulu drove an ambitious target to eradicate informal settlements by 2014, the end of the second post-apartheid decade. Premiers competed in undertakings to reach this target sooner, if not in time for the hosting of the Fifa World Cup in 2010.
This noble slum-free vision, conveniently aligned with the slogan “Cities Without Slums” under the UN’s millennium development goals, could have been pursued through the expedited implementation of the newly adopted Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme of 2004.
The expansion of informal settlements could have been forestalled through the rapid release of serviced land with top structures or housing where possible.
Instead, the attempt was to use a legislative route to ease eviction. In 2007, the KwaZulu-Natal legislature enacted the KwaZulu-Natal Slum Elimination & Prevention of Re-Emergence of Slums Act, ignoring extensive opposition during consultations around the bill. Unconstitutionally, the act sought to increase municipalities’ powers to evict.
Shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo litigated against the KZN Slums Act, ultimately leading the Constitutional Court to note and reject contravention of provisions in the constitution and the Pie Act. The Abahlali judgment of 2009 struck down that part of the act.
The Pie Act itself had just survived several amendment attempts. Pie amendment bills and drafts thereof were intensely contested from 2005 to 2008, with extensive opposition from grassroots movements, labour and human rights entities, academia and international housing rights organisations.
Like the current bill, the 2006 Pie Amendment Bill sought to criminalise the organising of land occupation without charging for this. It differed in also seeking to remove those who defaulted on their rent from inclusion in the definition of unlawful occupier.
In 2023 the DA introduced a Pie amendment bill that had a hearing with the parliamentary portfolio committee for human settlements in 2025.
The DA motivated for the bill directly by pointing to the growth in land occupations during the ban on evictions instituted during the Covid pandemic, among other factors. It sought to criminalise the “instigation” of land occupation. The committee raised several concerns, including its “potential to criminalise poverty".
Noting a Pie Act review already under way in the national department of human settlements, the committee agreed that the department is “ best positioned to lead the legislative process to ensure comprehensive consultation and coherence with national policy”.
The department’s Pie Act review followed its White Paper for Human Settlements of December 2024. The white paper mentions the intended review but gives no reasons or directives for the review.
As the parliamentary portfolio committee has already indicated, the amendments must align with the white paper. This in turn includes an extensive review and interpretation of housing rights judgments it seeks to build on.
Nothing points towards the need to criminalise the organisation of land occupations without exchange of money. The stated principles of the white paper include equity, spatial justice and social justice.
The department of human settlements’ review culminated in the current bill, which it put out for 60 days of public comment on April 16. Oddly, it reads in large parts like a cut-and-paste from two decades ago. Worrying is the persistent attempt across all Pie Act amendment bills to criminalise the occupation of land without the exchange of money.
Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s pronouncements in September 2025 about plans for unprecedented, unannounced midnight evictions suggest political interference in the review process, coupled with a shoddy legal rehash.
What is new in the 2026 Pie Amendment Bill is, equally troubling, the attempt to reduce rights in relation to alternative accommodation, reducing this to temporary accommodation.
For a court order to be granted to anyone having occupied for six months, the Pie Act requires, among others, that “land has been made available or can reasonably be made available by a municipality or other organ of state or another landowner for the relocation of the unlawful occupier”. There is no mention of “temporary” in the Pie Act other than the act preventing illegal evictions from temporary as well as permanent structures.
Back in 2000, in the Grootboom judgment, the Constitutional Court sent the housing minister back to the drawing board to develop policy for households with immediate housing needs. The resultant emergency housing programme, in its initial version in 2004, which is unchanged in its current format in the National Housing Code of 2009, takes its cue from the Pie Act: “Assistance under this programme should, wherever possible, represent an initial phase towards a permanent housing solution.”
A “temporary settlement area” is only one of five types of assistance in the emergency housing programme. The others are on-site assistance, relocation to a permanent location with temporary assistance, relocation to an existing developed area and repair to formal housing.
Reducing alternative accommodation to “temporary accommodation” contravenes the emergency housing programme as it stands. Worryingly, the intention may be to amend that next. Much is at stake in the decision-making over the Pie Amendment Bill, which seeks further changes not discussed here.
Once again, as in the height of the slum eradication drive, there is intense opposition and mobilisation around the bill. Abahlali baseMjondolo, the General Industries Workers’ Union, the South African Federation of Trade Unions and various human rights organisations have released statements expressing firm opposition, with Abahlali baseMjondolo being willing to take it to the Constitutional Court if necessary.
Withdrawing the bill and instead inviting participation in a discussion as to whether a review is necessary is the only route that makes sense at this stage.
• Huchzermeyer is a professor in the School of Architecture & Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand and director of the Centre for Urbanism & Built Environment Studies.
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