Court upholding urban squatters' housing rights a warning, says NGO

A South African High Court judgment banning the eviction of squatters from an unsafe building in Johannesburg without providing them with alternative housing should be read as a warning to other cities, said a human rights NGO. Judge Mahomed Jajbhay ruled on Friday that the eviction of 300 inner Johannesburg residents was unconstitutional as it violated the right of the poor to access housing. He ordered the city's municipal authorities to draw up a comprehensive plan to cater for people living in "bad buildings" in Johannesburg's central business district, if the city wants to evict them. Describing the judgment as a "writing on the wall" against future eviction hearings, Jean du Plessis, deputy director of the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) said, it should force other local authorities in South Africa to re-think their strategies. "We call on the city of Johannesburg to abide by the ruling, to immediately halt all planned evictions, to enter into dialogue with affected communities to find mutually acceptable alternatives and to provide redress for those who have been evicted in the past," he added. A significant number of squatters have been evicted from buildings classified as unsafe by the Johannesburg municipality since the launch of its urban renewal plan in 2001. The municipality has 235 buildings on its list of "bad buildings" and reportedly 60 court orders to evict. COHRE has estimated that some 25,000 people in the inner city are at risk of losing their homes as the council pushes ahead with its urban renewal scheme. Du Plessis said that while some of the buildings in question were "unhealthy" and could serve as a base for criminals, COHRE's research showed that the majority of people who make them their home were poor, with monthly incomes of less than US $160, who choose to live in urban centres close to formal and informal job opportunities. Gabu Tugwana, a spokesman for the municipality said they were still studying the judgment and would comment at a later stage. Johannesburg council has often argued that the buildings are fire hazards. In 2004, 12 people were killed in two separate fires in one such structure in Johannesburg's inner city. But du Plessis commented that apartheid-era regulations were being used to secure evictions from "bad buildings" on health and safety grounds.