Jun 2005
Shared Interest Update: The Right to Housing - Summer 2005
Fifty years ago, on June 26, 1955, the Freedom Charter adopted by a people’s assembly in South Africa proclaimed that “All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security.” The ringing declarations in the Charter did not stop with the vote, but set housing and other social and economic assets such as “work and security” as indispensable goals to be guaranteed to all. At that time these fundamental rights were denied to people of color by the apartheid system in South Africa and by segregation in the United States. These denials were enshrined in discriminatory laws as well as in pervasive structural inequalities and racial abuse.
Today, in principle, the legal barriers to achievement of these rights are gone. In South Africa, moreover, the government’s obligation to realize social and economic as well as political rights is mandated by the Constitution. While the United States government still opposes the growing international consensus that states have a legal obligation to ensure basic living conditions for all, South Africa’s constitutional court has ruled that such rights are not just ideals but binding obligations (see the illustrative excerpts below on the right to housing).
Achieving such goals, however, still requires both political will and human and financial resources. The South African government can rightly claim achievements in the first decade of democratic rule, with more than 1.7 million low-cost houses built. But the gap is even larger. Between 2 and 3 million families lack minimum levels of housing. And the shortages of services of water, sanitation, and electricity are even more daunting. The detailed statistics are much disputed. But there is no doubt that both inequality and massive poverty are still entrenched in South African society. While the rich now include both black and white, the poor are still overwhelmingly black.
Documents such as the Freedom Charter can inspire commitment to common goals. But they also serve to highlight the gap between rhetorical commitment and stubborn reality. In the last two months, a wave of protests swept townships in Cape Town, Durban, Mpumalanga, and other areas in South Africa. Bitterness against the failure to deliver sanitation and other services is rising, Cutoffs of services for non-payment threaten the welfare of poor families. Critics charge that it is not only lack of resources, but also bureaucratic indifference and policies tilted to the rich that lie behind the failure.
The debate on national policy and government action in South Africa should and will continue, as part of the democratic process that country now enjoys. Like you, we at Shared Interest are under no illusion that private action can substitute for the responsibility of the state. But we are also firmly convinced that all sectors must share responsibility for implementing the rights to which we are committed.
As you know, at Shared Interest, we are doing our part. With the steadfast support of so many of you during our first decade, as you will see in the enclosed report, we have built a successful model that has served as a catalyst for bringing homes, jobs and new enterprises to more than 400,000 black South Africans. In the process, we have strengthened a broad range of partners and enabled them to forge new relationships with the country’s banks while empowering low-income individuals.
You should have recently received in the mail a copy of the Shared Interest annual report for 2004. It is also available, along with earlier Shared Interest newsletters and annual reports, from our website at http://www.sharedinterest.org/publications.html.
What we are able to do depends on your support. We invite you to continue to accompany us on the road mapped out by the Freedom Charter, speeding the full realization of human rights in South Africa during its second decade of democracy.
Make a tax-deductible contribution here.
Contractor financed with the assistance of Indlu, a community development financial institution utilizing Shared Interest guarantees.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25 Adopted by United Nations General Assembly, December 10, 1948
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
The Freedom Charter
Adopted by Congress of the People, Kliptown, South Africa, Jun 26, 1955
http://sahistory.org.za/pages/specialprojects/june26
There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort!
- All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security;
- Unused housing space to be made available to the people;
- Rent and prices shall be lowered, food plentiful and no-one shall go hungry;
- A preventive health scheme shall be run by the state;
- Free medical care and hospitalisation shall be provided for all, with special care for mothers and young children;
- Slums shall be demolished, and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, creches and social centres;
- The aged, the orphans, the disabled and the sick shall be cared for by the state;
- Rest, leisure and recreation shall be the right of all:
- Fenced locations and ghettoes shall be abolished, and laws which break up families shall be repealed.
South African Constitution, Section 26 Adopted 1996
http://www.polity.org.za/html/govdocs/constitution/saconst.html
- Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing.
- The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right.
- No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions.
Constitutional Court of South Africa
Judgment by Justice Zakeriya Yacoob, in The Government of the Republic of South Africa versus Irene Grootboom and Others, 8 October 2000
http://www.concourt.gov.za/summary.php?case_id=11986
[1] The people of South Africa are committed to the attainment of social justice and the improvement of the quality of life for everyone. … This case grapples with the realisation of these aspirations for it concerns the state’s constitutional obligations in relation to housing: a constitutional issue of fundamental importance to the development of South Africa’s new constitutional order.
[2] The issues here remind us of the intolerable conditions under which many of our people are still living. The respondents are but a fraction of them. It is also a reminder that unless the plight of these communities is alleviated, people may be tempted to take the law into their own hands in order to escape these conditions. The case brings home the harsh reality that the Constitution’s promise of dignity and equality for all remains for many a distant dream. …
[3] The group of people with whom we are concerned in these proceedings lived in appalling conditions, decided to move out and illegally occupied someone else’s land. They were evicted and left homeless. The root cause of their problems is the intolerable conditions under which they were living while waiting in the queue for their turn to be allocated low-cost housing. They are the people whose constitutional rights have to be determined in this case.
[6] The cause of the acute housing shortage lies in apartheid. A central feature of that policy was a system of influx control that sought to limit African occupation of urban areas. …
[23] Our Constitution entrenches both civil and political rights and social and economic rights. All the rights in our Bill of Rights are inter-related and mutually supporting. There can be no doubt that human dignity, freedom and equality, the foundational values of our society, are denied those who have no food, clothing or shelter. Affording socio-economic rights to all people therefore enables them to enjoy the other rights.
[93] This case shows the desperation of hundreds of thousands of people living in deplorable conditions throughout the country. The Constitution obliges the state to act positively to ameliorate these conditions. The obligation is to provide access to housing, health-care, sufficient food and water, and social security to those unable to support themselves and their dependants. The state must also foster conditions to enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis. Those in need have a corresponding right to demand that this be done.
[94] I am conscious that it is an extremely difficult task for the state to meet these obligations in the conditions that prevail in our country. This is recognised by the Constitution which expressly provides that the state is not obliged to go beyond available resources or to realise these rights immediately. I stress however, that despite all these qualifications, these are rights, and the Constitution obliges the state to give effect to them. This is an obligation that courts can, and in appropriate circumstances, must enforce.
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