Herron: “Land & Building Occupations: Two-Track System Protects Historic Inequality”

This speech was delivered by GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament Brett Herron during today’s interpellation mini-debate the plan to upgrade informal settlements – which are also initially “unlawfully occupied” but refuse to plan for occupied buildings or even provide services to the occupants:

First response

What does the dramatically different way the province responds to land occupations versus occupations of vacant buildings tell us about the Western Cape’s commitment to spatial integration?

Although the law views “unlawful occupations” as unlawful – period – regardless whether it applies to land or buildings, those who occupy land in the Western Cape are generally treated with kid gloves while those who occupy buildings are viewed as constituting a grave and urgent threat.

There’s a simple reason for this anomaly, and it’s ugly:

Land occupations generally occur on the periphery of the City, far from suburbs that were previously reserved for Whites.

Buildings, however, can be much closer to home, like in Sea Point, and must be “cleaned up” at any cost.

It’s an unashamed two-track system: When an occupation occurs on peripheral land, the state can afford to adopt a “developmental” posture.

There’s time for mediation, assessments, and sometimes even interim services. There’s no mad rush.

When an occupation happens in a building, especially a well-located one, it triggers an emergency like when Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall.

Security forces converge on the site, and the “caring” state’s developmental posture goes out the window replaced by concerns over “asset protection”, “security risks”, and the absolute necessity for urgent evictions.

Millions of Rands are spent securing empty buildings instead of securing families’ access to dignified housing.

Speaker, what that speaks to is a province that prioritises property over people; that prioritises the preservation of spatial injustice and human separation.

It boils down to values. Political values and land values.

The DA has calculated that the simplest route to maintain its supporters, and therefore their votes, is to maintain the close relationship between race and space – engineered in the “good old days”.

Besides the injustice, longer-term strategic thinking, such as the irrationally feared impacts on property values if the inequality bubble bursts, don’t appear to feature in Wale Street’s calculations.

Thus, a family erecting a shack on a sandy patch of land in Delft may be tolerated – even assisted – for months while government figures out what to do.

But if that same family moved into a state-owned building, that has been vacant for decades, in an area like Green Point or Woodstock, they are met with fences, guards, and lawyers.

Same legal category.
Same human need.
Dramatically different treatment.

Shameful, but true.

Speaker, we should thank the Premier for making it so crystal clear that the Western Cape’s priorities do not remotely align with its stated commitments to spatial justice and affordable housing in well-located areas.

Second response

In my career as a politician I have regularly interacted with people who have felt compelled by their desperate social conditions to occupy property that did not belong to them.

I have never been warned that I was “almost trespassing”, as I recently was, when trying to take a picture of the Tafelberg School site in Sea Point.

This exposes the double standards.

Periphery land occupations are treated as a housing issue, but inner-city building occupations are framed as security threats to be neutralised.

Speaker, this is not neutral governance.

This is spatial politics, dressed up as administrative procedure.

It perpetuates historic injustices and protects an assumption about property values over human dignity.

We saw this movie unfolding at Helen Bowden.

And we saw it at Woodstock Hospital.

In both cases, instead of engaging the occupants as people with acute needs seeking housing near their places of work, the Province treated them as intruders.

Their presence was criminalised before their circumstances were understood.

And that approach, Honourable Speaker, is not only unjust, it is strategically irrational in a province facing a deepening affordability crisis and widening inequality.

This distinction matters, because buildings in well-located areas are exactly where social housing ought to be delivered first.

Instead, the Province defends the people’s assets from the people who need them most, and then, crucially, fails to provide alternative accommodation anywhere but miles away on the edge of the urban footprint.

Minister Simmers told us that there are 1 274 informal settlements in the Western Cape.

By his own admission, most of these settlements emerged from “unlawful occupations,” whether on private or government-owned land.

Yet 115 of them are set to be upgraded, despite originating from these so-called unlawful occupations. Of course, none of them are in well-located areas…

People occupy land out of necessity, not convenience.

If we are serious about spatial justice, we cannot operate a two-tier system in which vulnerable communities are only treated with compassion if they choose to live far from opportunity.

If we are serious about human dignity, we can’t be providing basic services to some communities but disconnecting the basic services that are available – water, electricity and sanitation – to others.

Occupations should not be treated differently based on the postcode.

And, at the very least, and urgently, this government must reconnect the basic human services to the people living in the Waterfront.

GOOD Community Development: The party is involved in various community development projects.

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