Marie Huchzermeyer

Slum Upgrading in Nairobi within the Housing and Basic Services Market. A Housing Rights Concern

This article addresses the high level of commercialization of shelter and basic services in Nairobi, and its implication for slum upgrading in Kenya. The article is based on a review of published and grey literature, and on qualitative interviews with slum residents as well as with landlords, tenants and stakeholders in Nairobis multi-storey tenements. The Kenyan governments conceptualization of slum upgrading inserts benefits into a highly distorted market, preventing a balanced realization of the internationally recognized elements of the right to housing, and raising fears of displacement among slum residents. An analysis of the wider tenement market confirms these fears, and suggests that market distortions must be addressed in order for slum upgrading to succeed.

From ‘‘contravention of laws’’ to ‘‘lack of rights’’: redefining the problem of informal settlements in South Africa

Abstract Informal urban land occupation in South Africa is treated in a technocratic manner, consistent with the policy of orderly urbanisation introduced in the 1980s. This approach focusses on the contravention of laws governing property and land use, and accordingly results in most cases in evictions and relocations. A new mandate of the national Department of Housing is to eradicate the phenomenon of urban informal settlements in the next 15 years. This mandate gives new justification to the deterministic approach of eviction and relocation within the governments standardised capital subsidy programme for housing delivery. Legislation has been tightened to enable the repression of new informal land occupations. The recent housing strategy proposal for Johannesburg, which advocates a zero tolerance approach to informal land occupations, remains largely undisputed. However, the media has often sided with the urban poor in recent cases of forceful eviction. This paper argues for a new paradigm, based on the recognition of the infringement of constitutional rights that is enabled by informality. Far from seeing informal settlements as a solution to the housing problem, it draws attention to the multiple levels of exploitation that are common to residents of informal land occupations. A socially compatible approach to intervention is suggested. This starts with mechanisms to protect residents against the infringement of their constitutional rights, rather than acting on their contravention of property laws.

Humanism, creativity and rights: invoking Henri Lefebvre's right to the city in the tension presented by informal settlements in South

In urban South Africa today, there is evidence of deep-rooted exclusions, signalling the ongoing need to realise city rights. While the socio-economic rights framework is a liberal one, the ‘right to the city’ as coined by the French sociologist/philosopher Henri Lefebvre in the late 1960s stems from a Marxist humanism. The literature that considers the relevance of Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’ for the urban condition of the 21st century largely emanates from and speaks to urban struggles in the First World or so-called ‘global North’. At the same time, a prominent shack dwellers’ movement in South Africa invokes an explicitly Lefebvrian right to the city in its urban struggles over the past eight years. This paper discusses key aspects of Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’, in part contested, in relation to the field of tension that represents informal settlements in cities such as Johannesburg today. It focusses in particular on Lefebvre’s humanist concept of a right to the ‘oeuvre’ or ‘creative work’ in relation to that of ‘inhabiting’. These are less explored dimensions of Lefebvre’s right to the city, but of central relevance for an engagement with informal settlements and for constructive mobilization around the South African urban condition today.