IDO LEKOTA
Helen Zille has made stopping land invasions one of the clearest promises of her campaign for the Johannesburg mayoralty. Launching the Democratic Alliance’s digital campaign platform, she declared: “We will be tough on crime, reclaim hijacked buildings and stop land invasions.” In an earlier eNCA interview, she went further: “We’re working very hard in Parliament and very close to amending the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act to make it much easier to move people out of invaded buildings or illegally occupied properties.”
Her language is unmistakably enforcement-oriented. It speaks to residents worried about hijacked buildings, unsafe structures, criminality, and the erosion of municipal authority. It promises a city in which government will reclaim control of land and public spaces. Yet before Johannesburg embraces that approach, it must look carefully at what happened at the Chief Albert Luthuli informal settlement – better known as the N12 Settlement – in Benoni. The recent Gauteng High Court ruling provides more than a legal precedent. It is a test of whether Zille’s proposed policy would restore the rule of law or simply give the state greater power to remove people without addressing where they will live.
The demolitions at N12 were not abstract exercises in law enforcement. Media reports from IOL and eNCA, captured live experiences of families suddenly stripped of shelter. These included Jane Mmabatho, who had lived at the settlement for 15 years, seeing her home destroyed with furniture and documents still inside. She was left homeless with 11 other people, including six grandchildren. Ceroline Mphuthi, 71, watched her home being demolished in front of her and was left sleeping “outside.”
Other residents told eNCA they had not been served with eviction notices and had been “left homeless.” A television report recorded residents saying they had been removed “without any prior notice” and given “not even any alternative accommodation.” These accounts give the legal dispute a human face. They expose the danger of treating “land invasion” as a complete explanation for what happened. Behind the label were families, possessions, documents, elderly people, and children – not merely anonymous structures marked for removal.
On 14 June 2026, Judge Stuart Wilson granted interim relief restoring displaced individuals and their families to the settlement, interdicting further demolitions without a court order, and directing the municipality to erect temporary structures. The Executive Mayor and City Manager were required to report back on implementation.
When Ekurhuleni sought leave to appeal, Judge Wilson rejected the City’s contention that restoring residents somehow gave them a permanent right to occupy the land. “It does no such thing,” he said. The issue was not permanent occupation but whether residents had been unlawfully evicted in circumstances where a court order was required.
This distinction is essential. The ruling did not declare every occupation lawful. It did not extinguish municipal power to regulate land use. It did not prevent the City from addressing illegal mining, criminal activity, or unsafe conditions. What it rejected was the idea that a municipality could settle those questions by demolishing homes and evicting residents without following the law.
Judge Wilson emphasized: “The question was always whether it had been established on a prima facie basis that the occupiers were illegally evicted from the property.” The SAHRC had compiled a list of occupiers’ names, identity numbers, and stand numbers. “This was plainly more than enough to establish the occupiers’ prima facie rights to be restored to the property.”
That finding is significant. It recognizes that informal residents are not an anonymous mass to be cleared away. They are identifiable people with homes, families, possessions, and rights. Their occupation may be unlawful, disputed, or vulnerable to challenge, but they remain rights-bearing individuals.
The SAHRC described the judgment as a victory for human rights. It linked the case to Section 26(3) of the Constitution, which prohibits eviction or demolition without a court order. Judge Wilson’s criticism of the municipality was unusually severe: he described its conduct as “redolent of the apartheid regime” and referred to its “apparently callous disregard”for dignity.
These comments should be read alongside Zille’s promise to make it “much easier to move people out” of illegally occupied properties. They do not mean Johannesburg must tolerate land occupations indefinitely. They do mean that any policy of easier removal must be designed with extraordinary care.
The term “land invasion” is politically dangerous. It collapses a complicated social reality into a single criminal label. An occupation may involve a criminal syndicate selling plots it does not own, a political entrepreneur mobilising desperate people, an extortionist controlling access to land – and hundreds of families who simply have nowhere else to go. Those actors do not possess the same power or responsibility. Yet a demolition operation can treat them as though they do.
Zille and the DA insist they want to target organisers and profiteers rather than poor people seeking shelter. The DA has called for criminalising the incitement and organisation of unlawful land invasions and warned about those who exploit vulnerable residents or sell land they do not own. That is a legitimate objective. Land fraud, violence, extortion, and political profiteering should be investigated and prosecuted.
But the practical question is whether municipal enforcement will reliably distinguish between the syndicate and the resident, the organiser and the family, the profiteer and the survivor. Section 26(3) requires more than good intentions. It requires a court order before eviction or demolition, and consideration of all relevant circumstances.
Eviction is not the end of the municipal story – it is the moment housing obligations become most urgent. With 3.4 million households registered for housing assistance in 2026, Johannesburg cannot simply close informal routes to land without opening credible formal ones. A viable policy must therefore combine enforcement with housing delivery: it must target land fraud, extortion, and profiteering while guaranteeing lawful eviction processes; it must provide serviced land, water, sanitation, and secure tenure; it must upgrade informal settlements where feasible and plan relocations with dignity; and it must ensure transparency and accountability through public reporting and deadlines. Only by integrating these elements can the city avoid criminalising poverty while restoring order.
