South Africans do not have adequate protection against land grabs in terms of our laws. A DA bill will rectify that, in a multi-pronged approach to fix our country’s decades-long housing crisis.

Due to the ANC’s governance failures over the past 30 years SA sits with a widespread housing crisis. In 1994 the ANC promised to build 5-million new homes — a target both missed by more than 1.5-million homes as of 2024, and outdated considering that our population has grown by more than 20-million South Africans in our democracy to date.

According to some experts our country sits with a housing backlog of about 2.5-million homes, which cannot be cross-referenced as the department of human settlements does not keep an updated record. Our housing crisis could therefore be worse than we know.

What we do know is that despite receiving more from taxpayers, human settlements has built fewer and fewer homes. In 2012/13 the department received R25bn, with which 115,079 homes were built. If we fast forward to today the department will receive R34bn this financial year, with a target of building 28,776 homes, which will likely be missed.

As of 2024, there is also a title-deed backlog of 1.2-million, the vast majority being post-1994 beneficiaries. Our housing crisis is resoundingly of the making of the six previous administrations and will likely worsen under the present leadership.

The consequence of this governance failure has been the rapid rise of informal settlements across the country. More than 2-million South Africans live in informal settlements, mushroomed mostly in our metros due to proximity to economic opportunities.

To be clear, homelessness is not a crime in our country, and nor for the most part are the circumstances of the homeless of their making. The buck stops with human settlements. There are, however, also nefarious individuals profiting from this crisis. In addition to building more houses, the DA wants to stop these individuals in their tracks.

In Buffalo City this year correctional officers and members of the SA Police Service were caught selling state-owned land for R50,000 per plot. About 15,000 plots were illegally sold, to the tune of R75m. The city/state did not receive a cent of this and instead had to foot the bill due to illegal water and electricity connections, taking away from services entitled to ratepayers.

In Tygerberg, during the Covid-19 lockdown a raceway earmarked for state-subsidy housing was illegally invaded as soon as plans for social housing were announced. A site worth R60m has now been taken away from the needy, awaiting to be housed via a legal process.

Taxpayers are footing a double bill. First, to provide housing for the needy via our legal process and second, to compensate for revenue lost due to illegal water and electricity connections from land invasions. The Western Cape government last year put a figure to this double cost.

While the province will spend R6.4bn on housing projects across the medium-term, over the past five years more than R1.5bn has been lost due to illegal land invasions. This could have taken many off the streets, providing the dignity of housing.

In addition to syndicates on the ground, there are wealthy political leaders in our country exploiting the vulnerable. The leader of the EFF, whose assets are under increasing scrutiny as they compare to his salary, in 2017 incited his supporters to invade privately-owned land. To score political points, he opted to criminally endanger his supporters with trespassing.

While he ultimately footed legal costs in litigation, he has still yet to held accountable for his incitement of landgrabs. It is this that the DA seeks to tackle — those that manipulate the vulnerable into land invasions for their own benefit.

The DA’s “Illegal Land Invasion Bill” (formally known as the “Prevention of Illegal Eviction from Unlawful Occupation Act Amendment Bill”) is aimed solely aimed at such syndicates. The loopholes our bill seeks to fill are:

• Criminalising the incitement to unlawfully occupy land, even if no payment is solicited or received, increasing the jail sentence to five years,
• Expanding the criteria for courts in consideration of eviction applications to include the intent, financial means and previous living arrangements of occupiers, as well as,
• If evicted, requiring the courts to determine the duration for which unlawful occupiers are provided alternative accommodated.

What this will achieve is locking up bad faith actors while focusing the state’s resources on building more houses for the needy by fast tracking the legal process. The process is incredibly slow, which the DA also has a plan for.

It is unacceptable that while taxpayers have footed more to house the vulnerable, fewer homes are being built. South Africans deserve to know why the average number of homes built yearly has significantly dropped from an average of about 100,000 more than a decade ago to about 30,000 today.

We need to establish why the title deed backlog has ballooned to over 1-million, and what the immediate plan is to solve this. The DA has undertaken a national probe to establish the exact housing backlog as the current data from human settlements is not reputable.

We invite all parties to join us as we strengthen the legal process to home ownership in SA and give expression to Section 26 of our constitution, which guarantees adequate housing to all. We must follow a pragmatic path to achieving this, as there are no shortcuts.

Fixing this multipronged problem is not as convenient as bulldozing structures in the middle of the night, as proposed by the premier of Gauteng in frustration. It is about following our hard-fought legislative process, which empowers us to permanently fix problems.

To colleagues across parliament, when the 7th parliament rises in 2029 do you want to have strengthened land ownership or be remembered for turning a blind eye to the cries of communities across our nation? That is the choice.

• Mphithi, MP, is DA human settlements spokesperson.