IRR to ask SAHRC to declare SA’s housing, title deeds backlogs human rights violations

The scale of South Africa’s title deeds backlog and the slowing of government-subsidised housing provision has prompted the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) to seek the intervention of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) in declaring these failures human rights violations.

The Commission has made a similar declaration within the ambit of housing-related delays in the case, for example, of the delayed delivery of Reconstruction and Development Programme houses to beneficiaries in North West. According to a November 2024 report, the SAHRC found that the North West Department of Human Settlements (NWDHS) had been “infringing upon beneficiaries’ constitutional rights” by failing to timeously and adequately deliver the RDP houses.

In its report, the SAHRC placed the blame squarely at the feet of the NWDHS, identifying the reasons behind this gross violation as including “mismanagement, inadequate planning [and] contractual disputes…” in addition to “insufficient oversight”, which worsened the issue.

In September last year, Minister of Human Settlements Thembi Simelane revealed that the title deeds backlog exceeded 1 million, and that more than 30,000 of these unallocated deeds dated back to the apartheid era. Between 1994 and 2014, the number of unissued title deeds grew to 423,642, and nearly doubled over the next decade to 774,064.

Says Makone Maja, IRR Strategic Engagements Manager: “Surely this deprivation of property rights to title deed beneficiaries is as egregious as the failures by the NWDHS, and equally deserving of being declared a human rights violation by the SAHRC.”

Maja notes that it emerged in a parliamentary debate in November last year that the Department was aware of 593 potential beneficiaries having died without being granted their title deeds.

“These individuals waited in vain for property rights they were promised.”

Maja concludes: “The IRR will be writing to the Commission to register its strongest condemnation of this abhorrent stain on our government. Both the government and the Commission itself claim to be determined to course correct and make up for injustices of the past.

“Condemning these backlogs as human rights violations and implementing accountability measures to expedite clearing the backlog is how the SAHRC can ensure that this injustice ceases to be perpetrated against people who have waited since the dawn of democracy to enjoy the property rights protections they were promised.”

Media contact: Makone Maja, IRR Strategic Engagements Manager Tel: 079 418 6676 Email: makone@irr.org.za

Media enquiries: Michael Morris IRR Head of Media Tel: 066 302 1968 Email: michael@irr.org.za