Monthly talk series with Dr. Marius Pieterse

Towards a right to the city? The slow convergence of rights to housing and land in South African constitutional jurisprudence

Rights work slowly. In South Africa, initial assessments of the judicial vindication of a constitutionally entrenched right to housing suggested that, while the right provided protection against eviction and could address emergency housing situations, it was of limited use in addressing structural injustice pertaining to unequal access to housing in cities and towns. But over time, judicial vindication of the right to housing has served to give poor and vulnerable communities a foothold in South African cities, which is productively being leveraged by social movements claiming a right to the city. Meanwhile, a separate remedial framework around land rights appears to be slowly converging with the housing jurisprudence, in ways that hold significant potential for transformative change. This talk briefly traces these processes, with a focus on their culmination in the recent judgment of the Cape High Court in Adonisi v Minister for Transport and Public Works: Western Cape, which prohibited the sale of publicly-owned inner city land and mandated its use towards affordable housing.

About the speaker

Dr. Marius Pieterse is a professor in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he teaches urban and local government law, constitutional law and human rights law. His research focuses on urban governance, local government law and the realisation of socio-economic rights in an urban context. Marius is the author of “Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa: The right to Joburg” (Routledge, 2017); “Can Rights Cure? The Impact of Human Rights Litigation on South Africa’s Health System” (PULP, 2014) as well as a large number of peer reviewed academic journal articles on different aspects of rights-based litigation, socio-economic rights, urban governance, the right to health, the right to equality and the relationship between law and urban space. He is joint global coordinator of the International Research Group of Law and Urban Space (IRGLUS). In 2022 Marius was an individual fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Amsterdam, pursuing research on strategic uses of human rights law in and by African cities.

About the monthly EVICT talks

On the third Thursday of every other month, we will have a speaker on a topic related to evictions, the right to housing, housing law, the (complex) relation between international law and national law, and/or data science. Each month, we will have a different international speaker (ranging from scholars to practitioners) who will offer fascinating insights into their area of expertise. Check out our events page for all upcoming and past events, which will have links to recordings of the talks.

The talks will be held online unless indicated otherwise. Each of these talks will begin at 4:00 pm and end at 5:00 pm (Central European Time, UTC+01:00).

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The talk will take place online. Join us on Bluejeans. Signing up is not necessary.

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