SAHRC finds NW Human Settlements Department violated housing rights

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has determined that the North West Department of Human Settlements violated the right to adequate housing.

The finding follows an investigation into over 5 500 incomplete RDP housing projects in the province.

According to the SAHRC, complaints received since 2011 revealed systemic and widespread issues affecting municipalities across the North West. The Commission attributed the challenges to inadequate oversight by the provincial Treasury and the Office of the Premier, citing poor planning and contractual disputes as key factors behind the abandoned projects.

Basebi Mogorosi, a 70-year-old resident of Tsetse village near Mahikeng, has been waiting for an RDP house since 1995. She continues to live in a one-room shack, which her son, Buti Motshabi, has had to rebuild twice after it was destroyed by strong winds.

Motshabi says, “I had to rebuild the shack twice. It was blown away by the strong winds twice. I had to request our neighbours to help me rebuild it after people told me that my mother was living in the streets because her shack got blown away.”

SAHRC Commissioner Phindile Ntuli says that 457 complaints had been recorded, with 205 new cases registered recently, highlighting ongoing accountability and housing challenges in the province.

“Other government departments that are meant to play an oversight role over the Department of Human Settlements, such as the North West Treasury, as well as the North West Office of the Premier, have collectively been complicit in these failures. They are complicit because they failed to take reasonable measures to hold the Department of Human Settlements to account and to ensure that funds allocated to them for houses and projects deliver value to the state and to the beneficiaries.”

Right to adequate housing violated says SAHRC