Occupation
Spurred by the land invasions in Zimbabwe, the derelict Elandsfontein Farm No. 412 in Bredell, Kempton Park (outside Johannesburg) was squatted by 5,000 poor black people from a nearby overcrowded township called Tembisa in early 2001. [2]
The 23 hectares of land were owned partly by the state and partly by private owners, including electricity supplier Eskom, state-owned transport company Transnet and a company called Groengras Eiendomme. [3]
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), a small political party, encouraged the occupation by taking RS25 ($3) from each squatter, which was designed to pay for legal assistance and water, but the squatters believed they were buying their plots with the money. [4]
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there were one billion slum residents and squatters globally. Squatting occurs worldwide and tends to occur when people who are poor and homeless find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. It has a long history, broken down by country below.
Crime in South Africa includes all violent and non-violent crimes that take place in the country of South Africa, or otherwise within its jurisdiction. When compared to other countries South Africa has notably high rates of violent crime and has a reputation for consistently having one of the highest murder rates in the world. The country also experiences high rates of organised crime relative to other countries.
Abahlali baseMjondolo is a socialist shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which organises land occupations, builds communes and campaigns against evictions and xenophobia and for public housing. It has been described as "certainly the largest, most independent, militant and progressive social movement in post-apartheid South Africa" and "the largest urban social movement on the planet".
The Landless People's Movement was an independent social movement in South Africa. It consisted of rural people and people living in shack settlements in cities. The Landless People's Movement boycotted parliamentary elections and had a history of conflict with the African National Congress. The Landless People's Movement was affiliated to Via Campesina internationally and its Johannesburg branches to the Poor People's Alliance in South Africa.
The N2 Gateway Occupations saw large numbers of government-built houses occupied illegally by local residents of Delft in the Western Cape during December, 2007. The houses in question were the new Breaking New Ground (BNG) houses in the Symphony section of Delft near the main road Symphony Way. This was the largest occupation of houses in South Africa's history.
The squatter's movement Abahlali baseMjondolo occupied a piece of vacant state owned land in Macassar Village, near Somerset West outside of Cape Town on 18 May 2009. The occupation was later destroyed by the city's anti-land invasion unit.
James Mpanza (1889–1970) was a squatter camp leader in Johannesburg, South Africa from the mid-1940s until the late 1960s. In 1944 he led the land invasion that resulted in the founding of modern Soweto. Mpanza is known as 'the father of Soweto'.
In England and Wales, squatting—taking possession of land or an empty house the squatter does not own—occurs for a variety of reasons which include needing a home, protest, poverty, and recreation. Many squats are residential; some are also opened as social centres. Land may be occupied by New Age travellers or treesitters.
In March 2013 around a thousand people occupied a piece of land in Cato Crest, Durban and named it Marikana after the Marikana miners' strike. Mayor James Nxumalo blamed the occupation on migrants from the Eastern Cape. He was strongly criticised for this by the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who said that "The City Hall is red with blood".
Elias Sekgobelo "Ace" Magashule is a South African politician and former anti-apartheid activist who was Secretary General of the African National Congress (ANC) until his suspension on 3 May 2021. He served as the Premier of the Free State, one of South Africa's nine provinces, from 2009 until 2018, and is known to be influential in the ANC of his home province.
Nqobile Nzuza was a resident in the Marikana Land Occupation in Cato Crest, which is part of Cato Manor in Durban, South Africa. She was a member of the shackdwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
Squatting in the Republic of Ireland is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. In the 1960s, the Dublin Housing Action Committee highlighted the housing crisis by squatting buildings. From the 1990s onwards there have been occasional political squats in Cork and Dublin such as Grangegorman, the Barricade Inn, the Bolt Hostel, Connolly Barracks, That Social Centre and James Connolly House.
Wynand Johannes Boshoff is a South African academic and politician from the Northern Cape serving as a Member of the National Assembly of South Africa for the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) since 2019. He has been serving as the Provincial Leader of the FF+ since 2015. He previously served as a municipal councillor of the Sol Plaatje Local Municipality from 2016 to 2019. Boshoff is the grandson of the assassinated apartheid-era Prime Minister of South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd, who served from 1958 until 1966, and the son of Afrikaner enclave Orania founder, Carel Boshoff.
Squatting in Peru is the occupation of unused or derelict buildings or land without the permission of the owner. From the 1940s onwards, land invasions to create shanty towns called barriadas and later pueblos jóvenes have occurred. At first they were repressed, then the government tolerated them and by 1998 it was estimated 2.5 million inhabitants lived in pueblos jóvenes in the capital Lima. In Lima there are also slum tenements in the centre known as solares or tugurios. A Wall of Shame has been built to separate rich and poor areas of the city. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru, an increase in the occupation of UNESCO World Heritage Sites such as Caral and the Nazca Lines was reported.
Squatting in Ghana is the occupation of unused land or derelict buildings without the permission of the owner. Informal settlements are found in cities such as Kumasi and the capital Accra. Ashaiman, now a town of 100,000 people, was swelled by squatters. In central Accra, next to Agbogbloshie, the Old Fadama settlement houses an estimated 80,000 people and is subject to a controversial discussion about eviction. The residents have been supported by Amnesty International, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions and Shack Dwellers International.
Squatting in Iran mostly occurs around the major cities, as rural migrants move to urban centres. From the 1950s onwards shanty towns have been set up and inhabitants are known as "koukhnishinan". Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, squatter settlements increased, with the state sometimes evicting and sometimes legalizing the areas.
Squatting in Nepal occurs when people live on land or in buildings without the valid land ownership certificate. The number of squatters has increased rapidly since the 1980s, as a result of factors such as internal migration to Kathmandu and civil war. In March 2021, the chairperson of the Commission on Landless Squatters stated that all landless squatters would receive ownership certificates within the following eighteen months.
Land invasion in South Africa is seen as the illegal occupation of land with the intention of erecting dwellings or establishing a settlement on it and is an issue that is affecting various municipalities in South Africa especially in the face of increased urbanisation in bigger metropolitans like The City of Cape Town, eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality and the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality.
The eKhenana Commune is a prominent land occupation in the historic working-class area of Cato Manor in Durban, South Africa. According to the Socio-Economic Rights Institute "The eKhenana settlement is organised as a cooperative in which residents collectively run a communal kitchen and tuck shop, theatre, poetry and music projects, and care for a subsistence vegetable garden named after the late Nkululeko Gwala [assassinated in 2013] as well as a poultry farm named in honour of the late S’fiso Ngcobo [assassinated in 2018].
