Herman Mashaba’s Legacy of Negligence On Land Invasions Casts A Shadow Over Upcoming Local Elections

The periodic emergence of temporary, illegal housing settlements continues to be millstone around the neck of the provincial government of Gauteng. Concentrated predominantly in the Southern region of Johannesburg, in suburban areas such as Lenasia, these informal settlements have been a recurring issue of the metropolitan area for some time, and are associated with rates of homelessness and rapid urbanization in the area. 

However, that is not to say land invasion is some sort of inevitable byproduct of an urban/suburban area undergoing development. Gross mismanagement and negligence of the situation that has prompted an explosion in the rate of land invasions over the past few years, a fact that did not escape the late Geoff Makhubo, former mayor of Johannesburg. 

Makhubo noted early on in his relatively brief tenure in Johannesburg that these illegal settlements had become more and more prevalent in the metropolitan area, with over forty new locations emerging in the past few years alone. This statistic places the blame squarely at the feet of Makhubo’s predecessor, Herman Mashaba. 

“Mashaba looked away when these [invasions)] were happening in the south”, Makhubo said in 2020, mere months after he assumed office from Herman Mashaba. 

Mr. Makhubo added that his predecessor fostered a state of “anarchy” by allowing people to invade land and build settlements with little by way of regulations or consequences whilst he was in office. The late APC politician issued this condemnation at the Gauteng government’s ‘Fight Against Land Invasion’ launch in Lenasia in August 2020, where he also drew a connection between land invasion and organised crime in Johannesburg. 

Gauteng Human Settlements, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) MEC, Lebogang Maile, confirmed this troubling reality.

“That part of Johannesburg, the south, the whole area since 2016 has gone out of control… from 2016 we have seen the upsurge of illegal informal settlements,” Maile said, referring to crime syndicates invading vacant plots of land and selling them, free from recrimination or the possibility of their ‘tenants’ being evicted.

The COGTA official did acknowledge that “the Lenasia situation” was a recurring issue. However, he was swift to add that the illicit practice had only thrived since 2016 (the year Mashaba assumed office) “because we had a city at the time which had a crazy mayor who was not interested in people’s interests but was just obsessed with himself and PR.”

It is not difficult to see how Mashaba’s interests may have been served by turning a blind eye to this practice during his time in office. The current leader of ActionSA then led a minority government in Gauteng, holding 103 of 270 seats. His authority in the municipality was entirely reliant on the good favour of the EFF, with whom he had an agreement that they would provide the voting power of their 30 seats.

The far-left party are outspoken proponents of land invasion, with senior figures such as Mandisa Mashego, EFF chairperson in Gauteng during Mashaba’s tenure, openly encouraging it. The party have even been taken to court over the controversy, with disparate political organisations coming together to condemn it.  

Yet Mashaba clearly did nothing to curb its rise during his tenure as mayor of Johannesburg; indeed, he likely viewed it as a necessary condition of his power. All the while 1.2 million people sat on the Gauteng waiting list for housing. The residents of southern Johannesburg who pay for their housing saw basic services such as water and electricity disrupted by the unsightly settlements that cropped up around them. 

Herman Mashaba is, of course, no longer in power in Johannesburg - it is now under the jurisdiction of ANC. Remarkably, even an organisation with as little credibility as them with respect to rooting out corruption have managed to oversee any improvement. Maile and Makhubo at least raised the profile of the issue, rather than sweeping it under the rug, and had some success in assigning patrol guards to vacant plots of land to defend them from invasion. 

However, Mashaba and his ActionSA party are standing for election in Gauteng again in the upcoming municipal elections on 1st November, as well as five other districts. It is imperative to the progress that has been made to combat land invasion that these districts are not subjected to the neglect of Mashaba leadership once more.