Three years of silence on state land, communities pay the cost
Government asked communities applying for land to follow the rules. Then it went silent.
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About 600 people marched in August 2023 to the official Cape Town residence of President Cyril Ramaphosa to demand the release of 24 parcels of state land. Archive photo: Vincent Lali
On 23 August 2023, communities, social movements and civil society organisations applied for access to state-owned land for housing.
Formal applications were submitted for 24 parcels of state land across the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal under the State Land Disposal Act of 1961.
Three years later, they are still waiting for an answer.
Since then, communities have done everything asked of them. They followed the prescribed process, participated in government engagements and assessments, and repeatedly sought information from the institutions responsible for taking the process forward: the Housing Development Agency (HDA), the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI), and the Department of Human Settlements (DHS). In return, they have been met with silence.
We will not accept a situation where government institutions frustrate a process through inaction, poor coordination or a failure to communicate.
The HDA cannot simply point to institutional challenges with other government departments while communities receive no meaningful information.
The DHS cannot tell communities that an official will provide answers and then fail to facilitate the promised engagement.
The DPWI cannot simply ignore formal correspondence from communities seeking information about a government process that directly affects their lives and futures.
Every month of silence is a month where families remain in overcrowded backyards, informal settlements and precarious tenancies, waiting on a process that the government itself set in motion. The delay is not neutral. It has a cost, and that cost is being carried entirely by the communities who did everything right.
A formal letter was sent to public works director-general Sifiso Mdakane requesting an update and an intervention on the delays. It has never been acknowledged.
A government department that cannot bring itself to confirm receipt of a letter about the homes and futures of thousands of people has told communities everything they need to know about where they stand in its priorities.
A process stalled by the State’s own institutions
Following a march and engagement with the government on 23 August 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa instructed the DHS and DPWI to establish an Inter-Ministerial Task Team to process the applications. The HDA was mandated to assess the parcels for suitability. It identified 12 sites suitable for housing. However, these sites remain vacant and others are occupied. According to the HDA, Department of Public works & Infrastructure, Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town have not responded to their invitation to a meeting, and as a result, the HDA has been unable to proceed with the process.
Communities and civil society organisations engaged constructively with the HDA on the proposed Terms of Reference, submitting amendments to keep the process transparent and accountable. The communities that applied for these sites live in precarious conditions, including in occupations and without security of tenure. One of the communities is Reclaim The City, whose residents occupy Ahmed Kathrada House in Green Point, Cape Town.
Instead of moving toward implementation, the process stalled. The HDA has since cited difficulties cooperating with other government departments and the City of Cape Town, in particular.
It is not an acceptable reason to leave affected communities without information about a process that will determine where they live.
Communities were not consulted on the internal disagreements between the HDA, DPWI, DHS and the City. They were not party to whatever institutional wrangling is producing this delay. It is not their responsibility to absorb the cost of government departments failing to coordinate with one another, and yet that is precisely what three years of silence have demanded of them.
The pattern has repeated with the DHS. After a stakeholder engagement in Johannesburg, Ndifuna Ukwazi and community representatives were told that deputy director-general Mhlongo would provide an update. A meeting was requested, followed up on repeatedly, and repeatedly promised. It has still not happened.
Promises of engagement that are never honoured are not a communication failure. They are a choice, repeated often enough to become a pattern, and a pattern this consistent cannot be explained away as an oversight.
Three institutions, three separate failures to communicate. Together, they add up to three years with no answer, and three years in which the 12 parcels already identified as suitable for human settlement have sat undeveloped while the people who applied for them wait to hear anything at all.
What we are demanding
We call on the HDA, the DPWI and the DHS to urgently provide:
- A clear public update on the status of the 2023 applications;
- a full explanation for the delays;
- clarity on the composition and functioning of the Inter-Ministerial Task Team;
- an account of the institutional obstacles between the HDA, DPWI, DHS and the City of Cape Town;
- a realistic, publicly communicated timeline for resolving these issues and progressing the 12 parcels already found suitable;
- a commitment to regular, transparent communication with affected communities;
- meaningful participation by communities in monitoring and implementation.
The government cannot ask communities to follow every rule of the process while it ignores its own obligation to communicate.
“The silence of the state is what forces us to take the necessary measures. We cannot live on the housing waiting list forever. The state wanted to introduce sites and services, and we wanted to meet them halfway by identifying suitable sites and the laws that could help fast-track the process. However, it is clear that the state has no sense of urgency when it comes to resolving the housing crisis,” commented Hlubikazi Mayekiso from Social Distance in Khayelitsha.
Silence is not neutral: for the families waiting for this land, it has the same effect as a refusal, except that it comes with no explanation and no accountability attached. Communities have waited three years for an answer. They should not have to wait a fourth.
Views expressed are not necessarily those of GroundUp.
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© 2026 GroundUp. This article is published under the GroundUp Republication Licence Version 1.0. Email [email protected] to request permission to republish.