South Africa has roughly 3.7 million families without housing, a number growing by 178 000 every year.
The government has published a Bill that makes it a criminal offence to organise poor communities around land and shelter. Parliament is expected to receive it by late July or early August. Public comment closes mid-June.
The Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Amendment Bill – the PIE Amendment Bill of 2026 – was published on 16 April by Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane.
The department frames it as a tightening of enforcement, a response to the burden unlawful occupation places on the government and private sector.
Nine prominent housing rights organisations and trade unions released a joint statement on 24 April setting out their objections.
Ndifuna Ukwazi, Abahlali baseMjondolo, Reclaim the City, the Inner City Federation, GIWUSA, Saftu, SERI, Abahlali base Freedom Park and Rent Control share a common position: the Bill threatens the constitutional protections that prevent South Africa from evicting people into homelessness.
The provision drawing most concern creates criminal offences for anyone who “incites, arranges, organises or permits” land occupation, punishable by fines of up to R2 million, two years in prison, or both.
Across a country where millions occupy land because there is nowhere else to go, the organisations argue this provision extends well beyond organised criminality. Community leaders, housing activists and the organisations of the poor themselves fall under its reach.
Union leaders have described the Bill as an all-out attack on the working class.
The history these organisations invoke matters. Under apartheid, the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951 criminalised occupation and enabled the forced removal of black and working-class people without consideration of their circumstances.
The constitution, adopted in 1996, dismantled that legal framework. Section 26 gave everyone the right of access to adequate housing.
Section 26(3) prohibited eviction without a court order made after considering all relevant circumstances. The PIE Act of 1998 was the legislation that gave those constitutional provisions practical force.
In the decades since, the Constitutional Court has built a consistent body of case law on that foundation. Courts must assess whether eviction is just and equitable, weigh the situations of children, the elderly, people with disabilities and women-headed households, and satisfy themselves that alternative accommodation exists before rendering families homeless.
The organisations argue the Amendment Bill cuts against this body of law. In their reading, courts would be able to order evictions even where no alternative accommodation exists, on the basis that the state lacks resources.
Where temporary accommodation is provided, people could face renewed eviction once it expires, leaving them in a cycle of displacement with no resolution. The Bill also narrows the factors courts must consider.
The organisations are calling for an amendment process grounded in constitutional principles and the lived realities of affected communities – one that strengthens existing protections rather than eroding them.
They want courts required to consider the social value of land, a standard that would orient the legal framework toward land as a shared resource rather than a commodity.
South Africa’s housing crisis requires urban land reform at scale, real investment in affordable housing and effective use of existing mechanisms like state land release and expropriation in the public interest.
The PIE Act has served, however imperfectly, as the last legal barrier between the country’s most vulnerable households and the street. Amending it into an instrument of criminalisation would mean abandoning the people the constitution was written to protect.
