The Grootboom case and the constitutional right to housing: the politics of planning in post-apartheid South Africa

Miss Irene Grootboom was one of a group of 390 adults and 510 children living in appalling circumstances in Wallacedene, an informal housing settlement in Cape Town. In September 1998, they illegally occupied land near the settlement which had been earmarked for lowcost housing. They were forcibly evicted, their shacks bulldozed and burnt and their possessions destroyed. In desperation they settled in Wallacedene sports field and in an adjacent community hall. The Legal Resources Centre, an NGO based in Cape Town, together with other legal activists decided to use their case to test the enforceability of their constitutional right to housing. This chapter uses the Grootboom case to argue that the inauguration of formal democracy in 1994 in South Africa has not led to basic constitutional rights being translated into the de facto daily lived experience of ordinary people. It examines some of the factors which help to explain this failure, drawing attention in particular to the extent to which racist attitudes and practices continue to structure the planning process, making it extremely difficult to implement the Integrated Development Planning approach adopted by the state as its primary vehicle for delivering services at local level