Why should illegal squatters have more rights than property owners who have worked hard to purchase and maintain their property? Technically, they don’t. Yet, as the law in action stands, squatters seem to be able to run roughshod over not just private property owners and landlords, but even local governments.

A community near to where I live have recently finally seen the end of a long struggle with squatting tenants. The tenants were dangerous drug addicts, with reports that they would steal from neighbours, and manipulate sympathetic members of the community for charity. Earlier this year, the court ordered the squatters to vacate a house that they been squatting in, refusing to pay rent, for over three years.

The story gets worse. The landlord was sympathetic to their condition and had offered cash incentives (amounting to tens of thousands of Rands) for the squatters to move out. The squatters refused. After law enforcement eventually evicted them, they proceeded to squat on the side of the road, erecting a shack on another private citizen’s verge. Their pit bull was kept off a leash, when it wasn’t being beaten in the open, and would chase people as they walked their dogs. It even attempted to chase a person’s dog into their own property.

It took weeks for law enforcement to finally break the shack and evict the squatters again, as they were able to manipulate ineffectual officials and cops by telling them sob stories and downright lying about waiting on a mishmash of bureaucratic decisions to be made.

After the landlord of the stolen property was able to regain control of his property, he found that everything had been stolen. Wiring, metal, the geyser, sinks, toilets. Everything. His recourse? Nothing. Law enforcement refuses to do anything and the process has been so exhausting that it just isn’t worth pursuing criminal action. And civil action? There’s nothing to take in a lawsuit.

There are stories like this throughout South Africa. We’re trained to feel sympathetic. And perhaps we should. To a point. The fact of the matter is that there are plenty of people who have been dealt worse cards than many squatters – yet they don’t use that as an excuse to commit a crime. And squatting is and should be a crime seen as equivalent to downright theft. Perhaps, even worse.

The rate of squatting tenants, according to the TPN Squat Index, has risen from 3.48% to 3.71% since the end of 2023. While we can easily detest landlords for doing their job, at the end of the day it is their property that they have purchased and invested in. No one has any right not to pay them the rent agreed upon.

As squatting rates rise, the incentive to develop property and rent it out plummets. This means fewer homes for people across the board. Which means higher rent for the homes that remain, as supply can’t keep up with demand.

While there is a reason to disallow the summary eviction of squatters without a court order, the process needs to be changed. Victims should not be required to pay a hefty amount in legal fees and wait an inordinate amount of time just to kick what amounts to a criminal trespasser from their land.

The process needs to be streamlined. Showing the lease agreement to law enforcement, and proof of non-payment should be enough to evict squatters. It should not take longer than a month to get a lawful eviction.

But what is a long-term solution to the squatting problem in South Africa? How do we stop the need to squat in the first place? For the case of the addicts in my anecdote, and many of the entitled criminals in the cases above, we need streamlined legal processes to disincentivise non-payment. But for mass illegal land occupation, we need reforms that enable people to be able to afford to pay rent.

NICHOLAS WOODE-SMITH | Senior Associate of the Free Market Foundation

***The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media or IOL.***

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