03/06/2026
The Campaign to Scrap the Labour Law Amendment Bill says:
We REJECT changes to the Eviction law!
Dozens of organisations who belong to the Campaign to Scrap the Labour Law Amendment Bill have come out strongly against the governments' attempts to change the Eviction Laws.
This is the pamphlet from the campaign. The organisations supporting it can be seen in the picture above.
In April 2026, the Minister of Human Settlements released the Draft Prevention of Illegal Eviction (PIE) from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Amendment Bill of 2026. The main aim is to criminalise the occupation of land and buildings and make it easier for landowners and landlords to evict working class people.
The ANC, DA and landowners complain that there are too many occupations of land and buildings by the working class. They say that the existing PIE Act of 1998 makes it difficult and expensive to evict occupiers because landowners need a court order to evict. This new bill wants to remove protections against evictions and make occupation a crime.
The government has tried several times to weaken the eviction law. They tried to criminalise land occupation organising in 2006. Then in 2007, the KwaZulu-Natal government pushed through the KwaZulu-Natal Slum Elimination & Prevention of Re-Emergence of Slums Act, to increase the powers of municipalities to evict. However, the Constitutional Court rejected the parts of this Act that undermined the existing PIE Act.
Through resistance, including legal challenges, these attempts were pushed back.
However, this new PIE Amendment Bill of 2026 represents another attempt on the part of the capitalist class and the government to prevent and evict the working class who occupy land and buildings. It wants to protect the current concentration of land ownership by a small minority. To hide this attack, the Minister has presented the Bill as a law that targets criminal syndicates who sell occupied land.
Where does this PIE Amendment Bill of 2026 come from?
The PIE Amendment Bill was first introduced in 2023 by the Democratic Alliance (DA) through a private member’s Bill. The DA presented its Bill in May 2025 to the Portfolio Committee on Human Settlement. And in early April 2026 the cabinet of the Government of National Unity (GNU) approved the PIE Amendment Bill. The new bill contains many of the DA’s proposals.
Capitalist Housing Crisis
Capitalism in South Africa has created a massive housing crisis. Presently more than about 3,7 million families are without housing. This housing crisis is caused by two factors:
Housing is for profit: Housing is not considered a public good but a commodity for profit. This leads to speculation in real estate and the concentration of housing in the hands of real estate companies making housing unaffordable. The average house price in the country is around R1,1 million. To buy a house, a 10% deposit and a 20-year loan at 11.5% interest are required. Banks control loan provision and make huge profits from home mortgages.
Thirty years of neo-liberalism: The ANC government supports and facilitates the provision of housing on the basis of profit-making. It therefore deliberately failed to provide housing. Thirty years of ANC neo-liberalism and austerity cuts have contributed to the creation of this housing crisis. In Gauteng, for instance, the government builds only 7,200 homes per year. The ANC government only wants housing to be provided by the market, especially the banks, and for the working class to get into huge debt with banks if they want a house.
Response of the Working Class to the Housing Crisis
In the context of low wages and huge unemployment the working class is excluded from acquiring a house in the housing market. The ANC’s neo-liberal policies have failed to provide housing and thereby compelling the working class to occupy land and buildings. This is the way the working class tries to secure a home for themselves and their families. In the City of Cape Town alone there are 657 informal settlements accommodating 243 812 households.
The PIE Amendment Bill is taking us back to the days of Apartheid
The main objective of the PIE Amendment Bill is to stop the occupations of land and to make it easier and less expensive to evict the occupiers.
It criminalises whoever organises a land occupation
Under the new Bill, any person who calls for or organises a land occupation without the exchange of money (i.e. a community activist or social movement activist) is guilty of a criminal offence. And if you are charged with calling for or organising a land occupation you could be fined R 2 million or be imprisoned for a period of 2 years.
When land occupations are
criminalised, this will have a
devastating impact on working
class women and their families.
It is working class women who
have the burden of providing for
their families by setting up and
running a home. When a working
class woman attempts to
organise an occupation, she can
be criminalised for trying to
provide for her family.
To have a law that brings in new offences and jail time for taking land is a direct attack on the organisations of the working class. It is targeting activists, organisers and occupiers of land.
It will also be a crime for shack dwellers to buy their own water tanks and share water!
Many families in informal settlements have lived for over 30 years without water or electricity and started organising to get these services themselves. These services are needed to make sure that there is a minimum level of liveable conditions in the settlement.
The new bill says it is a criminal offence if communities who have taken over land then get together and collect money to buy water tanks to share water, or to set up small solar systems.
The new Bill undermines section 26 of the Constitution which recognizing that occupation may arise from necessity. In fact, section 26(3) states that: “No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions”.
The new bill is similar to Apartheid laws such as the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act that also criminalised occupation and enabled the forced removal of people.
The new bill makes it easier for land owners and municipalities to evict people
Under the current PIE Act of 1998, only the court is allowed to serve on the occupiers a notice of court proceedings for evictions. This normally delays evictions for long periods because the landlord or government who owns the land first has to go to court to get an eviction order.
But with the new Bill, the owner or the organ of state or the person in charge is empowered to serve a notice of court proceedings on the occupiers. This will significantly speed up the process of evictions. Land owners or municipalities do not have to wait for the court to serve the notice of court proceedings; they can do it themselves.
It uses the resources of the state and land owners to evict people
Under the new Bill, both the municipality and provincial department of human settlement must be joined in eviction processes. What this means is that a landowner must join the municipality and provincial department to the court proceedings. In this way the resources and power of the landowner and the state are utilised against the occupiers.
It allows the courts to evict people without providing alternative accommodation
The Courts have ruled that no one may be evicted from their home without a court order and without being given alternative accommodation.
However the new Bill empowers the judges to grant an eviction order without securing alternative accommodation for the occupiers. Where the judge does rule that alternative accommodation or land must be provided, this can even be on a temporary basis.
This means that even where occupiers are moved to alternative accommodation, they cannot be there permanently and could possibly be evicted again.
Evicting someone without alternative accommodation is a serious violation of the constitution. It goes against the constitution, which say that no one should be left homeless because of eviction.
The Bill also directly contradicts previous rulings by the Constitutional Court. This includes the landmark Port Elizabeth Municipality vs Various Occupiers case, where the court held that eviction must not result in people becoming homeless (in other words, alternative accommodation must be provided).
The new bill will be devastating to farmworkers, many of whom have been born on white commercial farms to farmworker parents and have nowhere else to go!
Take housing and land out of the market!
Build Mass Housing now!
To deal with the housing crisis, its fundamental causes must be addressed. We must move to a situation where the capitalist approach to housing must be systematically dismantled. One part of this process involves taking housing and land out of the private market. Housing and land should not be commodities for sale and profit; they must become a public good. In this manner, housing will serve as a human right rather than a profit-generating commodity.
There are many ways that the government can remove housing and land from the market.
Government must build houses for the masses by increasing the budgets for housing and allocate housing on the basis of need. They must also put in place rent controls and price caps. This way, housing prices will be delinked from market speculation and investor demand.
We call on communities and workers to organise and resist the new PIE Amendment Bill.
We demand the immediate and complete scrapping of the new PIE Amendment Bill.
We demand housing!!
Amandla!!
Issued by the Campaign to Scrap the Labour Law Amendment Bill in May 2026.
For advice or assistance, call or WhatsApp the
Campaign on 082 812 1934.
