The failure of former housing minister, Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele and her successor, Lindiwe Sisulu, to improve policies affecting poor and vulnerable tenants since the promulgation of the 1999 Rental Housing Act is currently under scrutiny in the Durban High Court.
On Thursday, 16 tenants from Lincoln Mansions — some of whom have lived there since the Lorne Street block in Durban’s casbah area was built 57 years ago — launched an application for their eviction notice to be dismissed and a counter- application seeking protection of their constitutional rights to housing by the minister of housing, who is responsible for the implementation of the Rental Housing Act.
The Act effectively repealed the Rent Control Act of 1976, but made transitional provisions to carry forward the protections in the old piece of legislation that sought to provide people from lower-income groups with affordable accommodation and to safeguard their tenancies.
Most of the applicants in the Lincoln Mansions matter are pensioners, such as Ismail Vally (80), who has lived in the building for 57 years and needs a live-in caregiver because he suffers from diabetes and hypertension.
Kanakamma Naidoo, who suffers from debilitating arthritis, has also lived in the block since it was built in 1949.
According to residents, Randprop Trust, which owns Lincoln Mansions and the neighbouring City Hospital, plans to transfer both to a subsidiary, Sundrops 198, which will use the buildings for an extension of the hospital premises and the development of a parking lot.
According to the Act, promulgated in August 2000, tenants in rent- controlled properties can only be evicted under very limited circumstances such as breach of the lease, damage to the premises or if the landlord requires the premises for personal use.
The Rental Housing Act stipulates that the minister of housing monitor and assess the impact of its provisions.
The minister is also obliged to ”define criteria based on age, income or any other form or degree of vulnerability that apply to such tenant or group of tenants and amend and augment policy framework by introducing a special national housing programme to cater for the needs of affected tenants”.
By the ministry’s own admission in correspondence with the tenants’ lawyers, none of this was carried out, and the group of 16 believes this is in direct contravention of Sisulu’s constitutional obligation as a government minister.
They claim that ”the minister deliberately ignored the legislative obligations that parliament placed on her as a member of the executive” and that the minister’s ”failure to act” is ”unreasonable, unlawful andunconstitutional”. The tenants are seeking an order directing the minister to ”state under oath the steps that will be taken to ensure that [their] vested rights are protected”.
The state is claiming that, whether it has a constitutional obligation with regards to the Rental Housing Act, it does not see a link between the eviction battle and its legal obligations. The Rental Housing Act was considered a victory for tenants as it created a mechanism to regulate the rental housing market and provided for rental housing tribunals, conflict resolution and sound relations between landlords and tenants. The issues the Act deals with range from overcrowding and the invasion of privacy by landlords to poor living conditions and illegal lockouts by landlords.