He noted that the city will not take the taxpayers\u2019 money to provide services to illegal immigrants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mabaso said the city\u2019s decision to demolish shacks that belong to undocumented immigrants is not xenophobic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is nothing xenophobic about dealing with lawlessness and anarchy. Illegal foreign nationals in the country are tantamount to lawlessness and point to a government that is failing to protect its citizens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking to 702, Mabaso doubled down<\/a> on his comments and the city\u2019s hard-line stance on informal settlements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said some informal settlements date back before 1994 and remain unformalised, new ones are appearing at an alarming rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJohannesburg, before 2016, had 181 informal settlements. From 2016 to 2019, it mushroomed to 312. To date, we\u2019ve got 352 that we have recognised, and the number is growing very fast,\u201d Mabaso explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recognition of a settlement, he said, is not an endorsement of its permanence, but rather a legal requirement to allow the city to provide interim services while matters such as ownership disputes and evictions are handled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBefore we provide services, we need to audit, enumerate and profile the people that are there. Recognition means that we can use taxpayers\u2019 money to provide interim services so that we are able to account for the money spent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mabaso said many of these settlements are not simply the result of desperate families seeking shelter but are often driven by organised invasions and illegal land trading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMost of the people invading the land come from neighbouring areas and have prior knowledge of vacant sites. They even check who owns the land before moving in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou go to informal settlements where there\u2019s been an invasion, and they will tell you they\u2019ve paid a certain amount of money. People are buying stands in these informal settlements; this is not just a normal invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He added that in some cases, South Africans are acting as landlords, renting out shacks to foreign nationals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are many foreign nationals there that are tenants of South Africans in these spaces, and that\u2019s why we are pushing them out,\u201d said Mabaso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe go there with Home Affairs. We do a verification and an assessment, and if you are found to be a foreign national, then we will take you out, dismantle your shack, and deal with the landlord. That\u2019s the only way to enforce the law and deal with this anarchy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The MMC dismissed criticism from the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which has also condemned the demolitions as unconstitutional and a violation of people\u2019s rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve got a serious problem with the Human Rights Commission. What we are doing is trying to bring law and order in the country,\u201d Mabaso said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He rejected the idea that the city is carrying out blanket evictions. \u201cThis is not a demolition and eviction. If you get into a space and find people who should not be there, you need to take them out. If the shack has no one in occupation, the shack must be dismantled,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The MMC added that the city cannot allow the anarchy to continue. \u201cLand earmarked for development is being hijacked, taxpayers are losing out, and rightful beneficiaries are being denied housing. We must restore law and order,\u201d Mabaso said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Johannesburg\u2019s MMC for Human Settlements has vowed to clamp down on the rapid growth of illegal settlements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":816194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[23611,22797,23610],"class_list":["post-837591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-illegal-settlements","tag-johannebsurg","tag-johannesburgs-mmc-for-human-settlements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837591"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837623,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837591\/revisions\/837623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}South Africans are taking advantage <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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