The need for feminist approaches for housing cases in South Africa

Abstract

Although South African courts have handed down progressive judgments concerning the right to access to adequate housing, they have failed failed to do so from a feminist point of view. The trajectory of housing jurisprudence emanated from a sequence of evictions that occurred in Cape Town and the Johannesburg inner city. This article provides an analysis of four pertinent cases, namely Grootboom, Olivia Road, Blue Moonlight and Dladla. A gendered perspective was absent from the arguments before the court and from the court's interrogation and analysis of matters that came before it. This failure was a shortcoming, given the harsh lived realities that affect women who experience eviction based on their race, gender and class. It is against the backdrop of the failures of Constitutional Court cases that lawyers use feminist litigation approaches and courts in housing adjudication.