Socio-Economic Rights | The Port Elizabeth Municipality Case

Justice Sachs explains how he considered resigning from the Court rather than fulfil his oath to uphold the law in support of an order requiring black families to take down their shelters and move from vacant land owned by white families in an upmarket adjacent suburb. However, stating that the Bill of Rights was nothing but Ubuntu writ large, he counterposed the occupants’ rights to housing to the owners’ rights to property, he introduced the concept of meaningful engagement in the form of mediation to balance out the competing interests in a just and equitable way. Since mediation hadn’t been tried, eviction without providing alternative accommodation was not just and equitable. Justice Sachs points out how the concept of meaningful engagement between the parties in order to find the fairest and most efficacious outcome was later picked up and developed by Justice Yacoob in the Olivia Mansions case.