Informal settlements occupy contested spaces in our cities – physically, legally and in public discourse. In this paper, I try to make sense of this contestation, highlighting the inconsistencies between informal settlement reality and perceptions that dominate intervention. This inconsistency is mirrored in the discrepancy between progressive national policy and technocratic local government practice in Gauteng Province. At a time when it is increasingly legitimate to officially label shacks or informally constructed homes as a threat not only to the value of individual properties but also to cities’ ability as a whole to attract international investment, is it important to reassess government’s obligation in relation to the poor and their position in our cities.

Challenging the dominant perceptions of informal settlements, this paper points to the benign and often positive role that informal land occupation plays in shaping South African cities. It also highlights the extent to which this form of land occupation is driven by human needs, rather than the market processes that determine formal urban development patterns. From this portrayal of informal settlements as the uncommodified, human face of our cities, the paper points to the stresses and conflicts experienced through the non-implementation of progressive government policy (in particular Chapter 13 of the Housing Code) in Gauteng. In particular, local government thinking in two metropolitan municipalities is unpacked in relation to the refusal to consider in situ upgrading of three informal settlements. This is not intended as a critique of the officials involved, who are but trying to make sense of contradicting instructions from somewhere above. Instead, the aim is to illustrate the urgent need for sensitisation and reskilling in the urban development sector, be it municipal and provincial officials or those of the implementing agencies who are increasingly tasked with carrying out housing development (Johannesburg Social Housing Company – Joshco, Thubelisha Homes, etc.).

The paper tries to highlight not only key areas of capacity-building required by those dealing with informal settlements on the ground, but also key areas where mayors’ and city managers’ commitments to global competitiveness (and in Gauteng the Provincial government’s commitment to a global city region) need to be synchronised with democratically derived national and local commitments. Here it is relevant to note that in the conceptualisation of a new Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme, ‘addressing the problem of mindsets’ was identified as an important prerequisite for Informal Settlement Support (Huchzermeyer, et al., 2004). Two years later, this paper suggests that without a significant campaign to change mindsets, informal settlement intervention is not breaking the new ground intended in the national housing policy refinement in 2004.