Book Launch and Dialogue on the book: Human Rights and The Transformation of Property [7 September 2021]

The dialogue will explore pertinent issues relating to human rights and property. It will focus on how human rights can be applied to various challenges in relation to ownership of property, forced evictions, rental housing and mortgages.  

About this publication:

In Human Rights and The Transformation of Property, leading human rights lawyer Stuart Wilson develops a novel theory of how law leads to social change and what the prospects are for South Africa’s Constitution to shape a more just distribution of property. Wilson questions long-held beliefs about the nature of land reform and the appropriateness of the concept of ownership as a way of organising access to land and property in South Africa.

The book gives an overview of key aspects of constitutional and common law property rights – including the rights of ownership, possession and eviction; the rights associated with leases and mortgages; the National Credit Act; and the PIE Act – and discusses how they interact. It shows how recent developments in the law of eviction, rental housing, mortgage and consumer credit have opened up new spaces in which unlawful occupiers, tenants and debtors are challenging the power of landlords and financial institutions to dispossess them. By triggering a radical restructuring of property law, Wilson argues, the Constitution may yet keep the promise of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it.

Human Rights and The Transformation of Property offers the most up-to-date critical account of recent developments in residential lease law, mortgage bond law and eviction law, and provides a policy rationale for these developments. It will be a valuable teaching text for law students and a reference guide for law and humanities academics, legal practitioners, NGOs and activists. 

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Speakers:

• Stuart Wilson, Author and former Executive Director Socio-economic Rights Institute of South Africa
• Prof Moses Phooko, Associate Professor of Law University of Johannesburg
• Prof Kola Odeku, Professor of Law University of Limpopo

Moderator: Prof Jaap de Visser, Director, Dullah Omar Institute, UWC

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