On 13 April 2026, GroundUp published an opinion editorial authored by SERI researcher Thato Masiangoako titled 'Slovo Park: a decade of winning in court, losing on the ground'. The op-ed reflects on the tenth anniversary of a landmark 2016 South African High Court judgment (Melani case) that ordered the City of Johannesburg (the City) to apply for funding to upgrade Slovo Park, an informal settlement near Eldorado Park. While the court victory was initially hailed as a major affirmation that the national Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme (UISP) is binding on municipalities, the op-ed argues that a decade later, meaningful development has largely failed to materialise.
The op-ed discusses the concept of community participation, which the UISP places strong and explicit emphasis on, and reflects on Slovo Park's engagements with the City in the decade since the judgment. Despite the court order and years of engagement through a formal task team, residents still lack permanent water and sanitation infrastructure, proper roads, and completed land acquisition for de-densification. The community has won small gains—such as electrification in 2018 and improved lighting in 2026—but each required intense struggle. The op-ed highlights how government ambivalence, broken promises, inconsistent meetings, and lack of political backing (until recently) have weakened community participation and led to resident despondency.
The article notes that Slovo Park remains the only informal settlement with a court order mandating an upgrade, yet as Masiangoako writes,
"the City has largely failed to seize it as an important learning opportunity to better understand and implement incremental participatory informal settlement upgrading as advocated for by Professor Marie Huchzermeyer., However, with the renewed political commitment and parliamentary oversight secured through a 2025 petition by the SPCDF to the portfolio committee, not all hope is lost."
The piece concludes by noting that Frank Mapara, founding resident of Slovo Park and respected leader of the community who fought for decades, died in 2019 without seeing the promised development—but the community remains determined not to let their legal victory remain indefinitely deferred.
To mark the anniversary, the Slovo Park Community Development Forum (SPCDF) and its partners are dedicating the month of April to reflecting on this milestone and Slovo Park’s ongoing struggle for development. As part of this, they will be launching the Slovo Park Digital Archive at a Commemorative Media Briefing on Wednesday, 15 April 2026.
- Read the full op-ed here.