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The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) wishes to congratulate Adèle Kirsten for being awarded the Order of Luthuli in Bronze by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 19 May 2026. The Order of Luthuli is a prestigious national honour awarded to individuals who have made meaningful contributions to South Africa’s struggle for democracy, human rights, peace and justice. Adèle Kirsten was specifically awarded for her contributions to advancing peace and community safety. SERI wishes to acknowledge Ms Kirsten’s dedication and activism spanning over four decades.

During the 1980s under apartheid, Kirsten became a founding member of the End Conscription Campaign, an anti-apartheid organisation that opposed the mandatory military conscription of all white South African men into the South African Defence Force. She served as a coordinator for the Five Freedoms Forum, an anti-apartheid coalition of progressive organisations established in response to the state of emergency. Kirsten later worked in the Wits Vaal Peace Secretariat and helped build a rapid response network of unarmed young people who trained in emergency response and conflict resolution. In these roles, she focused on ways of de-escalating the high levels of violence that characterised the period towards the end of apartheid.

In 1995, Kirsten became a founding member of Gun Free South Africa (GFSA) where she served as Director between 1995 and 2002, and again from 2013 until her retirement in 2025. Under her leadership, GFSA became a leading civil society organisation fearlessly advocating against gun violence in South Africa through policy reform and evidence-based violence prevention advocacy. SERI is proud to have partnered with GFSA over the years, particularly in our research and advocacy concerning police brutality and police accountability in South Africa.

Following the Marikana massacre in 2012, former President Jacob Zuma appointed Kirsten to the Marikana Panel of Experts, which sat between 2016 and 2018. As a civil society member of the panel and one of the two women appointed, Kirsten helped to produce the Panel’s comprehensive report on policing and crowd management. The report was submitted in 2018 and only made public in 2021. The Panel of Experts’ report is significant because it made 136 recommendations, of which 45 concerned professionalisation, accountability and demilitarisation of the police and the other 91 concerned protest, the law and crowd management. She was among the experts SERI engaged when developing an infographic summary of the 600-page Expert Panel Report soon after its release.

It is noteworthy that Kirsten’s principled commitment to reducing gun violence is recorded in the Expert Panel report through her dissent to the Expert Panel’s recommendations concerning police use of kinetic impact projectiles (KIPs) in public order policing operations. In the South African Police Service, KIPs are the rubber bullets fired from 12-gauge shotguns used by the SAPS. The report specifically noted that she was of the view that “the use of KIPs should be entirely prohibited in crowd management situations”—a view SERI shares because of the high risk of serious injuries and deaths caused by misuse of the weapon. This is evidenced in the deaths of Mthokozisi Ntumba and Andries Tatane, and in the injuries sustained during the #FeesMustFall protests, and in countless other cases where accountability has been rare.

SERI congratulates Adèle Kirsten on receiving this important award in recognition of her long career dedicated to making South Africa a safer place. While the struggle for achieving this continues, we wish to acknowledge her contributions to this struggle and thank her for her commitment to peace and justice.

Contact details: 

• Edward Molopi, SERI senior communications and advocacy officer: edward[at]seri-sa.org / 082 590 9638.

On Thursday, 7 May 2026, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) launched two new research brief series examining land and housing through a women’s equality lens. The briefs focus on rental disputes in the inner city of Johannesburg, as well as their access to South Africa’s formal system of registered property.

The first series, Access to formal property: title deeds and sales in execution, explores the historical, legal and structural barriers that continue to shape women’s access to secure tenure. It provides an overview of South Africa’s registered property system, referring to legally recognised tenure arrangements recorded in the national deeds registry. While this system includes individual ownership, it extends beyond it and stands in contrast to the informal, off-register systems that many women still rely on.

• Brief 1: Historical and Contemporary Barriers to Registered Property
• Brief 2: Registered Title Deeds
• Brief 3: Loss of Homes Due to IndebtednessLoss of Homes Due to IndebtednessLoss of Homes Due to Indebtedness

The second series, Rental disputes in the inner city of Johannesburg, examines rental disputes and how conflict between landlords and tenants is produced, managed and resolved. It highlights how disputes often arise from insecure tenure, informal agreements, unaffordable rent and poor living conditions, alongside power imbalances between landlords and tenants. While legal mechanisms exist, many tenants, particularly women, struggle to access effective remedies. The research also documents how renters and community-based organisations have developed local, informal dispute resolution practices.

• Brief 1: An Introduction and Overview
• Brief 2: Common Types of Rental Housing Disputes
• Brief 3: Statutory and Judicial Dispute Resolution Mechanisms
• Brief 4: Dispute Resolution Mechanisms Outside the Courts
• Brief 5: Gendered Dimensions of Rental Disputes 
• Brief 6: The Cost of Being a Woman

The launch kicked off with presentation on the research briefs from lead researchers Lauren Royston and Nolwazi Mahlangu. The launch featured a panel discussion with both researchers, including, Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon and Freedah Motshwane. Although attendance was smaller than anticipated, the discussion was engaged and substantive. The setting allowed for meaningful contributions from a range of stakeholders, including academics, representatives from the Department of Human Settlements, and officials from the Gauteng Rental Housing Tribunal.

A representative from the Tribunal contributed to the discussion by responding to findings on the accessibility and effectiveness of the Tribunal. She noted ongoing efforts to improve public awareness through a new marketing campaign, including the use of social media. She also highlighted practical challenges in enforcing rulings, particularly where tenants are unable to identify or locate landlords. The Tribunal confirmed that most disputes relate to non-payment of rent and indicated that a fraud and corruption unit is in place to address allegations of misconduct.

An important outcome of the launch was the Tribunal’s invitation to engage further with civil society organisations. This presents an opportunity for collaboration, particularly as SERI’s Women’s Spaces project moves into its advocacy phase.

This launch forms part of the Women’s Spaces project at SERI which focuses on women’s rights to land and housing in sub-Saharan Africa. The project is supported by Rooftops Canada and Global Affairs Canada. 

On Thursday, 7 May 2026, SERI launched two new research briefs in our series examining land and housing through a women’s equality lens. This research briefs focus on women’s access to rental housing in inner-city Johannesburg, as well as their access to South Africa’s formal system of registered property. 

The first series on Access to formal property: title deeds and sales in execution provides an overview of South Africa’s registered property system, focusing on the historical, legal, and structural barriers that continue to shape women’s access to secure tenure. The registered property system refers broadly to formal, legally recognised tenure arrangements recorded in the national deeds registry, in contrast to the informal “off-register” systems many women still rely on. It includes individual ownership, but is not limited to it. 

Because colonial and apartheid legislation entrenched gendered, racialised, and class-based exclusion from land and housing, women—particularly Black women—continue to face significant obstacles in obtaining and retaining registered property. These inequalities persist despite post-apartheid reforms aimed at expanding access to land, protecting against arbitrary deprivation, and redressing past dispossession. 

This research brief outlines the historical context that produced today’s inequities, tracing how pre-apartheid colonial laws, apartheid-era legislation, and post-1994 reforms collectively shaped the registered property system and continue to influence women’s access to land, housing, and secure tenure. 

• Brief 1: Historical and Contemporary Barriers to Registered Property
• Brief 2: Registered Title Deeds
• Brief 3: Loss of Homes Due to IndebtednessLoss of Homes Due to IndebtednessLoss of Homes Due to Indebtedness

The second series on Rental Accommodation in the Inner City of Johannesburg examines rental disputes in South Africa and the ways in which conflict between landlords and tenants is produced, managed, and resolved within the rental housing system. Rental disputes often arise from insecure tenure, informal agreements, unaffordable rent, poor living conditions, and power imbalances between parties. While dispute-resolution mechanisms exist in law, many tenants, particularly women, struggle to access effective remedies in practice. As a result, many renters, or their community based organisations, have developed a range of local dispute resolution practices. 

Drawing on legal frameworks, selected case examples, and lived experiences, this research highlights how rental disputes are shaped by structural inequality and how they disproportionately affect women, who are more likely to be responsible for households, face informal leasing arrangements, and experience heightened risks of eviction and harassment. It situates rental disputes within the broader context of a constrained and unequal rental market. The case examples and lived experiences material is drawn primarily from the inner city Johannesburg context. 

• Brief 1: An Introduction and Overview
• Brief 2: Common Types of Rental Housing Disputes
• Brief 3: Statutory and Judicial Dispute Resolution Mechanisms
• Brief 4: Dispute Resolution Mechanisms Outside the Courts
• Brief 5: Gendered Dimensions of Rental Disputes 
• Brief 6: The Cost of Being a Woman

In April 2026, SERI together with the Slovo Park Community Development Forum (SPCDF) and partners marked the tenth anniversary of a landmark 2016 Melani High Court judgment. A decade ago, the Johannesburg High Court handed down a landmark judgment in Melani & Others v City of Johannesburg. The court found that the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme (UISP) is binding on all municipalities and ordered the City of Johannesburg to take steps to develop Slovo Park informal settlement under the UISP. The case, brought by SERI on behalf of Slovo Park's residents, affirmed that residents cannot be moved against their will to distant locations and that meaningful engagement and in situ upgrading are constitutional imperatives.

Ten years later, while the judgment remains a powerful legal tool, the community’s struggle for dignified housing, water, sanitation, and security of tenure is far from over. The SERI, SPCDF, and partners marked this milestone with a month of media advocacy, reflection, and action through a commemorative event and launch of the Slovo Park Digital Archive, as well as an op-ed series published by GroundUp.

On the anniversary of the Melani judgment on 5 April 2026, Lerato Marole, Chairperson of the SPCDF, was interviewed on Power FM about the state of Slovo Park a decade after the judgment. He spoke candidly about the City of Johannesburg’s broken promises, the ongoing lack of basic services, and the community’s determination to hold the state accountable. The interview set the tone for the commemorative activities that followed. SERI and the SPCDF issued a press statement on 7 April 2026 that called for urgent compliance with the Melani judgment, for the City of Johannesburg to fully implement the UISP and deliver the dignified living conditions that Slovo Park residents have been denied for decades.

Commemorative Media briefing and Slovo Park Digital Archive Launch

On 15 April 2026, the SPCDF, SERI, and partners convened a Commemorative Media Briefing that was hosted at the Forge in Braamfontein in Johannesburg. The event brought together Slovo Park residents, community leaders, media representatives, allies from Asivikelane and the Informal Settlement Network (ISN), as well as leaders from over ten informal settlements from across Gauteng, including Thembelihle informal settlement in Lenasia, Lindokuhle informal settlement in Germiston, and Harry Gwala informal settlement.

The briefing was opened with a prayer by Slovo Park Resident Archbishop Jeffrey Namusi, followed by a panel of speakers who each reflected on different aspects of the Melani case, its significance and what has happened in the decade since. Panellists included:

• Nomzamo Zondo (SERI Executive Director) delivered a personal reflection on the Slovo Park's case in her capacity as the lead attorney at the time, the constitutional imperatives upon which it was based, and the significance of the legal victory for all informal settlements.
• Phakamani Mpanza (Advisor to MMC for Human Settlements, City of Johannesburg, Cllr Mlungisi Mabaso) spoke on the panel on behalf of the MMC. While acknowledging that there was very little progress to show for the past ten years, he affirmed the importance of the Melani judgment for dignifying informal settlement residents, and the MMC’s commitment to drive the implementation of the judgment.
• Marie Huchzermeyer (Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Urbanism and the Built Environment Studies (CUBES) at the University of the Witwatersrand) reflected on the establishment and significance of the Slovo Park Task Team on which CUBES has provided technical advice and support to the SPCDF, together with 1to1 Agency of Engagement. She provided detailed analysis of the history of engaging the City through the task team, and shared lessons including the importance of political will to be coupled with UISP champions within the City's bureaucracy, the urgent need for the City to develop internal expertise on implementing UISP over their reliance on consultantson the legal context and implications of the Melani judgment;
• Cllr Johannes Mosehla (Ward 119 PR Councillor, Slovo Park resident and one of the applicants in the case) shared his unique perspective on Slovo Park's long and complex history and the community's stuggle for access to land and basic service. His inputs offered a sobering analysis of how goverment officials at all levels have failed Slovo Park and affirmed his commitment to realising the implementation of the judgment implemented.
• Lerato Marole (SPCDF Chairperson), made a powerful call to informal settlement leaders to join forces in using the judgment to demand basic services through informal settlement upgrading. In His reflection he acknowledged the loss of Slovo Park's leaders and residents over the years who died before seeing any progress in Slovo Park's development, and some of whose deaths have been a consequence of the poor living conditions in Slovo Park as well as the the slow pace of implementation.

The panel was followed by a Q&A session in which leaders from other informal settlements raised critical issues, including the criminalisation of residents, the difficulty of accessing the MMC's office, the lack of enforceable timeframes in the UISP, and the need for a dedicated stakeholder forum for informal settlements within the City’s human settlements department. A key highlight of the briefing was the launch of the Slovo Park Digital Archive – a living, community-driven online repository that preserves the history, struggles, and aspirations of Slovo Park. The archive has designed to be a resource for Slovo Park's residents, researchers, journalists, activists, and the public to learn from and contribute to Slovo Park’s ongoing fight for justice.

Coverage of the event can be read in this GroundUp article by Seth Thorne titled, 'City of Johannesburg admits it has little to show after a decade of failure to upgrade Slovo Park'.

GroundUp Op-Ed Series

SERI and partners published a series of op-eds in GroundUp, providing analysis and reflection on different dimensions of Slovo Park’s struggle a decade after the Melani judgment:

• Slovo Park: a decade of winning in court, losing on the ground by Thato Masiangoako (SERI) published on 13 April 2026. The op-ed reflects on the gap between the landmark judgment and the slow pace of implementation, the role of the task team, and the weakening of community participation over time.
• The need to grow food in informal settlements by Lungelo Mncwabe (SERI Women Spaces Project) published on 22 April 2026. The op-ed argues that government must integrate food security and urban agriculture into informal settlement upgrading, with a focus on the gendered impacts of hunger and the innovative food gardens led by women in Slovo Park.
• A decade of wasted consultancies: how Slovo Park exposes South Africa’s informal settlement upgrade failure by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer (Wits University / CUBES) published on 5 May 2026. The op-ed exposes the repeated, wasteful appointment of consultants who misunderstand the UISP, and calls for in-house expertise, genuine community participation, and an end to consultant-driven delays.

The tenth anniversary of the Melani judgment is a reminder that the judgment remains a vital precedent but that its promise remains unfulfilled. The milestone is also a remider that the struggle for Slovo Park is a struggle for all informal settlement residents who continue to be overlooked, criminalised and denied access to basic services and security of tenure. SERI remains committed to supporting Slovo Park community for the realisation of a fully participatory in-situ upgrading, and the constitutional promise of access to adequate housing and dignity.

Access some useful links below:

• Read more about the Melani case here.
• Access the second edition of Slovo Park's Community Practice Note 'Some Gains At Last' here.
• Access the first edition of Slovo Park's Community Practice Note '20 years of broken promises' here.
• SERI and SPCDF Joint Press Statement (7 April 2026) here.
• Visit the Slovo Park Digital Archive here.

Media coverage:

• Newzroom Afrika report and interview with Lerato Marole, 'More than a decade after ruling intended to improve living conditions of Slovo Park residents' (4 May 2026).
• Newzroom Afrika report and interview with Lerato Marole, 'Slovo Park residents' long wait for meaningful change' (3 May 2026).
• Slovo Park still waiting for freedom and services, 10 years later, Jan Bornman, Daily Maverick and Our City News (1 May 2026).
• Ashraf Garda SA FM interview with Lerato Marole, 'Slovo Park: a decade of winning in court, losing on the ground' (16 April 2026).
• Tshegohaco Moagi Power FM interview with Lerato Marole, 'Freedom Month - State of Slovo Park and the City of Johannesburg’s broken promises' (5 April 2026).