Johannesburg will profile and number every household in its informal settlements under a new policy aimed at bringing greater order to how the city recognises, services and upgrades rapidly growing communities.
The Informal Settlement Policy, approved by the City Council on September 30, requires residents to be enumerated and households allocated identifying numbers linked to where they live. The City says this should also help prevent people occupying or controlling multiple shacks in different settlements.
The policy represents a shift towards managing informal settlements as established parts of the urban landscape while they await incremental upgrading, rather than treating formal housing as the only response.
It comes as South Africa’s biggest cities grapple with persistent and, in some areas, expanding informal settlements driven by urbanisation, household formation, shortages of affordable housing and limited well-located land.
Johannesburg’s 2025/26 IDP estimates its housing backlog at more than 431,000 households and refers to 312 informal settlements. A separate City Human Settlements document for 2024/25 recorded 317 informal settlements, of which 181 were officially recognised.
Under the new policy, an informal settlement will formally be regarded as recognised or acknowledged once it has been profiled or enumerated and the necessary information about it recorded.
MMC for Human Settlements Mlungisi Mabaso said the policy was intended to end what residents had experienced as a fragmented approach to development.
“This is a huge milestone for all communities living in informal settlements, who have complained about serious service delivery challenges and a fragmented approach to the development of their areas,” Mabaso said.
“The policy ushers in a new era for informal settlements and will enable better coordination in addressing the development of these areas.”
The policy calls for basic services to be progressively improved, informal settlements to be integrated with surrounding townships and residents to participate in decisions affecting their communities. It expressly adopts an incremental approach to upgrading.
The City will also develop layout plans identifying community facilities, environmentally sensitive areas, business activities, access routes and space for future services. Social compacts will be concluded with communities setting out the responsibilities and expectations of residents and the municipality.
Cape Town focuses on incremental upgrading
Johannesburg’s approach reflects a wider shift already visible in other metros, where authorities increasingly provide services and improve settlements incrementally rather than waiting for residents to receive completed formal houses.
Cape Town’s informal-settlement programme prioritises basic services and what it describes as “functional tenure”, alongside safer public spaces, pedestrian routes, emergency access and space for community facilities.
The City of Cape Town says its minimum service targets in informal settlements include one water tap for every 25 families within 200 metres, at least one toilet for every five families and weekly refuse collection. It acknowledges that high densities, waterlogged land and property disputes sometimes make those standards difficult to achieve.
Cape Town has also put substantial money behind the strategy. In August it said more than R1.2 billion of its Human Settlements Directorate’s allocations over the next three financial years would go towards informal-settlement upgrading, while about R1 billion would support the expansion of serviced sites.
The City has explicitly described its programmes as responding to “growing informality”.
Tshwane adopts its own management policy
The City of Tshwane announced earlier this year that it had adopted an Informal Settlements Management Policy in February 2026. Tshwane’s implementation approach includes recognising settlements, registering households, shack marking, reblocking where necessary, managing relocations and providing rudimentary water, sanitation, waste services and access routes.
Tshwane had already identified 210 informal settlements in a 2023 assessment, with 187 assessed under the national informal-settlement upgrading framework.
Its latest municipal reporting illustrates the service-delivery challenge. At the end of June 2025, Tshwane reported that 168 informal settlements were receiving water services and 109 had sanitation services.
The City’s 2026/27 budget includes R90.4 million for chemical toilets and R19.9 million specifically for informal-settlement management.
More than 300,000 households in eThekwini settlements
The scale is even greater in eThekwini.
The municipality’s 2025/26 Spatial Development Framework records more than 592 urban informal settlements containing about 304,000 households, representing roughly a quarter of the metro’s population.
It says existing settlements continue to become denser and expand, with urban migration and the natural growth and subdivision of households adding to demand. Many settlements are also situated on steep, unstable or environmentally constrained land that is expensive and difficult to develop.
eThekwini’s response similarly includes incremental services such as communal water points, ablution facilities, refuse collection, emergency access, roads and footpaths and, where possible, prepaid electricity.
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