ABSTRACT
Housing and the associated challenges in South Africa cannot be discussed without reference to the country’s past and how the many race-based laws and policies of the past contributed to poverty, inequality and limited human settlement backlogs, particularly among the black population. This chapter examines the key housing and land policies of pre-democratic South Africa highlighting how the systematic dispossession of people of their land and the segregationist policies of the past continue to be contributing factors to spatial segregation and housing backlogs in post-apartheid South Africa. The chapter provides the historical context that informs subsequent chapters in this book.
