South Africa is facing a backlog with regard to housing provision in both rural and urban areas, even though, over the last two decades, the housing programme has produced large numbers of housing units, which have changed the country's landscape. This article is an ongoing effort to make sense of the continued increase in social protests around service delivery and access to free houses. It focuses on the role and importance of private sector players in housing development under the neo-liberal rationality of rule, and seeks to interrogate how the growing privatisation of the public sector is causing serious problems for administrative accountability. The article further develops an interpretation of how the implementation of the New Public Management (NPM) approach, evident in housing development, contributes to problems of unethical governance and despotism. It is argued that the analytical perspective of institutional assembl