In South Africa, the right to housing is enshrined in the Constitution: "Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing". The obligation to ensure that this happens is placed on the state. In other words, the state is required to "take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right". It is further stated in the Constitution that "no one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances". All these are deliberately formulated as part of the socio-economic rights to institutionalise the state's commitment to deconstruct apartheid's human settlement pattern. Two decades into democracy, the question is: how did South Africa fare in addressing the challenge of housing? An attempt to answer this question starts with the