The Constitution introduced and imposed a range of rights-based governance obligations on the State and in particular local government. The Constitution ushered justiciable human rights, these range from socio-economic rights to basic goods and services necessary for human being endurance. The local government is mostly directly affianced with socio-economic rights challenges faced by society and with the concomitant spatial transformation of city life, in particular the life of the poor individuals. The right to the City can be exercised within the city by those who either reside within the city or seek to access the city in order to enjoy the benefits offered and found in the city. This situation places local government firmly in the centre stage for the achievement of the right to the City and the ultimate enjoyment of the socio-economic rights contained in the Bill of Rights. The concept the Right to the City emanated in the political context of the French students’ riots in 1968. Henri Lefebvre is regarded as one of the people who articulated this concept exceedingly well and regarded it as ‘cry and demand’ by those disenfranchised urban masses for the inclusion in city life and the various advantages associated therewith. It is further regarded as a claim for the control over the production of city space. Pieterse assert that development discourse that appropriation of the concept presents a localised and inclusive vision of governance, which highlights welfare concerns and participatory citizenship alongside a developmental agenda.

Therefore, developmental discourse declines the radical notion of the right to the city which rejects the notion of State power over urban form and life. This means that the State cannot unilaterally implement policies without involving city citizens. The right to the city requires meaningful access to the city, and that which it offers. Meaningful access and participation to the city life consist of claims of habitation and appropriation. Habitation entails the right to inhabit the city, to use its space and share in its plunders. Appropriation entails the right to be present in, to experience and make use of the fullness of the city. The right to the city is grounded in the reality of present everyday life in the city and in a continuously shifting and contested vision of a future city that is impossible to identify but is actively imagined, struggled and strived for, by inhabitants individually as well as by collectives. The right to the city spread out to all individuals who inhabit the city and not only those whose presence there is legally recognised or tolerated, or to those who legally quality for rights protection.