Government policies are entrenching unequal access to land in and around cities rather than easing the problem, a panel chaired by former President Kgalema Motlanthe has been told.

The high-level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and Acceleration of Fundamental Change is holding a round-table discussion on spatial inequality in Parliament, focusing on people’s access to urban land.

The panel was set up by National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete last year to look at whether laws passed since 1994 are helping or hindering efforts to address poverty, unemployment, job creation, land reform and nation building.

Professor Ivan Turok of the Human Sciences Research Council says state-sponsored housing projects planned for the next two decades will reinforce rather than change the old apartheid pattern where poor and working class people live far from city centres where most jobs can be found.

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