Through a series of intricate informal processes and human-centric institutional arrangements, beneficiaries of South African government-subsidized housing force formally registered properties into informality. Sandile Mbatha explores the concept of informality in relation to how such beneficiaries challenge predominant understandings of property relations. These practices are embedded in complex urban tenure dynamics that prevail in post-colonial societies; societies, in which the state's imposition of predominantly western forms of tenure and property rights ignore the anthropological nature of housing.

Sandile Mbatha is a senior manager at eThekwini Municipality's Research and Policy Advocacy Department and works on establishing alignments between local action and global objectives relating to Sustainable Development Goals. He has more than a decade of work experience in the public sector, academia and non-governmental sector through developing and implementing programmes for low income urban and peri-urban communities.