cc ‘A better life beckons for the people of Joe Slovo informal settlement,’ the South African government has said, following a decision by the Constitutional Court that the settlement’s 20,000 residents will be evicted to Delft make way for the N2 housing project. Describing the statement as ‘utter nonsense’, Kate Tissington writes a personal reaction to the judgement, which, she argues, ‘has effectively allowed government to get away with a national project that was misconceived from the start’. Relocation from the settlement would ‘severely disrupt the lives of residents’, increasing their commute to work and essential services and damaging the existing community and social networks upon which they rely, says Tissington, pointing to government's failure to understand people’s needs. While it is unlikely that the eviction will go ahead as envisioned, says Tissington, the court’s judgment is ‘technical, cowardly and naive in the face of the obvious’.