The Rental Housing Act was widely lauded as an enlightened law when it was promulgated in 1999. It recognised that private property owners would be the main suppliers of rented housing by giving them a reasonable return on their investment while protecting both them and tenants from unfair treatment.

But recently the department of housing has proposed some amendments to the act which changes this balance by:

Criminalising cutting off tenants' electricity or locking them out, but not criminalising misbehaviour of tenants such as withholding rent or refusing to vacate a property when their lease ends ;

Giving the rental housing tribunal the powers of a magistrate's court, but specifically excluding it from evicting tenants - a landlord's primary recourse against bad tenants;

Removing the words "bona fide" from the definition of visitors to a property, meaning that landlords may not discriminate against visitors and making it difficult for landlords to protect themselves against property hijackers.

An extreme effect of these and other amendments is that a landlord can be jailed for up to two years for cutting off his tenant's electricity. He will have to continue paying the electricity costs to the municipality while in jail.

Inner-city properties are plagued by predators who enter buildings, often claiming to be acting on behalf of the municipality or government. They say the landlord is corrupt and instruct tenants to pay their rent and electricity costs into a special bank account, from which they can hijack money. The police and courts treat these actions as civil, not criminal.

Landlords have been struggling with the unintended application of the Prevention of Illegal Evictions & Unlawful Occupation (PIE) Act, meant to regulate invasions of farmland and municipal property by homeless people. In 2002, the appeal court said it applied also to occupants of rented houses and flats and to property owners whose homes had been repossessed, and who refused to move out. The housing minister promised to have the act amended and to criminalise hijacking and the persuading of tenants to withhold rent. Despite a series of draft amendments, no changes were made.

Landlords must go through a tedious and expensive process of eviction so complicated that the Johannesburg magistrate's court has often refused to take such cases on the grounds that they have no hope of success.

The PIE Act and the proposed amendments impose a form of draconian rent control. They also increase the danger of inner-city suburbs returning to their feral states of a few years ago before concerted efforts by municipal officials and property owners started their regeneration.

To add insult to injury, the Johannesburg property owners & managers association (Poma) was given only two days' notice to submit comment on the amendments to Gauteng's housing portfolio committee. "We didn't have time to even call a meeting," says Poma chairman Brian Miller. He and other landlords are livid. "We're supposed to have formed a partnership with Johannesburg metro to supply 75 000 affordable houses for the city," says Miller. "But it appears that landlords have had no say when these amendments were drawn up and it's difficult to see how our partnership with Johannesburg can be fruitful in the circumstances."

Even the chairman of the Gauteng Rental Housing Tribunal Trevor Bailey has sent a memorandum to government describing the criminalising of landlords as "having no counterbalance that effectively weighs the rights and duties of landlords and tenants" and "inappropriate and unfair".

The amendments are working their way through parliament and, via the council of provinces, through the provincial legislatures.

Nobody from the Gauteng or national housing departments was available to comment.