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Government faces a mammoth task to address the challenges of housing in South Africa. Thabo Mokgola however thinks if the Comprehensive Housing Plan for the Development of Integrated Sustainable Human Settlements unveiled recently is anything to go by, the country might have just found the final solution.
Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu's pledges to eradicate all informal settlements by 2014 is a huge feat bearing in mind that in the past decade, her department provided more than 1.6 million housing units to more than 7 million people.
The 2001 Census statistics reveal that approximately 16.4 percent of all households live in informal dwellings. That's nearly 5.2 million people.
Dr Sisulu's pledge to rid the country of these unpleasant scenarios is thus understandable and it interestingly comes two months after assuming office at the Govan Mbeki building in Pretoria.
The minister has so far wasted no time but knuckled down to work, taking on President Thabo Mbeki's orders, giving her three months to table a comprehensive plan for human settlements.
Minister Sisulu responded to the President and said the task would be achieved in two months and kept to her word.
"We have taken it upon ourselves to embrace the word 'fast-track' as we embark on the task of housing millions of South Africans," said Dr Sisulu launching the housing plan this month.
Her move to fast-track the process is understandable since she is tasked to ensure that no South African ever relates stories of a long night in a makeshift dwelling that gave in to stormy weather or got gutted in a blazing fire that is a common experience in informal settlements.
Minister Sisulu summoned provincial housing MECs to map out a way of solving the country's housing challenges. In the past three months, Minister and MECs (MINMEC) meetings were convened five times while the minister also toured the country listening to complaints, challenges, and advise from communities.
She also engaged the financial and the construction sectors, co-opting them as partners in the process.
Those inputs formed an integral part of the Comprehensive Housing Plan for the Development of Integrated Sustainable Human Settlements unveiled recently.
The plan's necessity stems from the fact that, at its inception, the Housing Policy and Strategy (1994) focused on stabilising the environment to transform the extremely fragmented, complex and racially-based financial and institutional framework that was inherited from the apartheid government.
This, whilst simultaneously establishing new systems to ensure delivery to address the housing backlog.
In an effort to deal with squatter camps, the housing department and the Cape Town Unicity will use the N2 Cape Town informal dwelling as a pilot project, against which seventeen others would be rolled out countrywide. Each province is set to have its own two pilot projects.
The N2 Cape Town project will include social amenities such as parks, clinics, schools, community halls and places of employment located at a stone's throw away from settlements.
"We are moving away from building houses to [a new concept of] building communities," explains Dr Sisulu, adding that various departments would be partners in the process. "We will work with the departments of provincial and local government, agriculture and land affairs, transport, minerals and energy and water affairs and forestry."
The housing blueprint also sets out to collapse the current subsidy system and create a three-tiered model of income categories for better targeting. These would be what minister Sisulu describes as the hardcore poor (0-R1 500 income) who receive the full housing subsidy of R28 000, the poor (R1 500-R3 500) who shall also receive the full subsidy but would be required to provide either a small contribution or sweat equity.
A brand new subsidy band is created for affordable housing targeting the middle income level (R3 500-R7 000) for whom government pays 50 percent of the mortgage bond deposit.
Also central to the department's strategy to provide alternative and cheap accommodation is the rental housing programme aimed at those who work in urban areas but have houses and families in villages and rural areas away from cities.
It also seeks to encourage investment in urban and rural regeneration and to correct distorted and racial patterns of residential settlement by initiating, promoting and facilitating new development in or the redevelopment of affected areas.
Minister Sisulu said in June this year that rental housing responded to young families who depended on mobility to secure economic opportunities and therefore remained transient.
The promulgation of the Rental Housing Act in 1999 regulated the roles and responsibilities of landlords and tenants and establishes a framework for the efficient management of rental housing.
Perhaps the most innovative element of the plan is its restriction on when it's permissible for the beneficiary to sell a subsidy house. Beneficiaries could previously only sell their houses after eight years and that has now been reduced to five.
The move is set to allow homeowners who aim to move on to houses of higher standards to be able to sell their low-cost houses with ease. But, government will have the first option to buy those houses, thus returning a volume of them for redistribution.
"We will be putting regulations to ensure that people will only sell houses in relation to particular specific requirements that would have been put down," explains Dr Sisulu.
The envisaged improved partnership between government and the banking sector is set to unblock the financial flow towards middle-income earners where, according to housing Director-General Mpumi Nxumalo, the market has shrunk.
She says constructors have moved away from the market - which generally is accommodated within the R70 000 - R90 000 band.
The department has therefore committed itself to normalise the market by embarking on a concerted education and information drive towards communities to produce clients that financial institutions can trust.
"We will introduce a risk sharing mechanism between the financial sector and the department," affirms Dr Sisulu. She says she has been pleased by the banks' feedback so far.
The construction sector will also be brought on board with 30 percent of all construction work in housing given to women owned construction companies.
The quality of already built low-cost houses has for a number of years been a subject of much criticism and the housing blueprint plans to address those.
The department is working at ensuring that construction firms contracted to build houses are registered with the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC).
Minister Sisulu also committed her department to cleaning up its act in ensuring that its administration was up to the delivery of the programme.
"We are putting up systems and mechanisms to ensure that any maladministration, corruption and fraud are dealt with effectively," she said.
The plan provides for the establishment of a Special Investigative Unit to attend to the reported cases of corruption at all levels. Consideration is also being given to ensure that this unit is highly mobile, well resourced and is able to act speedily to bring those guilty to book.
Government is upbeat that the realisation of this innovative plan will surely alleviate the heavy burden placed by virtual homelessness on the shoulders of those currently living in informal settlements and in insecure homes made off corrugate irons and scrap boards. -BuaNews |
