Issued by Ministry of Housing
National Assembly, 19 June 2001
Madam Speaker
Honourable Members
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
SISHOVA INGOLOVANE, SIXOVA UDAKA, SAKHA IZINDLU, SAKHA ISIZWE
The lack of housing is the most visible expression of cumulative poverty, a characteristic of physically and socially degraded areas. Most of the time this leads to other problems like social exclusion. Processes that perpetuate poverty flourish under conditions of want and result in unemployment, illiteracy, failure in school and eventually a phenomenon of school dropout occurs. Drug addiction and low income, plague individuals living in such conditions. There is, therefore a close correlation between housing and social environments.
Housing need has a quantitative aspect that relates to the insufficiency of housing in terms of numbers, the suitability for families, how housing is acquired and for how much. The qualitative aspect is translated into a lack of habitability such as overcrowded occupation, sharing of small dwellings by more than one family like in Kwa-Mashu in KwaZulu-Natal, the extreme degradation of buildings and their lack of safety.
Madam Speaker, it is with this understanding that we have approached the issue of housing in our environment. We put in place a policy and supporting legislation, we planned our programmes that meet the national goals, taking into consideration the local and specific requirements of housing. The poor remain our primary target group.
As I stand before you honourable members, 5 million South Africans who did not have a roof over their heads, will return at the end of today to a place they call home, will have running water and sanitation, which they did not have before we embarked on this journey. This journey travelled by very few if any, in the world to build 1,129 million houses, in the first six years of this democratic ANC-led government. A journey that took us through the slippery slopes of consolidating more than 10 different housing departments that existed in 1994, fragmented policies and 34 pieces of legislation. It took us through the potholes of reluctance by financial institutions to extend credit to previously marginalised communities and redlining and defusing the land-mines of fraud, corruption and criminal activity.
So far, have we, indeed come, Madam Speaker, still faced with daunting challenges, albeit different from those we faced at the beginning of this journey.
Then, it was how to provide houses; today we assess the impact of HIV/AIDS on housing. Then it was what subsidy mechanism to introduce; now it is how to promote a savings culture to augment the housing subsidies. Then, it was where to build new houses; today it's how to eradicate informal settlements. Then it was introducing a new policy and administrative procedures and today it is policy enhancements and review of administrative procedures to improve efficiency. On this journey, we have learnt by doing, and have a true success story to tell, because by not doing, there can never be learning or progress.
URBANISATION AND MIGRATION TRENDS IN THE COUNTRY
Estimates by Statistics South Africa (2000) indicate that approximately 53.6% of our population lives in urban areas. This is as a result of natural population growth and rural to urban migration. This has been exacerbated by inappropriate policies; a skewed distribution of resources and wealth and the general pull factors of growing economies and cities.
Honourable members, South Africa is not unique as with her developing counterparts of Latin America, Asia and our African continent, to experience the phenomenon of informal settlements.
As a result of the shortage of adequate and available shelter, people occupy any vacant land they find and put up shacks in areas without sanitation, infrastructure or social amenities. Others occupy old disused and/or abandoned structures, or prefabricated buildings of inferior material in advance stages of decay with very deficient safety or habitability standards.
Informal settlements have mushroomed mainly because of inadequate resource allocation for housing during apartheid, resulting in a huge backlog, inappropriate policies such as homeland policies and Group Areas Act, lack of adequate land for the majority in the country, lack of available land for settlement by the poor in the inner cities where there is employment and economic opportunities. That history is still with us.
Not enough land exists for low cost housing in the inner cities. Where it does the costs are exorbitant. The Department of Land Affairs and other departments, which manage land, are currently looking at ways of dealing with this problem. Unique to our country is that most land is in private ownership and most land occupied illegally is unsuitable for development. This means that in situ upgrading of informal settlements is seldom possible, requiring acquisition of new land and relocation of communities.
Despite these difficulties, I am happy to report to this House that our informal upgrading programme has resulted in a total of 293 projects and 232 000 families, who have had their shack in an informal settlement converted into a proper home across the country.
URBAN RENEWAL
In response to the President's prioritisation of the urban renewal programme, the Department has led the way with the implementation of the Alexandra Urban Renewal Programme with R3,5m used for feasibility study and planning work, and in Kwa-Mashu in excess of R20m has been allocated for redevelopment over two years through our Human Settlement Redevelopment Programme.
MEDIUM DENSITY HOUSING
Where land has been available in the inner city the Department of Housing has implemented programmes that have drawn low-income earners into the inner cities. Through the Institutional Subsidy, a sub programme of our Capital Housing Subsidy Scheme, 70 medium density housing projects that comprise of 33 935 housing units has been concluded in the provinces. 16 638 housing units have been planned for the 2001/2002 financial year.
The Institutional Subsidy has been utilised by the Department as an instrument to combine the government subsidy and private sector funding. We have had remarkable support from governments abroad and some NGOs through grants. Medium density development is more costly and requires professional management through social housing associations.
The implementation process for the institutional subsidy mechanism requires structuring of partnerships, which is normally complex and time-consuming and additional investment by the private sector at project level with financial models unique to each project.
Even more difficult is the establishment of the institutions and capacity building of new members on social housing issues to the extent that the institution is viable and fully operational. The result is that medium density housing and social housing projects have lead times of more than 1 year. Project linked subsidy projects, on the other hand, which have been our main sub-programme of delivery, have a 7-month lead-time and no requirement for institutional establishment and inherent capacity building.
There are several housing associations in the country that are functioning at optimal level but more will be needed when more stock is delivered. The R16 000 subsidy is directly invested into the property and not linked to individual recipient to allow for the mobility. Through this programme we also provide for rental-to-ownership within the same projects to accommodate those who would wish to own.
Social housing, however, is a new concept to South Africa. Prior to 1994 these institutions did not exist at all. More importantly, we introduced the institutional subsidy in December 1995 to facilitate social housing. Later in 1997 we established the Social Housing Foundation in partnership with the Dutch Government to promote social housing.
We have also utilised abandoned buildings by transforming them into high density housing through renovation of existing flats or conversion of commercial/office buildings into housing units through the institutional housing subsidy programme. In other cases we have developed disused infill sites for medium density housing, all contributing to inner city regeneration. Transitional housing development is used to accommodate persons temporarily before they move on to more permanent accommodation.
LAND AND SECURE TENURE
The housing policy has as its central thrust, security of tenure. To date about 350 000 families enjoy secure tenure through our programme of transferring old rental stock for ownership. In addition, 1,129m families currently benefit from our programme that provides housing with security of tenure.
This government has chosen that route as a way of bringing dignity to our people but also because, of all elements of the right to housing, it is the right to security of tenure that forms the most indispensable core element. When security of tenure - the right to feel safe in one's own home, to control one's own housing environment and the right not to be arbitrarily forcibly evicted- is threatened or simply non-existent, it jeopardises the full enjoyment of housing rights.
It is important to note that securing tenure for a household does not necessarily secure tenure for women and children unless the principle of gender equality is adhered to, the principle of human rights is respected and all persons are treated equally and enjoy security of tenure. This in itself is empowerment of the disadvantaged.
EMPOWERMENT PROCESSES
Providing a house with secure tenure assists the poor to establish a foothold in the urban economy. A house provides a place where people can study and improve their lives whilst moving out of the web of poverty especially when the low income areas are functional, the house can be put up as collateral to access credit. To date the transfer of council houses for ownership has created an asset base of about R28 billion.
The construction of RDP houses has empowered emerging contractors to create jobs around their projects. Many of our people have now acquired skills they did not have before through our capacity building programmes run by tertiary institutions in every province and through our technical support of support centres. The multiplier effects of our projects have also boosted the local economies and SMME development. Skills developed in our communities include brick making, window making, micro builders, fence-making, plasterers, roof, wall and floor tiling and other relevant skills.
We proudly speak of women developers and contractors who entered the construction industry to build but also to earn a living through construction. After conducting an evaluation of women's involvement in the sector it was discovered that few projects are given to women. In order to reverse this Housing Minmec (as indicated in the expenditure priorities in Annexure A) committed itself to ensuring that provinces give at least 10% of their subsidies to women developers and contractors. It was made clear there would be no tolerance for female rented faces. Genuine participation is what we are bent on promoting, not fronting.
SALE AND RENTAL OF SUBSIDISED HOUSING
We further passed through this House, the Housing Amendment Bill which will prevent the sale of subsidised housing to private individuals, introduces a pre-emptive clause on the title deed of every subsidised house and makes provision for sale only to the provincial government in order for the property to be reallocated to other beneficiaries on the waiting lists.
This also prohibits the auctioning of subsidised housing by local governments and ensure that one arm of government does not undermine the efforts of another.
On Sunday, on e-tv, we heard of the case of a Ms Payne from Paarl, who was evicted from a subsidised house she was renting. It is unclear why she was evicted, but it was crystal clear that she was renting from a landlord who owned the subsidised house. These are new emerging trends that we are investigating, to ensure that subsidised housing is used to the intended purposes and that we eliminate any unintended consequences of our policies. We are committed to create diverse choices for our people within the framework of the housing programme.
But more importantly, this indicates a growing demand for rental housing. We shall continue, to focus our delivery programme on rental housing in line with the Rental Housing Act of 1999. We will endeavour to implement the Presidential Job Summit Housing Pilot Projects, which will result in the development of 50 000 to 150 000 rental-housing units over a three-year period drawing on private sector investment.
ACCESS TO HOUSING FINANCE
Despite the efforts of Government, access to finance still remains the greatest challenge to low cost housing development. Since 1994 this Government established four housing finance institutions to "normalise the housing finance lending environment".
To date these institutions have recorded the following progress:
COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT LEGISLATION
Madam Speaker, this House facilitated the enactment of the Home Loan and Mortgage Disclosure Act late last year. This Legislation is intended to ensure that we monitor the lending patterns of financial institutions and all lenders in the housing finance sector. It is intended to eliminate redlining, a discriminatory practise by banks, not to lend to marginalise communities. It will force banks to disclose the reasons for not advancing a home loan or mortgage and will ensure the elimination of discrimination based on reasons other than sound financial underwriting criteria.
During this year, I will be presenting to Cabinet the next phase of this intervention, the Community Reinvestment Bill, which will aim to promote investment by the private sector in marginalised communities through identifying causal deterrents for investments and creating incentives and disincentives for future investments.
CONCLUSION
As we look forward to the ongoing challenge of housing the nation, we have renewed our commitment to providing housing at scale whilst focussing more on qualitative aspects of housing delivery compare to the previous term of Government. Our engagements in the International arena are provided in Annexure B, which aim to broaden our influence and sharing of best practices in policy and programme implementation.
Our efforts, locally, will ensure better planning and budgeting in the context of the MTEF, to promote efficient financial management to eliminate maladministration, mismanagement and prevent subsidy fraud through improvement of subsidy administrative system.
Having thus shared with you what lies ahead of us, we have once again rolled up our sleeves for another year and are already hard at it to house the homeless people of our country.
I would like to thank all those who have made this journey a success, the provincial MECs for Housing, department officials, the housing institutions, active members of our communities who are here with us today.
Sishova Ingolovane,
Sixova Udaka,
Sakha Izindlu,
Sakha Isizwe
ANNEXURE A
EXPENDITURE PRIORITIES FOR FINANCIAL YEAR 2001/2002
At our meeting of 7 December 2001, the Housing Minmec approved the following expenditure priorities in respect of housing funds:
Our national integrated land development plan is therefore a consolidation of provincial plans which are in turn informed by local development objectives and budgets, drawn up in an integrated manner by all relevant stakeholders. Now that we have identified these expenditure priorities, provinces will be expected to incorporate them into their integrated development plans.
In view of this complexity, each province was required to set its own annual targets per year, and to ensure that the targets are in alignment with national priorities. To that end, I shall soon be entering negotiations with each of the Housing MECs in their provincial legislatures. Once such agreements have been reached, we at the national level will monitor the provinces to ensure conformity to this new policy line.
ANNEXURE B
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
From the context of globalisation and liberalisation emerges international regulatory framework for human settlement and development agenda of nations. We have not escaped this; in fact our international role has been elevated to prominence through our role as co-ordinator of the African Chapter of the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Habitat Agenda since 1996 in Istanbul.
Last month, the United Nations General Assembly convened a Special Session for an overall review and appraisal of the implementation of the Habitat Agenda. My department, as the lead department in the implementation of the Habitat Agenda in South Africa, submitted the South African Country Report, approved by Cabinet on the implementation of the Habitat Agenda, in October 2000.
In March 2001, at the invitation of the Special Session Secretariat, we submitted a proposal for presentation to the Thematic Committee, on the right to adequate housing, which was subsequently selected as one of the 16 international good practices, which was presented at the Special Session. The management of our international agreements includes engaging the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements for the Habitat Agenda in South Africa and working with the Department of Environment and Tourism on both the implementation of Agenda 21 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
The Millennium Africa Plan also forms framework for our engagement on the African Continent. We continue to promote the African Renaissance in all international co-operations within and outside the UN system; we will share information on best practices within the continent and promote regional and economic development through our housing programmes.
Whilst we observe the world enter the new millennium in the midst of an economic revolution and globalisation, which affords Africa the opportunity to realise its rebirth, we strategically locate housing as an integral part of the Africa Plan objectives of providing basic social infrastructure for the development of Human Settlements.
Housing will also be central to the mobilisation of resources to finance development including promoting Community Reinvestment on the African continent. As we embark on our mobilisation of personal savings to contribute to housing development, we envisage utilising the opportunities created by MAP to promote our best practices of public partnerships.
sishova ingolovane
sixova udaka
sakha izindlu
sakha isizwe