Instead of depending on the government for a roof over their heads, a group of homeless women from Khayelitsha has started an innovative savings scheme. Justin Pearce reports
FOR the women of the Victoria Mxenge Savings Scheme, development starts with coins in a jam jar under the bed. On Saturday, the group of 200 homeless women from Khayelitsha celebrated the first stage of their plan to build a neighbourhood from scratch: they had levelled the land on a site donated by the Catholic Church at Philippi and built a life-size wood and canvas prototype house on it.
They were still a long way from having homes to move into, but the presence of a site and R19 000 in the bank were tributes to the tenacity of women who weren’t prepared to wait around to be rescued by the reconstruction and development programme.
The idea of this sort of scheme reached South Africa after an international conference of homeless people held in 1991, said savings scheme co-ordinator Patricia Matolengwe. “We realised we could not take for granted that the new government would be able to build houses for the poor.” People at the conference looked at the example of India where “they have been free for 40 years but they still suffer homelessness”. There savings schemes were developed as a way of giving the poorest people access to finance for their own homes.
In South Africa, as in India, banks refuse to grant housing loans to the lowest-income earners. Banks claim that small loans are not worth the administrative costs, and distrust poor people’s ability to manage money. A savings scheme answers both these objections: it enables a loan to be made in the name of a community with a combined income sufficient to make the loan worthwhile; and it proves to the bank that the scheme’s members can manage money effectively.
To Matolengwe, the group is effective because it consists of women: “We, as women, are responsible for the house. We are the ones who experience the leaks and the burning of shacks. We are responsible for the children’s welfare.”
For women who were tired of waiting for houses or site- and-service schemes, the Victoria Mxenge savings scheme provided a way to make a contribution towards improving their own circumstances, scraping together
R19 000 in two years. In terms of planning, it is the most advanced of 165 similar schemes countrywide affilitated to the South African Homeless People’s Federation (SAHPF).
Many of the women were unemployed, contributing to the project physically, if not financially. The women themselves cleared the bush and levelled the land on the site. Four women volunteered to learn how to cast blocks and tiles from concrete, with the help of low-tech equipment supplied by a foreign donor.
Though a lot of money must still be raised, the fact that the project has got as far as it has is proof that the women are capable of managing their own financial and housing needs. Mato-lengwe hopes that this will count in their favour when they apply for loans.
The housing subsidy system is skewed in favour of projects built by contractors, says Joel Bolnick of People’s Dialogue, an NGO which acts for community- driven development schemes. He cites the legal red tape which makes subsidies inaccessible to people who want to do their own building.
Yet the figures prove that a contractor-built house is not cost-effective: a budget researched by Victoria Mxenge members shows that, using their own building and design skills, they can build a two-bedroomed house for R10 000 — about half the price quoted by contractors for the same job.
Another benefit of a scheme initiated and developed by a community is that it is driven by exact needs. “We’re not just saving money — we’re determining when and where and what kind of houses will be built,” Matolengwe says. Top-down development fiascos such as the unused “toilet towns” are out of the question when people are making their own decisions about what they want.
People’s Dialogue is overseeing the establishment of a rotating loan fund, based on the collected savings of SAHPF affiliates and state and donor funding. Affiliates will be able to apply to borrow from it — each application being considered on the basis of the community’s needs and its track record at managing money.
There is a concern that the sight of homeless people seizing the initiative will absolve the state of responsibility for housing. While promising co-operation with SAHPF, Western Cape housing minister Gerald Morkel — a National Party member — praised the women of Victoria Mxenge for “getting on with it” while “those people in the PWV are expecting handouts”.
Matolengwe thinks the relationship between the provider and the needy should be allowed to change: “If the government can support us, we are prepared to be the doers.”