Not only the national housing director should be changed, but also the national housing and urban policy, argues Mzwanele Mayekiso
MAIL & GUARDIAN reporters recently spotted a tidal wave of urbanisation (“A human flood is drowning Gauteng”, May 16 to 22) and asked whether millions of shack settlement residents will ever “become taxpaying citizens who benefit from schools, roads and clinics, or whether they will continue to live in a world apart. The government is grappling to construct a coherent urbanisation strategy.”
Now the bureaucrat most responsible for the incoherent urban strategy, Billy Cobbett, is out of a job – though not for that reason. Although personality differences between Cobbett and Housing Minister Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele may be to blame, the catalyst was Cobbett’s referral to the auditor general of a R185-million housing project in Mpumalanga awarded to a black- owned construction company which had, apparently, not delivered on its contractual obligation. If indeed there was any wrongdoing in awarding the contract, we expect an official explanation to the satisfaction of the taxpayers. One would hope for an enquiry similar to a recent commission that unearthed misconduct in awarding driver’s licences to people. The suggestion of racism as the reason for the resignation is not shared since both people belong to an African National Congress that has no room for bigotry.
As an urban analyst, my interest is in whether this rift might affect the promised delivery of a million houses by 1999. There have always been problems with the manner in which the ministry sidelined the opinions of the civic movement in favour of advice from financial institutions. In part this was caused by Cobbett, who as director general had first-hand access to former minister of housing, the late Joe Slovo.
Whether referring the Mpumalanga project had merit, or simply reflected growing personal animosity, is unclear at this stage. More to the point, the clash over the style of work and the personality differences should not distract us from an opportunity to change not only the national housing director – if indeed that’s the case – but also the national housing and urban policy.
What remains clear to township residents is that the approach taken since 1994 has not worked. The policy, whose outcome Business Day described as “remarkably like the discredited site-and-service schemes advocated during the apartheid era”, was not only stingy. It also failed to deliver the promised goods, and worsened urban segregation by locating the “toilets-in- the-veld” long distances from cities.
Fewer than one in five subsidised sites received access to bank credit, despite banks being given every carrot available – much higher interest rates for low-cost loans, generous guarantees, support in carrying out evictions and state purchase of foreclosed properties. High-profile people like Cheryl Carolus have complained of being rejected by banks because even middle income areas like Yeoville have been redlined, yet the housing and finance departments still have no plans to draft a Community Reinvestment Act banning such discrimination.
In pampering the banks, Cobbett failed to consult the civic movement, thus alienating a key constituency which had lobbied hard for the Reconstruction and Development Programme’s commitment to affordable housing for all and which provided detailed recommendations – ignored by Cobbett – on how to foster community-centred development.
Cobbett’s reliance on credit to turn a site into “incremental housing” – and rejection of a much larger subsidy for well-located social housing and public rental units – created a huge financial bottleneck, with major developers blaming bankers for blocking projects. The result was government’s shocking failure to spend more than R4-billion allocated for housing during 1994 to 1996, followed by a dramatic budget cut in 1996.
The next director general of housing can remedy these problems if there is political will. But further urban policy reforms are needed, because household infrastructure – water, sanitation, energy and roads – has also been designed on the basis of market- oriented principles instead of a rights- based approach. The new policy downplays public health and ecological hazards, and makes water so expensive that a fifth of urban (and 90% of rural) residents are unable to afford to flush a loo.
For the 20% to 25% of urban households earning less than R800 a month, the Department of Constitutional Development claims there are only enough state resources to install pit latrines, yard taps (not within the dwelling), and electricity supplied at eight amps (not enough for heating or cooking). The World Bank’s 1995 infrastructure framework advocated even lower standards (communal taps and no electricity); to our regret, this week the bank announced it would begin investing in South African infrastructure.
Even in Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s Winterveld (Pretoria) constituency, infrastructure consultants wrote that more than 85% of all residents could, within a decade, merely have access to pit latrines – notwithstanding that the 1991 typhoid epidemic there was caused by pit latrine contamination of the relatively high water table.
The crucial point is that such low standards were adopted because constitutional development staff and the World Bank consistently refused to adopt sufficient “cross-subsidies” (redistribution from rich to poor, industry to consumers, urban to rural areas) through reform of tariffs at national level.
Along with other NGOs, the Development Research Institute has documented dramatic environmental problems – not to mention public health hazards, poor use of rural women’s time and class segregation – flowing from the poor infrastructure standards. We offered an alternative proposal that was ultimately rejected by officials as too redistributive. This leaves us to ponder a miserable future of bankrupt municipalities, controversial service cut-offs, service payment boycotts and even riots.
Mayekiso is director of the Development Research Institute