themselves
To address the country’s basic construction needs the government must facilitate community-driven projects, reports Aspasia Karras
Sixty percent of all construction projects in South Africa are handled by 12% of the industry. “The South African building industry is in a state,” says Sam Amod of Development Engineering Consultants. “Serious restructuring is required.”
Amod is part of a team working on the Green Paper for Construction due for publication at the end of the year. Entitled “Establishing an Enabling Environment for Construction”, the paper will focus on challenging the protectionist and uncompetitive nature of the industry. It will also attempt to break the cycle that makes it extremely difficult for emerging contractors to tender for large operations, because credit extension and surety are very hard to come by.
“Quality and execution are a serious problem; there is hardly any capacity. Large contractors point to the impressive hi-tech work at Richards Bay and Alusaf to show that capacity exists, but that kind of construction is not addressing the country’s basic needs.”
Amod is managing a project that reflects the Green Paper’s transformation objectives. His analogy is: “When you’ve got children to feed you cannot stop cooking in order to clean the kitchen.” The Boipatong-Bophalong integrated pilot project, started up in May, is one of 12 initiated by the Department of Public Works. The aim of the programme is to demonstrate to other government departments how re-orientation may be achieved, and to develop guidelines and technical information for future use
As part of the wider public works portfolio, each province was requested to develop a pilot project to deal with unemployment, poverty and the lack of skills in a particular community. The project entails creating and maintaining physical assets, such as clinics and roads, through the direct involvement and participation of the community. In this respect, the Gauteng project is the only one that has taken the principle of community participation to its logical conclusion. The R15-million project budget is being administered by community project committees, which have been set up in offices in Boipatong and Bophalong. Amod explains: “The community is still emerging from the throes of the massacre, so there was enormous animosity among the members of the project committee, but we found that inclusivity was the right management decision.”
Sean Phillips, director of the public works programme in Gauteng, says: “We are trying to interpret people-driven development and put it into practice, but it is a vague concept and you could end up empowering thugs.”
This is the very real consequence of the history of a community like Boipatong, and the latent instability has flared up during the course of the project. The four construction projects, the Jet Nteo school, two clinics in both townships, and a library in Bophalong, are being entirely handled by emerging contractors from the region, chosen after an open tender process. Nevertheless, gun-toting members of the African National Congress youth league at one stage prevented building on the site of the school, citing corruption and employment of non-Boipatong residents as reason enough to demand R2 000 to secure their co-operation. They have been subsequently expelled from the ANC, but their actions highlight the risks associated with community-driven projects.
But says Jacob Letsela, a member of the project committee in Boipatong: “The advantages to the community are many. Participation ensures that the community actually receives the services it identified and really needs; it also ensures that the projects will not be vandalised on completion, because the community has bought in to them.”
Amod adds: “South African construction moved away from labour-intensive methods during apartheid in fear of unionisation and instability, but the real need in South Africa is job creation. In real cost terms the labour-intensive method used on this and other projects would cost us the same if we had machines in there.”
The need is for stronger project-management and more risks by the government. Traditionally, a single contractor would go in and complete the project after it had been assessed by consultants. This ensured that the government ran the smallest risk, for relatively safe returns. A community- centred approach entails far more risk than the government usually likes to take, but has higher long-term returns.
But, says Amod, “to stick a wad of money in front of communities is irresponsible; parameters must be set”. These entail balancing the level of power given to communities with internal checks and balances, as well as developing the control in the projects at the level where decision-making is most effective.
“If government is serious about empowering communities it must then give provinces, local government and individual project managers discretion to act beyond hierarchical regulations, to speed up the process.”
Phillips sees the process as a series of trade-offs between communities and personal gain; between time constraints and a high level of community participation; and between meeting social needs and actually getting things off the ground. But central to government’s fear of this kind of project, he says, is the culture of risk aversion – and this kind of community participation is a potential minefield.
“If the independent auditors who are auditing this project found that the R5- million already spent had been somehow misappropriated, heads would roll.”
The trade-off for the government appears to be to take more risks and transform the way development projects are managed or give up the notion of community-driven development.