Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele: RIGHT TO REPLY
Your article, “Whatever happened to the dream of low-cost housing”, February 20 to 26, was sensational and alarmist.
My office has been co-operating with the media in making sure that their information needs are met on time. There is nothing sinister about verifying statistics and maintaining their integrity before releasing them to the public.
We have not put a spin to the figures at all: we have quoted a figure that has included houses completed or under construction. It is correct to state that “under construction” may mean just a foundation. However, it takes between two and four weeks to turn that into a completed house. As a result, the inclusion of houses under construction reflects units possibly completed by the time the figures are released.
The figures are for December 31 1997. One can only imagine how many units have been completed between then and the date of your article, given that the housing delivery average rate is 1 000 units every two-and-a-half working days.
We take the process of housing delivery very seriously and would not gamble with the destiny of ordinary and poor people, unlike some politicians in our immediate past. Housing delivery is not a political die but a responsibility we are vigilantly pursuing to make sure that the quality of life of ordinary people is enhanced.
Homelessness and lack of affordable housing is a serious problem facing all of us. That is why we are constantly checking and putting mechanisms into place to make access easier.
The housing department is currently finalising arrangements to facilitate access to finance and building materials for those earning less than R1 500 per month, to enable the incremental building of houses through the People’s Housing Process to take off.
Government policy on housing is to provide beneficiaries with starter homes the size of which is determined by the household’s budget. With this starter home for those who have no access to credit, it is hoped that a family will increase the size of the unit themselves. Thokoza stands as a case in point of where starter homes have been transformed to sizeable homes.
Providing over 460 000 houses, security of tenure and shelter to at least 2,3-million families in four years is no idle boast, but a record that is unparalleled in the history of housing delivery in South Africa. We included the 40 000 units built under the previous dispensation programme because they were financed through the budget allocated to this department after 1994.
It is surprising that the building industry prefers to carry on the housing debate through the media when they are signatories to the record of understanding. They have not, at any stage, approached the department to express their reservations on the target being met.
The agreement binds all signatories, and one would imagine that it would be fair that anybody expressing misgivings would communicate this to the other parties.
Any self-respecting builder will tell you it takes at least 18 months from the time of conceptualising an idea and putting it in the form of a comprehensive proposal to actual implementation. Long lead times do not fit comfortably within a 12-month budgetary period.
So, rolling over committed funds is a normal phenomenon in this industry, and is also symptomatic of large-scale capital programmes such as housing development. It does not reflect our reluctance to spend money, but how we are grappling with the harsh realities of the market.
Furthermore, the issue of lack of funds relates to inadequate budget allocations for the purpose of planning and carrying out new projects.
However, after the delay in the launch of the housing programme in 1994, we have mustered the capacity to accelerate the programme, and we can confidently state that housing delivery is on track and more and more people are getting access to state subsidies on a non-racial basis, which was not the case before this new democratic dispensation.
Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele is the Minister of Housing