The squatter invasion that swept Cape Town housing officials into the high court this week comes against a backdrop of delayed, scrapped or crippled low-cost housing projects around the city.
Latest council figures show that nearly R30-million of the R46,2-million the city council had earmarked for priority housing projects for the year to June 1998 will not be spent – with many schemes snagged in a bureaucratic web or simply scrapped.
The provincial legislature, meanwhile, has decided to halt one of the province’s highest-profile low-cost housing projects – Crossroads Phase 4. Just 31 of the planned 604 houses have been built.
Such setbacks are symptomatic of the growing housing problem Cape Town faces. The council alone has about 41 000 people on a long- standing waiting list for housing.
Another 100 000 people are living in shacks. Many of them were among the hundreds who invaded the Lost City area of Tafelsig in Mitchells Plain two weeks ago.
The council had originally hoped to evict the squatters and bulldoze the site earlier this week. But the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), which is representing the squatters, won a four-day reprieve.
The council was due back in the high court on Friday to re-argue its case, should negotiations opened on Wednesday fail to find a settlement.
“Bulldozing is not the right way of dealing with this problem – it’s not going to go away,” says LRC attorney Vincent Saldanha. “You have to deal with people. You have to negotiate. The continuous refrain is that people have been frustrated. They’ve been living in backyards, under cramped conditions.”
Deputy executive committee chair Saleem Mowzer says the council understands the squatters’ frustrations. But he says the council cannot give favourable treatment to illegal occupants.
Officials also suspect the Lost City invasion is being exploited for political gain. The Inkatha Freedom Party, the United Democratic Movement, the South African National Civics Organisation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Muslim Judicial Council and Qibla have all been jostling to stake a claim among the squatters.
Mowzer adds that the council is close to finalising a plan under which the city will contribute R125-million over five years to “top up” the individual R15 000 state subsidies available for low-cost housing.
“I think we have a housing policy in place that will fundamentally address the housing need,” he adds.
Such a policy is desperately needed. The latest reports compiled for the city’s housing committee include an update on expenditure for “ad hoc” projects – those drawn up to eliminate housing backlogs.
They include schemes in Vygekraal, Manenberg, Hanover Park, Mitchells Plain, Ikapa, KTC, Langa and Nyanga.
The report shows the council expects to spend nothing on 20 of the 24 projects it identified for the year to June 1998: three of them, together worth R9-million, have been scrapped as “unsustainable”, the others delayed.
Project engineer Paul le Roux says among the main difficulties is getting the state subsidies through.
“In some cases it’s because consultation with the community has not been done, or the community is just not ready.”
One of the delayed projects is a 320-house scheme for another area of Tafelsig, Silver City – illegally occupied more than four years ago. The city’s housing committee must also discuss a plan of action for Crossroads Phase 4.
The provincial housing department has been battling with the scheme since last May, arguing that the subsidy is insufficient. Most of the cash goes to providing services such as water to the site.
The department’s patience finally snapped last month. “We do not believe any contractor can build 36m2 houses to the required specifications and programmes on a sustainable basis,” provincial housing head of department Herman Steyn wrote to outgoing city housing chief Billy Cobbett.
“The existing housing contract has been terminated. Your council is invited to consider an appropriate means of continuing the project.”
Crossroads Phase 4 is part of the R1,2-billion Integrated Service Land Project founded six years ago to provide 41 000 houses.
Other project schemes have been afflicted with similar difficulties, and allegations of poor workmanship and corruption.