The small town of Vermaaklikheid could provide a model for low-cost housing
Barry Streek
The Cape Town holidaymakers who descended on the southern Cape village of Vermaaklikheid 15 years ago were a mixed blessing for the local community. They created jobs – but they also created a housing shortage, buying sites and farm workers’ cottages from landowners who were happy to get a reasonable price in this depressed town.
Now a pioneering land reform project is redressing the balance with the establishment of a village with home ownership for 32 families.
The basic core houses, designed in the traditional architectural style of the area (which is derived from local materials), are being built under the direction of a housing committee chosen by the local community.
After a previous building contractor was fired, the committee took control. With Izak Philander, maintenance officer for a group of hire cottages, as committee chair and self-employed builder Johannes “Batties” Hill as quasi-foreman on the site, things began to happen.
The quietly authoritative Hill leads, as he describes it, “from the middle”. He has to. The committee insists that someone from the family which is to occupy the house has to be involved in its construction.
When the Mail & Guardian visited the site, fisherman Stephanus Miggels was laying blocks for his house under Hill’s direction.
Miggels has lived in Vermaaklikheid all his life but he has never had his own home. Asked where he is staying now, he merely says: “We live further down the village.” It is not easy to earn a living and build a house at the same time. After his day on the construction site, he was going fishing that night at the nearby Stillbaai.
He represents a determination among a community that was devastated by economic developments, which all but destroyed its agricultural support base, and by the discovery of this picturesque and remote area by Cape Town tourists.
It is a determination that is demonstrated by the community’s construction of an attractive community hall, the Vredesaal (Peace Hall), with the assistance of the Independent Development Trust and the Social Change Assistance Trust, and by the establishment of the democratically elected Vermaaklikheid Gemeenskap (community) Trust, which is spearheading the village project.
Vermaaklikheid is a small settlement on the Duivenhoks River south of Heidelberg and Riversdale.
Sixty years ago it was a well-populated, thriving village, growing fruit, including grapes, and vegetables. There was a white and a coloured school, two shops, a butchery, a post office and a police station. All the land was owned by white farmers on subdivided farms, mainly smallholdings. The farmers built cottages for the local coloured labourers and everyone was housed adequately within the various smallholdings. Oddly, there was never a coloured group area.
However, when grape quotas were introduced, these did not include Vermaaklikheid and the area was cut out of the market. The butchery closed down because of new health regulations. The white school closed down. Many of the local people drifted to the towns and cities, and the village became depressed.
Then, about 15 years ago, it was “discovered” by holidaymakers seeking an escape from the pressures of urban life. They bought the cottages and renovated them, and they bought land on which they built new houses. This has stimulated some economic growth in the area. But with many former labourers’ cottages now being used for recreation purposes, a critical housing shortage for the predominantly coloured community developed.
The people involved in the new housing project still work in the area, and most adult men and women are employed there. They also have useful skills, such as thatching, building, and market gardening, as well as a relatively stable background. The 32 families were all born in the area and have lived and worked there all their lives, but like most rural workers they have been locked into dependency and poverty for generations.
The opportunity to break this situation came with the Department of Land Affairs’ pilot land reform project initiated in the Southern Cape after 1994. Vermaaklikheid was chosen as one of the 15 projects in the area. After bureaucratic delays and other problems, like the (unconnected) murder of the department’s facilitator and the lack of action by a builder, land was bought for the housing scheme in 1999.
But the project is floundering because of the shortage of funds, and the government’s pilot land reform project funding apparently cannot be stretched any further.
Once the land was bought (costing R3E000 per plot), it was transferred to one of the 32 families (R1E000 per plot), waterless toilets were purchased (R2E000 each) and water tanks were provided (R1E000 per plot). These costs, together with others, meant that only R7 500 of the government’s R16 000 subsidy per family remained for the construction of the houses.
This also excluded the provision of any services, such as water, sewerage and electricity.
But the participating families will accept the lack of bulk infrastructure, at least for now; they have cleared the site by hand. Local holidaymakers are also lending their support in a big way: land surveyor Damien Burger has donated his services; architect Paul Andrew has provided architectural support and urban designer Piet Louw has done the planning.
The village is designed around a public space. The core houses can be expanded with lofts and balconies in the roof, and by stoeps outside.
Materials have also been bought and are neatly stacked in front of each proposed house. Local farmers have also agreed to provide materials, such as beams and stone.
The Vermaaklikheid trust is convinced that with further funding, which it estimates at R1,4-million, including R460 000 for services and R150 000 for a community development programme, this could become a showpiece for rural development.
It also believes it is an example of how government and private co-operation can enhance community self-help and self- determination. The Vermaaklikheid project is not just blocks of low-cost housing. It is an attempt to build a village with local style, and give security to those 32 families.
Philander estimates they have R7 500 per house left but it will cost them at least R1 500 more per house to complete. The architect believes it will take a good deal more, but he’s not making an issue of it. In either case, Philander’s plaint rings true: “We have too little,” he says.
Hopefully, the trust’s funding drive will prevent the project from collapsing. It would, indeed, be tragic if the development of South Africa’s first rural village based on home ownership in some style failed at this stage because of the shortage of funding.