More than 20 000 township bondholders have fallen into bond repayment arrears since 1997 — but no mechanism exists for dealing with their plight, according to Servcon Housing Solutions MD Manye Moroka.
Moroka said Servcon had resolved half the 33 000 bond default cases referred to it. However, its mandate covered only the pre-1997 period. About 20 000 new defaulters had emerged since the August 1997 deadline and the company could not deal with them.
Servcon is a joint venture of the government and the Banking Council that emerged from the ”record of understanding” reached at the 1994 Botshabelo housing summit. A Section 21 company, it was set up to help defaulting township home-buyers by, among other things, relocating them to cheaper rental accommodation or Reconstruction and Development Programme housing.
A key purpose was to encourage the banks to lend more readily into ”redlined” low-income areas. The creation of Servcon was coupled with the launch of a government housing indemnity fund, aimed at cushioning private lending institutions from bond boycotts.
The company has been in the news in connection with violent anti-eviction protests in Mandela Park, Khayelitsha, which have sparked a security force crackdown and the arrest and prosecution of local members of the Anti-Eviction Campaign. Bond defaulters have been resisting Servcon ”rightsizing”.
A senior housing official confirmed there was no policy in place to deal with bond defaulters subsequent to September 1997, but said the initial draft of the planned Community Reinvestment Bill stipulated that banks had to educate bond applicants about their duties.
Banking Council general manager for transformation Cas Coovadia said urgent attention had to be given to issues such as the 30% to 38% unemployment rate, which bore on housing provision. He hoped once the Community Reinvestment Bill was released, progress could be made.
Last year the Bill was criticised in the banking and housing sector for setting low-income loan targets, and imposing penalties if these were not met. A revised draft is still to be finalised, but it is understood to offer various options in dealing with low-income bonds.
In addition to Khayelitsha, Servcon has hit grassroots opposition in Tembisa and Welkom. However, Moroka said the cooperation of councillors has proved a breakthrough in many areas.
In Khayelitsha, the company successfully dealt with 558 of the 1 903 properties in default; in Tembisa, 939 of 2 714 properties; and in Motherwell, 513 of 845.
In two Welkom townships it has been less successful — 99 cases of a total of 979 have been resolved.
It was estimated in 2000 that there was a backlog of three million housing units in South Africa.