Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu is carrying the flag for her Cabinet colleagues. She is implementing President Thabo Mbeki’s raison d’être — to mesh the three levels of government to create jobs and halve poverty.
Through her N2 Project Gateway she has breathed life into the interministerial committee — a forum where Cabinet ministers meet to assimilate policy and fast-track implementation. Until recently the committee met on an ad hoc basis, but has now agreed to meet twice a month. But the N2 Project Gateway is also indicative of a policy change.
The N2 Project Gateway, which is a multi-storeyed “human settlement”, indicates a change of emphasis in policy from Joe Slovo’s “one plot, one house, one family” made famous by the Reconstruction and Development Programme houses. What’s behind the shift?
When we met as the government to determine our way forward for the second decade we had time to reflect on what we had done right and we also had time to reflect on what had gone wrong. We discovered that the houses we had built were not quite of the standard that we would have wanted.
One of the basic tenets of the Freedom Charter is the right to decent shelter for all South Africans. With an annual urbanisation rate of 4,1%, the policy of one family, one house was not quite the right direction to deal with the housing backlog, which is affecting 2,4-million households.
It was also very linear and would take years to accomplish … We are also fast tracking our provision of rental accommodation because if we can provide rental accommodation we can absorb a great deal more people who have been on the waiting list.
Your father was a signatory to the Freedom Charter. Are you carrying out his vision?
I see myself as carrying out the policies of the African National Congress. My father is but an element of the party. The fact that he was secretary general or that he was never there to bring me up when I needed him is not the issue, and I try to divorce as much as possible my personal and professional life.
How do you deal with the not-in-my-backyard issue [the erection of low-cost housing alongside wealthier suburbs has raised fears about the effects this will have on property values]?
It’s natural within the society that we have grown up in. We have learnt that we have to communicate better and allay fears that property prices will not be affected by the new policy. I happen to have been in Britain about two months ago and I drove past Margaret Thatcher’s home — it’s meant to be an exclusive area in London but just across the street is council housing and it has not done anything to the value and status of the area at all.
We need society to buy into the idea behind the N2 Project Gateway — replacing informal settlements with formal housing structures. They need to realise that [mushrooming] informal settlements next door to them will, in fact, undermine property prices.
What does your diary look like?
My energy levels are always very high — I am in a new portfolio so I have to read a lot and still have much to learn. I consult a great deal — every step I take is after extensive consultation with all the spheres of government, the construction sector, the mining sector, because any statement that I make has repercussions.
I have been meeting with my provincial counterparts once a month during the planning for the Gateway Project. Under normal circumstances we meet quarterly. I think that at the beginning of next year we might begin to have normal lives.
The N2 project has been formulated, approved by Cabinet and construction has started within five months. Are the other 12 provincial pilot projects going to be pushed through as quickly, and will future housing settlements, based on these pilot projects, be shored up as much from the national government to overcome the red tape?
We have a monitoring and evaluation system that we didn’t have before. All along we were policymakers; now it will be possible for us to intervene, in consultation with those various levels of government, wherever we find it is necessary. [This also means] we can take charge of the final product … at the municipal level. Â
How do you marry the traditional tensions between the politicians, such as yourself, who formulate the policy and the civil servants whose role it is to implement that policy?
I carry a stick with me and a great deal of Red Bull! I think that every human being wants to be inspired and when they are inspired they will work hard. This plan has galvanised and created some source of inspiration for most officials.
One of your aims is to replace the country’s 2,2-million informal settlements with formal housing structures. With an urbanisation rate of 4,1% is this realistic?
I haven’t measured how realistic it is, but I know from my gut that it is possible.
You have altered the subsidy system to include a bracket of people [those who earn between R3Â 501 and R7Â 000] who did not qualify previously. Has the National Treasury bought into this?
We have consulted with Treasury. In fact consultation around this before we put it to Cabinet was extensive. The president announced in his State of the Nation address that the housing budget will be bolstered, so, therefore, I can only assume that there will be more money.