Apartheid’s legacy remains tenacious and despite a huge public investment in housing in the 10 years of democracy, the number of informal settlements has grown substantially, South Africa’s national Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Thursday.
She acknowledged that at the current funding levels, the housing department was marking time. The department had discovered that with a growing backlog and rapid urbanisation “in ten years time we will be at the same place with the same backlog” of housing for the poor.
Sisulu, addressing a housing conference at Cape Town’s convention centre, said: “The incontrovertible fact of our transition is that despite achievements in the economy, as a direct consequence of apartheid, we remain a country with some steep contradictions.
“Despite huge public investment in housing over the last ten years of R29,5-billion, apartheid’s legacy remains strongly tenacious,” she told delegates to the conference.
“Now it threatens to scupper all that we carefully crafted and worked towards since we collectively began the transition in 1994.”
Sisulu said that between 1999 and 2001 the number of households living in shacks in informal settlements and backyards increased from 1,45-million to 1,84-million — reflecting an increase of 26% — “a figure far greater than the 11% increase in population over the same period”.
About 2,4-million households live in informal housing structures, she noted.
“This is worsened by some major shifts in the housing need where households have become smaller and more numerous and have become more urbanised,” said Sisulu.
In informal settlements, the basic services and infrastructure that was the norm in developed areas were lacking. “By reason of their spatial exclusion, individuals and households experience difficulties in assessing all that they have been guaranteed as rights by the Constitution — namely the right to basic amenities such as health and safety and security facilities.”
Sisulu noted that at the one end “of the [property] spectrum” there had been a boom with housing prices recording the highest growth in the world and at the other end, there were millions living in unacceptable conditions.
Noting that South Africa was aiming at reaching 6% economic growth by 2014, she said that “it would be silly not to take the opportunity … to achieve an equally significant miracle to present each South African with a decent home”.
Sisulu said that in a partnership with communities and their organisations and the private sector, the government was determined to accelerate housing delivery to increase it by 12% — enough to overcome the backlog.
In the estimates of national expenditure released by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel earlier this year, he noted that 1,74-million subsidised houses had been built since 1994 — the year of democracy — had not necessarily become economic assets in the hands of the poor. “The inability of recipients of subsidised housing to pay municipal rates and service charges has also meant that municipalities view these new residential neighbourhoods as liabilities as they do not contribute to the municipal tax base,” he said. – I-Net Bridge