Municipalities have neither the capacity nor the mandate to deliver housing, Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu said on Monday.
”Together with my colleagues in the housing Minmec [Minister Members of the Executive Council], housing MECs and the Salga [South African Local Government Authority] leadership, we realised that municipalities have not been given a clear mandate for housing delivery,” she said.
”We also noted that not enough capacity exists in municipalities to carry [out] housing delivery — simply because we did not specifically build nor fund such capacity.
”As such, we came to a conclusion that in cases where municipalities have an acute lack of capacity to perform housing functions, we need to urgently attend to that matter,” Sisulu said in a speech prepared for delivery at the National Municipal Housing Indaba.
International best practice indicates that efficiency in delivery is best achieved by the sphere of the government closest to the communities.
But the precondition for that is a properly funded and adequately capacitated sphere of government, with the appropriate mandate.
In line with the Comprehensive Plan for Sustainable Human Settlements, it is envisaged that municipalities will play a much more substantial role in this.
Selected municipalities will be accredited and the Department of Housing is seeking to devolve and assign housing functions on the basis of sound funding arrangements and accountability, appropriate governance arrangements and systematic capacity development of the provinces and municipalities.
Sisulu said the ”simple reality” is that people do not care which sphere of the government delivers housing, and they are not interested in the convoluted processes involved.
This has been highlighted by protests across the country against some municipalities.
”Situations arose where, because of failures to perform in respect of housing delivery, communities then decide to simply march to the municipality and knock on the mayor’s door demanding speedy delivery.
”Invariably, the mayors were then placed in some very awkward positions where they were required to account for responsibilities that did not belong to their spheres of governance.”
In other cases, the delivery failures of municipalities are blamed on the national and provincial governments.
The government needs to be a single seamless entity, whose local face and presence within communities come through municipalities, she said. — Sapa