On World Habitat Day women used the opportunity to shed light on their living conditions and to illustrate the obstacles women still face in realising their housing rights.
Their testimonies reveal that women bear the brunt of poverty and, along with their children, continue to be vulnerable.
It also highlighted the fact that the face of poverty is changing.
When we listen to these women, we develop a better understanding of the quality of family life, of the prospects for South African children, and we begin to gain insight into the state of community.
The unsustainability of prevailing housing, economic and social security strategies is evident in these testimonies, which expose the effect of ongoing joblessness and increased poverty on women in urban areas.
Though nearly half the jobs available in South Africa can be found in cities, we find extreme poverty co-existing in close proximity to these same economic hubs.
The National Spatial Development Perspective, due for release soon, indicates that 77,31% of people living under the minimum living level are located within 60km of areas generating at least R1-billion.
Following global trends, our population is rapidly urbanising and research indicates that migration is increasing among women as an important livelihood strategy. Most find no work, but those who do tend to find themselves in low-paying jobs that require little or no skills.
Confirming that the majority of South African women continue to lack economic security, Census 2001 indicated that 49% of black African women are not economically active and a further 29% are unemployed. Those who work tend to have informal employment where workers have low pay, less security, are typically not covered by labour legislation, and cannot access credit.
All of this illustrates that women have very low affordability levels and makes housing rather inaccessible to women. A more developmental approach is required on the part of the state, which must intervene where markets fail to provide for the needs of the most vulnerable in our society. More direct engagement is needed with women such as these, to develop a nuanced understanding of their experiences and vulnerabilities and also of the capacity they have to contribute to addressing our housing and economic problems.
Anthea Houston is the executive director of the Development Action Group (DAG). The proceedings of the DAG seminar will be available at www.dag.org.za or Tel: (021) 448 7886 from November 15
‘We live where we work’
Ma Dunyiswa Phephani (66) is a domestic worker in Sea Point. She has lived in a single room with her children since 1993. Given her salary, it is impossible for Phephani to buy or rent a house near her workplace. In 1997, she joined The Rainbow Housing Cooperative, where she met other domestic workers, caregivers, cleaners, gardeners, caretakers, chauffeurs and restaurant/hotel workers. Together they tackle the problem of securing dignified, affordable and secure housing.
“Most of us live in small rooms with a toilet behind our employer’s house, or in a room with a shared kitchen and toilet in blocks of flats.
“We work long hours and we do not earn enough money for the transport between the townships and work. So most of us live at the place where we work. Our families are separated. Sometimes we don’t even know if our children are going to school … Some employers only allow the women to spend one night per month with their husbands. That is why we need housing close to where we work so that we can have a job and a decent life with our families.
“We feel stronger now that we have formed the cooperative. We are not victims … For 10 years we have knocked on every door, from the councillors all the way to Parliament … We are behind high walls, and invisible to other people, but we have a big voice and big hopes for the future of our children … We still believe one day we are going to be heard.”
‘Now we can talk openly’
Lesar Rule, a 39-year-old disabled woman, was one of several backyard shack dwellers who occupied land in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain, in 1998. Frustrated by the overcrowding, the lack of privacy and the high rent paid to their landlords, the occupants chose to erect shacks on the unserviced state land, pitting themselves against the authorities. Today, the community (with the support of the local authority) is leading the upgrading of the Freedom Park settlement.
“On Freedom Day we just said ‘this is it’. We took that land and people, mostly women, put up their shacks.
“The city gave us eviction letters but when the bulldozers came the schools and community organisations helped us make a human chain around our shacks. So the city took us to court instead and the court sent us to mediation, which took five years.
“The city finally agreed to upgrade Freedom Park and now we are doing this project together. But we also don’t have work. Sometimes when a woman is unemployed she’ll go to shops and steal, she’ll skarrel [beg], some women even sell their bodies to get food. We have to fix all these problems, too. So we started projects for recycling, food gardening, women abuse and parenting. Now some of us can talk openly and at the end of the day we can eat and there is less abuse and soon there’ll even be houses.”
‘It gave me back my pride’
Elize Tully, a single parent of four children living in a backyard shack, has been at the forefront of an arduous, but successful, 18-year long struggle for land and housing in Netreg, Bonteheuwel. In October she moved into her own 42m2 house built as part of a self-help housing project.
“I struggled, moving from one place to another, having my children living away from me for 10 years and taking abuse from a man. All of that made me join this project and really get into it. I can really say that after [we] women joined this project that’s when things started moving.
“It’s us — as women, mothers, who have to put food on the table — who have to see that our children are safe. Women would go and do someone’s washing just to get a piece of bread for the table and the men would come and beat the women for that money. So we’ve done this project, simply because our children were staying in a shack.
“When I looked at the shack where I lived, I thought, ‘My Lord, this is the place I’m living in. Can someone, a human being, live in a place like this?’ But that’s a reality, that’s where I stay and others will never know the humiliation we face. You feel as if you are nobody, your dignity is stripped from you, because you have to beg for water, and even in winter our children have to wash in cold water. Once I didn’t work for six years; for those six years my children shared unemployment with me in that shack. Someone told me: ‘You don’t work and you’re a mother!’
“But that didn’t stop us from getting together to form the group and push forward. We worked so hard and it makes me so proud to see us women doing what men are supposed to do. Through this project I feel I can take on the world, because it gave back my pride, it gave back my dignity. I stood and I sat and I quarrelled and I talked with government ministers.”