Project Woebegone

The woes of government’s massive housing flagship, Cape Town’s N2 Gateway, refuse to go away. This week, the United Nations’s special rapporteur on adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, wrapped up a two-week visit to South Africa, saying he found it ‘distressing” that the R3,1billion scheme was so ‘chaotic”.

Kothari, who visited South Africa on the government’s invitation, inspected a range of formal and informal settlements in Cape Town. He told the Mail & Guardian he was ‘surprised at the lack of planning and consultation” in the Gateway project.

Phase one of the project, involving the construction of 705 rental units, was completed almost a year behind schedule, while the construction of bonded houses in phase two has also been delayed. The budget overrun currently stands at about R150-million.

‘I found the whole process to be chaotic. It was distressing for me to see that the original beneficiaries of this housing project were moved so far out of the city and ended up not benefiting at all,” Kothari said.

Residents of the Gateway’s rental flats have complained that they have been forced to approach the rental tribunal office over substandard construction work, because government representatives are unavailable.

Kothari agreed: ‘People are and were simply not consulted by government — this is a critical absence. I also found a large scale of misplaced planning because of a lack of consultation. Residents from every type of community spoke with frustration about the lack of information and access to government.”

His visit came as the Western Cape’s Housing Minister, Richard Dyanti, added his voice to the chorus of criticism. But residents say Dyanti’s visit to the site last week is not sufficient and that they have asked the rental tribunal office to conduct hearings into the housing department’s responsibility for shoddy work.

A month ago, a civil engineer and construction manager showed the M&G major structural defects in Gateway houses, barely six months after the first residents moved into the complex.

Representatives of national Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s office, and the managing director of Thubelisha Homes, the company which manages the complex, then asked tenants to give them a month to fix ‘all construction problems”.

The general manager of Thubelisha Homes, Prince Xhanti Sigcawu, said that ‘about 80% of complaints” had been attended to and they were aiming to fix 90% by the end of April.

‘We’re not happy — it’s rare to have these problems so quickly after a place has been built. The quality is poor and we can’t run away from that fact,” Sigcwu said. ‘But we’re working on the problems.”

Riedwaan Davids, the Gateway’s maintenance manager, said Thubelisha Homes was putting heavy pressure on the contractor, Sobambisana, to remedy the defects.

‘We’ve been fighting with them [Sobambisana] since last year November and we will continue to fight until we are satisfied with the quality of the work done. We’re holding them responsible and, if they don’t come to the party, we’re getting somebody else,” Davids said.

But Luthando Ndabambi of the tenants’ committee is sceptical: ‘We feel Dyanti is bullshitting us. We’ve been complaining about some of the units for many months and only when the media got involved did they start listening to us. They asked for a month to fix problems; the month is over and very few of our complaints have been attended to.”

The rental tribunal office’s deputy director, Andre Rossouw, said his office had met Thubelisha, which undertook to deal with all the complaints. ‘We told Thubelisha we are proceeding with opening cases. They undertook to come back to us with an agreement between themselves and the community, but we’ve not heard from them,” Rossouw said.

An M&G inspection of the 11 units seen a month ago showed that work has been done on only two. Tenants are still complaining about the same cracks, damp walls and plumbing faults.

Dyanti said he was ‘worried” by the structural defects he saw during his tour of inspection. ‘People are very angry. I hold the entire Sobambisana team responsible for the problems we’re experiencing at N2 Gateway. We’re retaining some of their funds and they will have to come back and fix up what’s wrong,” he said.

About R35-million has apparently been withheld from Sobambisana until the government is satisfied with the quality of its work. However, it is understood that the construction company has been signed for the entire Gateway project.