Address by MEC Nomvula Mokonyane, on the tabling of the Housing Department's Budget Vote, Gauteng Legislature
28 June 2004 Speaker It is an honour for me to present to the House my first budget speech since being appointed to be MEC for Housing in our province. I present this budget full of confidence because this is the start of the better things to come in our province. One of the most obvious manifestations of the apartheid past was the creation of racially divided communities. Levels of infrastructure and other public investments in these communities were based on race. A high level of investments were in white areas. Poor and or non-existent facilities and services in black areas. In 1994, the democratically elected government inherited a system of gross inequality and increasing neglect of services to the majority of the people, who happen to be black and poor. About 50% of the African population was informally housed in 1994. The provision of access to basic services to the majority of South Africans who previously did not have access has been a significant achievement. Currently, over 90% of households in Gauteng have access to water, over 80% have access to basic sanitation, about 73% have access to electricity and over 80% have weekly refuse removal service. The majority of people in Gauteng now enjoy their rights to basic services. More than 500 000 housing opportunities were created, directly impacting on more than 2.5 million people in Gauteng . Between 1994 and 2003, a total of 295 218 stands were serviced, 193 360 new houses built and 277 367 houses transferred in Gauteng . The people of Gauteng and the indeed the whole country have spoken through the ballot by giving the African National Congress an overwhelming mandate to continue to govern thereby ensuring that even more people have access to basic amenities. When we went out to canvass for votes in all corners of this province, we listened to what people were saying about their problems in relation to housing and indeed their complaints are valid and through this budget we will by all means start dealing with the problems identified. The soaring number of people coming to our province in search of a better life, and in search of employment opportunities will continue to be a challenge and our plans are therefore geared towards meeting such challenges. One of the critical and most urgent challenges is to accelerate the programme of ensuring that the homeless and those who live in squalor have decent houses built on well located land and access to basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity. As part of dealing with poverty and unemployment and building safe and sustainable communities, the department has identified areas where housing development will take place as our contribution to the people's contract to create work and fight poverty. Our main objective is to ensure a sustainable housing and human settlement process to achieve housing with secure tenure, within a safe and healthy environment, and the development of viable communities for all people. We have to deal with the challenge of how to best optimise the use of space available to the urban poor and unemployed in targeted areas, enabling these people to find alternative local economic development paths that are collectively determined by them. In developing our plans we recognise that the emphasis of housing delivery in Gauteng and indeed South Africa has moved beyond the issue of numbers to the enhancement of quality of both our houses and the lives of the people we serve. This is important, because we must recognise that the eradication of poverty is not only complex, but also needs strategies that will enhance social up-liftment of the poor beyond the physical structures that we erect. Our delivery programme on housing will always be measured by the efforts we make in pushing back the frontiers of poverty and expanding access to a better life for all. It is within this context that we want to ensure that during this period we build and cement a people's contract for a better future, in which all sectors including communities and financial institutions play their respective roles in accelerating the delivery of quality housing for our people. Our commitment through this budget is to build quality homes and help in the building of thriving communities while at the same time trying to turn around the apartheid spatial development patterns that we have inherited. In doing this, we have to get in touch with and organise non-governmental and community-based organisations, private sector partners and the beneficiaries themselves so that we face these challenges as a collective. Honourable Speaker, the President in his State of the Nation address said we would build on our experiences of the past ten years to intensify the housing programme and indeed this is what will happen in Gauteng . The President identified the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment as the key priorities, this along with the creation of job opportunities for all, especially the historically marginalised sections of our communities. In turn, the Premier responded by making the point that in Gauteng those who continue to live under conditions of abject poverty expect us as government to urgently implement measures to alleviate their plight. The unemployed requires both short term jobs and sustainable employment opportunities, along with workable strategies to reduce poverty. The President further raised a number of other issues that relate directly to the work of our department. These include the improvement of the quality of life of all people - to which he said that we will ensure that within the next 5 years all households will have easy access to clean running water, and also that all households will be provided with basic sanitation during the current term of office. He raised the challenges of addressing racial and gender inequalities, disempowerment of our youth and people with disabilities and proper care for children and the elderly. He urged all of us to respond to the challenges posed by the Second Economy and the need for strengthening our system of local government as a sphere located closest to our people. The President called upon all of us to mobilise all our people to voluntarily act together to achieve the tasks of reconstruction and development in a People's Contract to create work and fight poverty in the context of Expanded Public Works Programme and the Urban and Rural Nodes identified in terms of our Urban Renewal and Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme - these representing key strategic interventions by the state to achieve sustainable growth with equity - while at the same time addressing the slow down in housing delivery and the broader question of spatial settlement patterns and their implication on the question of building a non-racial society. Other strategic issues raised by the President relating to the broader question of governance include the - harmonisation of the Municipal Integrated Development Plans and the refining our system of Monitoring and Evaluation to improve our performance and the quality of our outputs. The Premier also raised similar issues in his address to this Legislature on the 7th June 2004. He articulated the complaints by our people about the inadequacy of our housing products, in particular, the quality and the standard of houses we have delivered in the past. And we want to join him in saying - the poor and the homeless who live in squalor also want, and indeed deserve, decent housing built on well located land, with access to basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity, along with other social amenities such as clinics, public transport, recreation and all. We also join the Premier in saying that the women also want access to economic opportunities that can entrench their independence, people with disabilities want opportunities to work and contribute to the development of our province, black people wants to participate in the economy as entrepreneurs and owners of the means of production. Through our housing programmes over the next 5 years, we also want to join the Premier and the rest of the Provincial Executive Council's effort to achieve the following:
The central tenet of our plan is underpinned by the need to substantially improve the quality of life of our people. Indeed, there can be no more visible intervention than at the lowest levels, among the poorest of the poor. Housing is an area where the stuck reality of inequalities in our society is immediately visible. And we who have been given an overwhelming vote of confidence by our people commit ourselves to giving in equal measure our commitment to deliver on our promises. Together, therefore, let us break new ground in housing delivery! The central tenets of our policy in the new term of government rest on five key pillars, which determine our new direction as we break new ground in housing. First, we are shifting away from quantity to quality housing. In the past, in the quest to meet the huge demand in housing, we unfortunately concentrated on numbers (quantity). We now will be dealing with the two (quantity and quality) not as mutually exclusive components of the same delivery process. It is against this background, Speaker, that government at all levels has declared war on informal settlements. It is a known factor that these settlements are distinguished by poor quality of life, high unemployment, impermanent shack housing, and a lack of convenient access to social and economic opportunities, such as health care, education, sport and recreation, and local formal employment. It's a known factor that our ordinary people who reside in these informal settlements, routinely experience trauma of personal and property crime, often more so than in other parts of our cities, our province and our country. This situation has contributed to the general problems associated with poor and or inadequate access to services such as policing, emergency services and other essential services by the masses of our people. Speaker, we have therefore taken a decision that our main focus in this new decade of freedom will be to upgrade and formalise all informal settlements capable of formalisation. We will relocate those on river banks below 50 to 100 years flood lines, those on flood plains and marshes, on rubbish dumps, on dolomite, shallow mined land and others risks associated with sink holes. The focus will be on providing housing and basic services on a priority basis to those in historic townships, those who have been on our waiting lists since 1996 and 1997 but have not yet been assisted, and certainly those who currently occupy shacks and have no access to running water, sanitation or electricity. Through this approach we are determined that we will be push back the frontiers of poverty by reducing the housing backlog. From our perspective, the formalisation of informal settlements will entail providing security of tenure, the issuing of title deeds, the providing water, sanitation and electricity and, where necessary, building schools, clinics and recreational facilities. Our housing developments will continue to focus on building safe and sustainable communities on well-located land. The second pillar of housing policy direction in this new term emerges out of the recognition that the formalisation and upgrading of informal settlements will present great challenges given the composite nature of consultations required with various community-based organisations, and individual beneficiaries, to ensure that we take into consideration the various needs, circumstances and requirements of our people. This pillar is about the mainstreaming of the participatory development paradigm. Participatory development goes hand in hand with community empowerment and poverty reduction. It is embedded in decision-making processes. Processes by which, and manner in which, decisions taken are implemented (or not implemented). Recognise that power exists inside and outside the formal authority and institutions of the state and government, thus includes government, the private sector and organs of civil society. Participatory development also recognises that decisions are made based on complex relationships between many actors with different agendas and priorities. The responsibility of government and the department in particular, is to at all material times articulate and protect the interests and priorities of the poor and the most vulnerable. Participatory development is associated with efficient and effective administration in a democratic framework and is equivalent to a purposeful and development oriented administration committed to the improvement of the quality of life of the masses of the people. Implies high level of organisational effectiveness and strives to link the capacity of the political centre of power to the administrative systems, and to respond to the emerging challenges of society and the marginalisation of the poor in particular. Participation refers to an explicit process that is neither closed nor static, a means of identifying and realising development needs along with the allocation and distribution of resources in consultation with the beneficiaries. Inherent in this participatory development paradigm is equality and partnership for beneficiaries and stakeholders in development, as opposed to old perceptions of the poor being merely passive recipients. In the context of our political priority of a People's Contract, community partnership will be structured and be built on the foundation of the Housing Support Centres (HSCs). The HSCs will be capacitated to promote sustainable partnerships with Ward Committees established in terms of the Municipal Structures Act. Making housing available to the poor must be coordinated with other basic services necessary for the sustainability of any community. The HSCs must link communities with opportunities. The HSCs must also link up communities with the Expanded Public Works Programme - a nationwide programme aimed at drawing significant number of the unemployed into productive work - so that workers gain skills while they work, and increase their capacity to earn an income while providing for their own shelter. The HSCs will work extensively with the SETAs and also draw on the Learnership Programme to structure the training and capacitating of community builders and fieldworkers. Another key tenet of participatory development will be the transfer of knowledge and skills among all partners by promoting interaction among parties by the appropriate participation and contribution of all partners. This calls for a focus on service learning in the field of community development and home-based social service delivery to ensure sustainable development in all activities. This is community empowerment - can also be defined as transformation through collective power. Community empowerment can be achieved by enabling participation of communities through their organised formations in the planning and development processes and by promoting equality in development projects that enable women in particular, and other marginalised sections of the community in general, to not only participate, but also to dictate the pace, rate and direction of the development processes. Community empowerment will also be achieved by minimising the vulnerability of the poor through housing as an economic asset, as such; we will soon be going on a massive drive to distribute title deeds to the poor and the vulnerable in our communities. The comprehensive programme to be submitted to National Cabinet by end of July will amongst other things include land acquisition, medium density development strategy and financial models, inner city regeneration programme, measures for the enhancement of the secondary housing market, the principles of the rental housing policy and rental housing subsidy, a revamped social housing programme together with the social housing policy, to ensure well capacitated institutions to manage rental stock. This programme will prioritise informal settlement areas, sparsely populated suburban areas, and inner city areas, in order to change the spatial settlement patterns through integration and the building of a non-racial society and thereby ensuring that we have sustainable and vibrant communities. This is the third pillar of the housing policy as we begin the new term of office. The planned human settlement and infrastructure programme will consist of three most important thrusts: the development of medium density housing, informal settlement upgrading, and the development of social infrastructure, in well-located areas. To make the ideal of "housing on well located land" a reality, work has already been undertaken to integrate all spatial data sets of the following Departments:
The spatial mapping work emanating from this integration exercise that was done with respect to available and suitable land for development shows that there are a total of 95,012 ha for development within the urban edge. The conclusion can therefore be drawn that there is adequate available and suitable land for development within the built-up urban fabric - well located land. What remain to be determined are the economic and financial costs of development as a result of the choice of a location - this exercise is ongoing and the Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) will guide all future decision-making. Our time-bound Urban Regeneration initiatives remain on our radar screen. But for the successful completion of the Alexandra, Bekkersdal and Evaton Renewal Projects, it will be essential that funding agreements be concluded with the municipalities and other sister departments both at national and provincial level. We have agreed with the Department of Local Government on the need to speed up the finalisation of a funding protocol, especially with regard to the utilisation of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant. The protocol with other sister departments will be with regard to the funding of other social infrastructures, services and amenities (capital and operational). This will ensure the sustainable implementation of all the urban renewal projects. Work has already started in Bekkersdal and Evaton. And we are also on track to complete the Alexandra project in three years time. The most significant aspect of the success of the urban renewal experience though will be our ability to mainstream the application of integrated development in all our future projects and programmes. The rental housing policy will be concluded this year and the rental-housing subsidy will be implemented from the beginning of the next financial year making this the fourth pillar of this new term of office. Through the Gauteng Partnership Fund (GPF), and supported also by various Social Housing Institutions, we in Gauteng will be in a position to deliver up to 10 000 Rental, Rent-to-Buy and Instalment Sale units over the next 3 years to households with monthly income ranging from R2000 to R8000. For those households with income less than R2000 per month, we will be repackaging the hostel redevelopment programme into a new broad based Affordable Rental Accommodation intervention, aimed at serving as rental housing of last resort to those with the least disposable income, while at the same time integrating the hostels with the surrounding communities. Our interventions are also focusing on promoting good governance and attaining sustainable in integrated human settlements. With respect to good governance, i.e. our fifth pillar, we will focus on efficient and effective systems of government and optimise the potential of all stakeholders to constructively contribute towards our goal of housing the nation. We will establish the necessary policy and regulatory environment, systems and procedures, human and financial resources, and an organisational culture that strives for excellence throughout the institutional machinery collectively responsible for achieving the housing mandate. At municipal level we will focus our efforts particularly on building capacity for municipal officials, councillors and emerging contractors through our Programme Management Offices (PMO) to ensure efficient delivery of housing. As a response to problems associated with the capability of various municipalities and other implementation agents to roll out various housing and infrastructure projects, the department is also setting up PMO sub-offices at various local authorities to ensure the effective management of housing projects as well as capacity building and skills transfer. We have also agreed with the Department of Local Government to work together with regard to this initiative so as to avoid confusion and duplication of effort, especially since the National Department of Provincial and Local Government is also rolling out Project Management Units (PMUs) in various municipalities. As part of realising and contributing to the objectives of NEPAD, in November this year, our country will be hosting the African Minister's Conference together with the UN Habitat where our housing development plans and ideas in this regard will be further enhanced through sharing of information and expertise with other countries within the continent. Gauteng has been in the forefront of rooting out corruption and maladministration and the investigations that were set up to probe number of cases are still underway and by end of July this year a report will be presented to the Department and we will robustly implement recommendations suggested. The National Minister of Housing has already announced that a Special Investigative Unit will be established and will be operational in three months. In addition to this, a national hotline will be established in order to ensure that members of the public report any complaints, irregularities and raise any queries they might have regarding housing. In discussions with the National Minister and various MECs for Housing we have resolved that we will devise a communications strategy that will permeate from the national to the provinces. The strategy will encompass a number of pillars which include educating communities about their rights, obligations and responsibilities such as ensuring that a house that is given to them cannot be sold for eight years unless under special conditions; educating them on special arrangements for certain categories such as people living with HIV/AIDS, disabled persons etc; and educating communities about the government's plans regarding their environment. The strategy will also ensure that stakeholders within housing are sufficiently empowered to assist communities. As part of reaching out to communities, we will continue with our programme of meeting with communities who have problems with their houses and those who have benefited from our programmes. Through this interactive programme, we will be promoting the notion of Letsema in housing in order for communities to initiate their own housing solutions. Speaker, in affirming our commitment that we are indeed a caring government, the value of the housing subsidy in the current financial year is increased to keep pace with inflation. Households with incomes up to R1, 500 per month will receive subsidies of R25, 800 and be required to make a savings contribution of R2, 479. This means that the house price will come to R28, 279. Indigent households and people building their own houses will receive R28, 279 and not be asked for a contribution. People with disabilities receive even more to cater for their various needs. Households earning between R1, 501 and R2, 500 per month will receive a subsidy of R15, 700 and invest their own savings in the balance over a period of time. Households earning between R2, 501 and R3, 500 will receive R8, 600 and contribute their own additional savings over a period of time. We will be rolling out the learnership and internship initiatives on a massive scale through our infrastructure and housing implementation projects:
Trench Excavation: All trench excavation that is classified as "suitable for excavation by hand" shall be performed by hand - using the pick and shovel. We aim to develop 51 000 stands for the period ending March 2005. With an average of 3 short term jobs created for every site developed, we therefore anticipate no less than 150 000 short term job opportunities will be created through this programme for the period ending March 2005. Our new Community Builder Housing programme - to be implemented through Xhasa Accounts and Technical Centre (ATC) - will also use labour intensive methods so that we can create more employment, skills and training opportunities. We aim to create further short-term job opportunities by enrolling the construction of housing "top structures" with the Expanded Public Works Programme. Through this programme, raft/concrete slab foundations will be constructed on site - optimally combining labour intensive and mechanised methods. With 10 000 housing units expected to be finished by end March 2004, it is thus expected that 50 000 more short-term jobs will be created through this initiative. We will also be employing 2500 youth and people with disabilities on a short-term contract basis. They will be visiting each and every household in the province. They will be conducting a level 1 social survey to establish the form and content of housing demand in Gauteng . The results of this social survey will be captured on our GIS based eKhaya system to guide our planning processes. In all these initiatives, we will be expecting the Housing Support Centres, working closely with various SETA's, to blend these short term job creation interventions with learnership initiatives - this will ensure that through housing delivery processes, we also leave behind people with skills and recognised certificates, making them employable in their own right. Other indirect outputs of various housing programmes directly related to the fight against poverty are, but not limited to:
On the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment front, the targets as set by the Department are the following:
We have deliberately increased the 10% national target for women in housing to 30% because we believe that it is possible to achieve this 30% and even more, because where there is a will, there is a way. Programme summary allocations for 2004/5 * Administration Programme 1: R 68 866 000 Total: R 1 425 018 000 Conclusion Speaker, we have a long way and in the process many lessons have been learnt and our experience of the past ten years will be utilised to deal with housing allocation in a manner that will ensure that the deserving individuals and families are prioritised. We are also fortunate that we build on very firm housing delivery programme laid by my predecessor. In taking forward the spirit of the Peoples Contract, we will ensure that the initiatives outlined in this budget speech are implemented with the people, for the people, by the people, with each doing something to eliminate poverty and create a better world. The housing allocation process will change for the better and the Housing Department reaffirms its commitment to address the needs of individuals, households and communities who experience poverty, social exclusion and vulnerability. We commit our selves in building working partnerships with various sectors and stakeholders, and in the process we will ensure that our housing programme becomes a key instrument for economic growth and ensure sustainable communities. I wish to thank members of the Standing Committee who I have interacted with since my appointment into this portfolio, your continuous support and co-operation is highly appreciated. The Chairperson, Mr. Godfrey Tsotetsi has participated in our departmental process of developing a new strategic plan document based on new mandate of this government, and I believe that this will assist in ensuring that all of us have a common understanding and vision for housing delivery in our province. To the Premier and Members of the Executive, thank you for your ongoing support, guidance and co-operation. My sincere appreciation goes to the Head of Department, Mr Sibusiso Buthelezi, Senior Mangers and all employees of the Department who have so far provided me with support and guidance. We have a long way ahead of us and we shall not fail and we will make the 'Peoples Contract' a reality. I thank you For more information contact: Mongezi Mnyani Issued by: Department of Housing, Gauteng Provincial Government
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