MEC Mokonyane Launches The Hostel Eradication Programme

Gauteng Housing M EC Nomvula Mokonyane today launched the Gauteng Hostel Eradication programme, a turn-around strategy by the provincial government to fast track the development of 13 Gauteng hostels into affordable rental units by the end of the current financial year. The process marks the beginning of an aggressive plan by the provincial government to completely eradicate all the 54 hostels in the province.

The groundbreaking initiative is expected to yield close to 9 500 affordable rental units by March next year at a cost of R1.4 billion. The Department has already appointed contractors and work has begun in all the earmarked projects for this financial year. Affordable Rental Accommodation (ARA) is a new approach adopted by the Department of Housing to redevelop hostels into residential and family units to cater for variety of housing needs including single and family accommodation.

Speaking to the media after the official launch held at the Dube hostel in Soweto , where the Department also displayed a live demolition exercise to flatten a section of the old hostel, MEC Mokonyane emphasised that the eradication process signals the beginning of a new era in housing delivery in the province.

"As we demolish these old hostels, we are replacing them with new integrated human settlements that will now be called Community Residential Units. These units will cater for both hostel residents and surrounding community members. The integration of hostels into the broader community will foster harmonious co-existence. This will build safe and sustainable communities, ensuring that deserving people with limited disposal income have access to decent housing and shelter. Residents who can not afford the prescribed affordable rentals will be accommodated within other housing programmes in the province."

"Our emergency interventions to improve living conditions in these hostels were not yielding desired results and we therefore decided on full scale eradication process," added MEC Mokonyane.

"The four Soweto hostels: Dube, Diepkloof, Meadowlands and Orlando West will become pilot projects.to showcase our eradication model."

MEC Mokonyane also noted that the eradication marked the end of an era which was part of the apartheid legacy of cheap migrant labour which robbed black people of a basic decent lifestyle.

"These hostels were designed to dehumanise our people, on a basis that black cheap labour was to remain migrant labour force with their permanent homes and other family members remaining in some distant place away from the urban areas."

"They were designed and constructed in such a manner that they could not, by any means, accommodate anything else than black males"

"These hostels were to become huge social and later on political problems as hostel residents were never properly integrated into township life and many of these hostels are in appalling conditions which today we want to bring to an end as we embark on the hostel eradication programme" concluded MEC Mokonyane.