A furious row has broken out between Cape Town city officials and Western Cape provincial authorities over housing accreditation for the council. But the municipality won't get accreditation rights, says Housing MEC Whitey Jacobs, because of a "collapse of governance".
"The mayor of Cape Town must understand that accreditation is not as simple as supply and demand. It is about creating conditions for the totality of government, working together to improve implementation and delivery."
Jacobs responded to mayor Helen Zille's statement in a council meeting that housing project delays could be avoided if the province granted the city council the housing accreditation it had been asking for since 2006.
The accreditation would allow the council to implement housing programmes without provincial approval.
Zille said accreditation would allow the city to approve housing projects in two to three months compared with the eight to 18 months it took the provincial housing department.
The city council had met the criteria stipulated by the provincial housing MEC for accreditation and submitted a business plan in 2006, said Zille.
Zille said the city declared an intergovernmental dispute with the province that then said the city's housing department had to first be assessed by the auditor-general to ensure it had adequate capacity.
"The irony is rich considering that the city received an unqualified audit while the provincial housing department received a qualified audit. It is even more ironic when you consider that the auditor-general found 60 percent of houses delivered by the province had serious defects, 2 200 subsidy allocations by its housing department worth R65-million were given to people who did not qualify and R16-million of the department's budget was unaccounted for."
She said the city waited 16 months to be told that the auditor-general could in fact not do the assessment for housing accreditation, despite auditors-general in other provinces giving assessment certificates to metros with less capacity than Cape Town.
But Jacobs said the city was one of 19 municipalities that were required to document capacity requirements for accreditation.
Many cities, including several that were better prepared than Cape Town, were also not accredited yet as they were still going through the necessary processes.
Although "largely completed in 2006", the process was delayed when the city declared a dispute with the province, Jacobs said.
The council's housing executive director, Hans Smit, and the director of housing finance, Wayne Muller, said the quickest way to resolve the dispute would have been to grant accreditation.
"The provincial officials indicated that the main reason for not granting the council's accreditation application was that the city council comprises 72 percent of the provincial housing budgets and this could effectively impact on the role of the province over the city."
But Jacobs said the city council had failed to implement its requirements for accreditation.
Muller and Smit said city staff had already been on a number of training programmes with the national and provincial housing departments, and the city received funding for accreditation from the national housing department used for the core accreditation staff and the information technology infrastructure which was already in place.
Jacobs said the city rejected inter-governmental co-operation, and wanted housing accreditation so that it could operate independently of other spheres of government.
"The city is therefore itself frustrating its accreditation process."
But the city said the province was withholding accreditation because it did not want to lose its housing budget.
- Cape Times
"The mayor of Cape Town must understand that accreditation is not as simple as supply and demand. It is about creating conditions for the totality of government, working together to improve implementation and delivery."
Jacobs responded to mayor Helen Zille's statement in a council meeting that housing project delays could be avoided if the province granted the city council the housing accreditation it had been asking for since 2006.
The accreditation would allow the council to implement housing programmes without provincial approval.
Zille said accreditation would allow the city to approve housing projects in two to three months compared with the eight to 18 months it took the provincial housing department.
The city council had met the criteria stipulated by the provincial housing MEC for accreditation and submitted a business plan in 2006, said Zille.
Zille said the city declared an intergovernmental dispute with the province that then said the city's housing department had to first be assessed by the auditor-general to ensure it had adequate capacity.
"The irony is rich considering that the city received an unqualified audit while the provincial housing department received a qualified audit. It is even more ironic when you consider that the auditor-general found 60 percent of houses delivered by the province had serious defects, 2 200 subsidy allocations by its housing department worth R65-million were given to people who did not qualify and R16-million of the department's budget was unaccounted for."
She said the city waited 16 months to be told that the auditor-general could in fact not do the assessment for housing accreditation, despite auditors-general in other provinces giving assessment certificates to metros with less capacity than Cape Town.
But Jacobs said the city was one of 19 municipalities that were required to document capacity requirements for accreditation.
Many cities, including several that were better prepared than Cape Town, were also not accredited yet as they were still going through the necessary processes.
Although "largely completed in 2006", the process was delayed when the city declared a dispute with the province, Jacobs said.
The council's housing executive director, Hans Smit, and the director of housing finance, Wayne Muller, said the quickest way to resolve the dispute would have been to grant accreditation.
"The provincial officials indicated that the main reason for not granting the council's accreditation application was that the city council comprises 72 percent of the provincial housing budgets and this could effectively impact on the role of the province over the city."
But Jacobs said the city council had failed to implement its requirements for accreditation.
Muller and Smit said city staff had already been on a number of training programmes with the national and provincial housing departments, and the city received funding for accreditation from the national housing department used for the core accreditation staff and the information technology infrastructure which was already in place.
Jacobs said the city rejected inter-governmental co-operation, and wanted housing accreditation so that it could operate independently of other spheres of government.
"The city is therefore itself frustrating its accreditation process."
But the city said the province was withholding accreditation because it did not want to lose its housing budget.
- Cape Times
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