For the quest for decent human settlements to receive attention, civil society has to stand up a lot more, says Thabo Makgoba.
Cape Town - The recent cacophony of new voices from the various legislatures has drawn considerable attention to the parliamentary channel on DSTV.
Politicians at each other’s throats and others thrown out of the legislatures seem to have made good entertainment while generating interest in this important, yet less watched, channel – at least according to what I hear.
My interest in that parliamentary channel this week was, however, different. With temperatures plummeting towards the freezing point in some parts of our country in the past week, my heart is with the families of Lwandle, Lenasia and many others that may have been waiting with bated breath to hear what Minister of Human Settlements Lindiwe Sisulu had to say in her budget vote of 2014.
My interest, as it has always been, was to pay attention to what our government intends to do with the degenerating state of our communities, primarily caused by what is today referred to as inadequate human settlements or lack thereof.
Some of the most basic human rights lie in the provision of site and services, in particular sanitation and proper housing.
Madiba’s legacy, which we are all celebrating this week, has, as its foundation, the question of human dignity.
I hope you took some time to reflect how deeply hurtful and dehumanising the recent eviction of the people of Lwandle in the Western Cape was.
The images fed to us by TV cameras and print media were not only an eyesore to some of us, but took us back to the pre-1994 era, where forced removals and evictions were the order of the day.
I can relate with the people of Lwandle and Lenasia who, through the evictions, were forced to take what they could while they watched in horror what they used to call home being brought to rubble.
What do we say to these people when we ask them to remember Madiba?
Back in the early 1940s, my father, his brothers and their cousins left the picturesque Limpopo village called Magoebaskloof for the city of gold, where they settled in Alexandra.
After many years of forging strong community bonds, my family was unfortunately forcibly removed back in 1974 to Pimville, Soweto.
What this removal was insensitive to was the fact that any ill-prepared move was not only going to tear families apart, but it was the beginning of disintegrating a community.
But I guess on the part of any repressive regime, that may be an intentional move to deal with perceived threats or risks as they were calling us back in the day.
In post-apartheid South Africa, one which continues to advocate for nation-building and social cohesion, it is quite incomprehensible that during days of inclement weather, families can be evicted apartheid-style out of their homes.
The greatest difficulty facing our government and its lawmakers today is the competing interests that require planning and execution to lead our people out of the many challenges overwhelming them daily, in particular the poor.
While I acknowledge that the government has finite resources to deal with all the problems facing South Africans today, I firmly believe that even if people are employed and have access to education, and yet struggle with the basic human necessities – shelter and access to proper sanitation – many things will break and the consequences will be too dire to deal with.
Some of our people have to continuously live with the bucket-toilet system while children untimely meet their Maker because of open pit toilets and bacteria-laden water.
Human settlements has to be a priority of the government – not only on paper and in parliamentary debates. This prioritisation has to trickle down to the very people the government seeks to serve.
While many solutions lie on the doorstep of the government, a lot more lie within us.
As citizens, we need to go beyond imploring the government to act against such a travesty of human dignity – we need to ask ourselves hard questions, ones that require us to take action instead of apportioning blame.
In her speech in Parliament Sisulu reminded us that the Race Relations Institute reported back in 2012 that of all the service delivery protests in the past five years – 20 percent – were said to have been attributed to housing problems.
While this is a noteworthy report, the question to be poignantly asked to the faith communities is: where have you been all along while communities continue to struggle for services, including access to sanitation and decent housing?
In all towns, townships and major cities I never miss a church, mosque or a synagogue. In fact, I have also been observing an increase in congregations that do not require the four walls to gather for worship.
This to me is an indication of how pervasive the faith community is – but seemingly, we are not using our collective power to be the voice of people in communities.
Are we that afraid that politicians will say we are trying to take their jobs and we should stick to preaching and worship?
Other questions are: if a community has been without basic human rights related to sanitation and settlement, where are the faith communities that minister to them weekly?
What action have they taken to ensure that this situation changes?
We seem to be sitting too long on our hands – we have not been called to be bystanders while our communities burn in the form of service delivery protests.
For the quest for decent human settlements to receive attention, civil society has to stand up a lot more to enforce what are basic human rights.
We commend civil society initiatives, like the one on Limpopo, that have seen the birth of a coalition to focus on the issue of poor sanitation in schools.
Such civil society pressure groups must be replicated across the country to hold the government accountable.
The strike in Marikana, and the subsequent tragedy in that part of the country, has brought into focus the role of business in communities.
Mining companies, in particular, make billions from the minerals below our land.
The extent to which they plant back, both as a direct meeting of their obligations linked to their licence, and also simply as a moral duty to plant back, leaves much to be desired.
It’s common knowledge that mining companies, in particular, are responsible for the collapse of the family unit.
They are an example of what a migrant labour system can do to destabilise the family unit.
Therefore, a call for mining companies to invest in proper accommodation for families will go a long way towards rebuilding the fabric of family in what is a huge constituency of mine workers.
Second, and more importantly, the communities surrounding the mines must be attended to with huge investments that should eradicate things such as the bucket system, and therefore improve the health profile of these communities.
Finally, business in general must identify communities where they derive their income, and partner with the government to attend to the settlement challenges.
Investment in sporting facilities, or even mere fields, can go a long way towards ensuring that the settlement of communities is made even slightly bearable.
What has happened to local community action?
In our culture, letsema used to ensure that there was joint community action to clean up our places of abode. These days we wait for the government to do things for us.
The president called on all of us to clean up during Mandela Day – this is a call that we endorse only as a reminder of what communities ought to be doing all round the year to live up to the adage, “cleanliness is next to godliness”.
Once these things are done, we still have to attend to the spiritual challenge of refocusing the attention of society on the family.
The scriptures give us hope that this battle can be won.
The issue of fixing the family and the values that must underpin it must start with each one of us.
* Thabo Makgoba is the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
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