Cape Town cries foul after councillor ‘asked to leave’ human settlements meeting

THE city of Cape Town has cried foul after one of its councillors sent to attend a Department of Human Settlements meeting in Johannesburg this week was asked to leave the meeting venue by Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu.

Ms Sisulu is said to have asked Cape Town mayoral committee member for human settlements Benedicta van Minnen to leave Monday’s meeting arguing that it was only for mayors.

The incident is likely to put further strain on the relationship between the city of Cape Town and Ms Sisulu. Last year the minister and the city clashed over the Lwandle Commission of Inquiry. She also accused the Democratic Alliance-led city of "buying" the title of World Design Capital in 2014.

According to Ms van Minnen, Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille could not attend the meeting because she had a previous long-standing commitment that she could not cancel for a meeting where she was given only three days’ notice.

"She communicated her unavailability to the minister’s office the very next day, but added that she would be sending me as her representative in my capacity as mayoral committee member for human settlements. Considering that the meeting pertained to my directorate, both myself and the mayor felt it apt that I should attend the meeting," Ms van Minnen said.

"This morning (Monday) I proceeded to travel to Johannesburg to attend the meeting. An e-mail was sent from the minister’s office ... when I was already en route to the meeting once more indicating that I was not allowed to attend. Upon my arrival, I entered the meeting.

"About 40 minutes into the discussions, Minister Sisulu arrived and asked me to leave the meeting venue. She personally blocked me from taking part in the discussion that directly impacts my directorate, and service delivery in the city at large," Ms van Minnen said.

She said Ms Sisulu has "once again misused her position as the national minister of human settlements to purposefully block service delivery in the City of Cape Town".

Ms Sisulu’s spokesman, Ndivhuwo Mabaya, said that Ms van Minnen was not an acting mayor and therefore her presence at the meeting "would not have assisted with anything, as she does not have mayoral executive powers — she was just there to take minutes".

"The city was informed that only mayors will attend the meeting. Mayor de Lille issued a number of media statements attacking the national Department of Human Settlements in the past six months; it was only fair for her to attend the meeting herself so that she can explain herself on a number of issues. We suspect she did not attend the meeting to run away from them," Mr Mabaya said.

- BDLive

Moving Up in Joe Slovo

Approved Joe Slovo housing beneficiaries, who were deemed to be "too young" by government to receive houses in October, this week moved into their new units at the N2 Gateway development. Other families, who remain behind in the informal settlement, and who are now being moved to make space for the next phase of the housing development, remain unhappy.

In the last week of October, Zimasa Zibeko, 32, and dozens of their neighbours were denied access to houses at the Joe Slovo N2 Gateway development in Langa. The houses, they believed, were due to them, and they threatened to resist being moved out of shacks on land earmarked for the next phase of the development.

GroundUp investigated and found that that Human Settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela had deemed the beneficiaries too young to "be prioritised" for government houses.

But Madikizela has now confirmed that those beneficiaries (56 in total) were approved before government's policy shifted to prioritise people over the age of 40 for housing.

"This is incredible," said Zibeko, as she gave GroundUp a tour of her new double-storey, two-bedroomed apartment at the N2 Gateway development. She received the keys on Monday.

"We were worried [in October] that this day would never come. Here we have a toilet and running water. We are warm at night, and this has already had a good impact on me and my children's health. I have asthma, and when the wind blew through my shack at night, I used to cough until the early hours of the morning."

The novelty of a house has been particularly entertaining for her three-year-old son, Yomelela. He has been flushing the toilet with glee, and been mesmerised by the door handles, the likes of which he has never seen before, according to Zibeko.

Nomonde Mahlati in the shack from which she is to be removed to make space for the next phase of the Joe Slovo housing development, in Langa. Photo by Daneel Knoetze.

"My child was always sick; the flu would not go away and he had a runny tummy sometimes. It is all because of the conditions where we lived in the shacks. It was not healthy ... We had to walk far just to go to a portaloo or a water tap."

For other residents of Joe Slovo informal settlement who have not yet received houses, such unhealthy conditions persist. Approved for housing at the new development, 41-year-old Nomonde Mahlathi has lived in the area since 1995. When her shack was demolished by the Housing Development Agency to make space for the housing development, she spent four nights outside in May 2013. She now stays in a small two-roomed shack with seven family members, four of them children. As the land is cleared for the next phase of houses, she will have to move again.

"We are disappointed ... Some of those beneficiaries were very young, in their early twenties, and they do not even have families to look after," said Mahlathi.

"What about my children? My son Ndim, who is now six, still has memories from being evicted," she said, recounting how her son, aged four at the time, came home from creche to find his mother's shack lying in tatters.

"He has become a withdrawn and scared boy at school. Living like this is not good for his health and he is psychologically damaged from us being removed so violently. Now, we have to move again -- to a small shack in a congested area where the risk of fires is very high."

- allAfrica

Human settlement panel answer questions

TNA in Sandton with the Minister of Human Settlements, Lindiwe Sisulu, & Human Settlement Stakeholders as they unpack the Social Contract for development of Sustainable Human Settlements as signed at the National Indaba on 17th October Chamber of Mines SA, SA Affordable Residential Developers Association, Black Conveyancers Association, Banking Association of SA.

Mike Teke, President: Chamber of Mines South Africa Cas Coovadia, Managing Director of Banking Association of SA Zukiswa Ntlangula, President of Black Conveyancers Association Yusuf Patel, SAARDA spokesperson.

"I'd like to be able that I'd like to be able to confirm that perhaps in two years there will not be an indigent military veteran anywhere." 

- Lindiwe Sisulu prioritizing a select few military veterans over providing what the state is obligated to, set out in the Grootboom case

Minister defends housing age limit

Parliament - Apartheid did not steal the youth of South Africans under 40, Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Tuesday as she defended her department's age criteria for qualifying for free public housing.

“What apartheid could never take from anybody is their age. They are young, they are energetic, they are able to do,” Sisulu said on the sidelines of a briefing to Parliament's human settlements portfolio committee on her first 100 days in her portfolio.

The minister was accused by the Economic Freedom Fighters last week of misleading voters and creating a generation of “hobos” after she told journalists in Durban nobody under 40 would get a free house from the state.

She said she had referred to the age of 40 on that occasion because everybody present was younger, but it was established state policy that the minimum qualifying age was 60.

Asked when the policy was introduced, her office referred to a recent press release issued by Sisulu in which she stated that the decision to make 60 the qualifying age dated to 2009 Ä towards the end of her first term as housing minister.

The minister and all provincial human settlements MECs “resolved in 2009 that priority must be given to the elderly”, the statement said, and to that end the criteria were changed to prioritise those above 60, military veterans and people with disabilities.

“The housing database or waiting list is also being audited and adjusted to prioritise possible beneficiaries by age, starting with the elderly and those with special needs,” the minister's statement added.

Sisulu told Sapa there was a basic, universal understanding that the poor and elderly would be first in line for state benefits.

“If I should ever be able to say there is no 80-year-old without a house, I would have achieved something.

“If I can say there is nobody above 60 without a house, I will celebrate, I might even get to the 40-year-olds but right now our indigency policy does not accommodate any of you.

“Our policy speaks to 60, because that is the qualifying criteria worked out in our policy. Anything that is free ... there must be a cut-off point otherwise it will be a free for all. So in human settlements that is the criteria we use.”

She said the group of journalists in Durban's protests that they too were disadvantaged by apartheid, because for example they were taken out of school, were not persuasive because they were better able to fend for themselves than the aged. They were also eligible for other forms of state support, such as subsidised low-cost rental.

“What apartheid did do to the elderly is it has taken their lives away. There is nothing an elderly person can do,” she said.

“So it had nothing to do with schooling or advantages, it had to do with the fact that there are other programmes that we have in housing that caters for a whole variety of people who are able to do that.

“What people under the age of 40 have is an enormous ability to do things themselves. That which the older people can't do.

“They have sweat equity, which is one of the programmes that we have. They can go into rental if they can get a job. We are creating a youth brigade so they will get a job.”

She added the government did not want to create a young generation dependent on state benefits.

“We want our young to grow up and be self-sufficient, we don't want them to be dependent on the state. The state has only so much that it can cater for.”

- Sapa

Lindiwe Sisulu and the New Denialism

In 2005, early in her in her first term as Minister of Housing, Lindiwe Sisulu announced that the state had resolved to 'eradicate slums' by 2014. This was a time when the technocratic ideal had more credibility than it did now and officials and politicians often spoke, with genuine conviction, as if it were an established fact that this aspiration would translate into reality.

It was not unusual for people trying to engage the state around questions of urban land and housing to be rebuffed as troublemakers, either ignorant or malicious, on the grounds that it was an established fact that there would be no more shacks by 2014.

As we head towards the end of 2014 there are considerably more people living in shacks than there were in 2005, in 1994 or at any point in our history. The gulf between the state's aspirations to shape society and what actually happens in society have also been starkly illustrated at the more local level. Sisulu's flagship housing project, the N2 Gateway project in Cape Town, resulted in acute conflict and remains in various kinds of crisis to this day.

One of the lessons to be learnt from the denialism around the nature and scale of the urban crisis that characterised Thabo Mbeki's Presidency is that although the state is certainly a powerful actor, it has often been profoundly wrong about its capacity to understand and to shape social reality.

But Sisulu's first term as the Minister of Housing is not only remembered for her failure to grasp either the scale of the demand for urban land and housing or the limits of the state's response. There was also a marked authoritarianism to her approach. She did not oppose the escalating and consistently unlawful violence with which municipalities across the country were attempting to contain the physical manifestation of the urban crisis via land occupations.

Sisulu also offered her full support to the failed attempt, first proposed in the Polokwane Resolutions, and then taken forward in the KwaZulu-Natal parliament in the form of the Slums Act in 2007, to roll back some of the limited rights that had been conceded in the early years of democracy to people occupying land without the consent of the state or private land owners.

At the same time she also earned some notoriety for her unilateral, and clearly unlawful, declaration in 2007 that residents of the Joe Slovo settlement in Cape Town would be permanently removed from the (entirely mythical) 'housing list' for opposing forced removal. She was also silent in the face of the violence marshalled through party structures against shack dwellers who had had the temerity to organise around issues of urban land and housing independently of the ANC in both Durban and on the East Rand in 2009 and 2010.

Her second term as Minister, in a portfolio now termed Human Settlements, has been marked by a similar silence in response to the even more brazen forms of repression, including assassination, now visited on people organised outside of the ANC in shack settlements in Durban. But there have been some important shifts in her position.

One is that like her predecessor Tokyo Sexwale, she no longer speaks as if the 'eradication of slums' is imminent. In this regard the state has developed a more realistic understanding of the situation it confronts. Another shift is Sisulu's opposition to unlawful evictions in Cape Town. This is, given her on-going silence in response to violent and unlawful evictions elsewhere in the country, clearly an expedient rather than a principled position. But in a context where land occupations are routinely misrepresented through the lens of criminality or political conspiracy her framing of her opposition to eviction in Cape Town in the language of justice may open some space in elite publics to politicise the contestation over urban land, something that is relentlessly expelled from the terrain of the political by a variety of elite actors.

But it is Sisulu's recent declaration that the state intends to do away with the provision of free housing and that people under forty will no longer be eligible for public housing that has been particularly controversial. Both aspects of this comment position her in direct contradiction to the law and the policies to which the government is, at least in principle, committed.

This is nothing new. When it comes to its response to the urban land occupation the state routinely speaks and acts in direct contradiction to both law and policy. What is significant here is the indication that the state, increasingly short of cash, intends to step back from some of its commitments to sustain some forms of public welfare.

Sisulu is presenting the state's public housing programme as if it were a temporary state response to apartheid, which now that things have been normalised, can be abandoned. Both parts of this equation are seriously problematic.

The ANC, in a posture that these days is simply farcical given that it is Putin rather than Lenin that restores the sparkle to Zuma's eyes in tough times, likes to pretend to itself that it is a revolutionary organisation. But public housing, far from being some kind of unique and temporary South African exception to the general status quo, is a standard part of even basic social democratic programmes.

Countries in the South like Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela all have public housing programmes of various kinds. These programmes all have serious flaws, but the fact that they exist and that other states are committed to public housing as a principle, should not be denied. In Venezuela the public housing programme includes housing that is entirely free for entirely impoverished people. There are also governments in the South that have actively sought to legalise land occupations and support the improvement of conditions in shack settlements.

Sisulu's assertion that people under forty "have lost nothing [to apartheid]" is one of the most extraordinary statements to have escaped from the mouth of a cabinet minister since 1994. The pretence that apartheid's consequences came to an end in 1994 is the sort of denialism that is so out of touch with reality - and in a way that works to naturalise inequalities inherited from a long history of brutal oppression that turned race into class - that it's almost obscene to even engage it as if it were a serious proposition.

In a situation in which millions of people cannot access housing through the market the state should recognise the social value of land occupations, offer all the support that it can to improve conditions in shack settlements and develop the best and most extensive public housing programme possible.

But if the state continues to see most land occupations as criminal and to curtail its own public housing programme, it will place millions of people in a situation that is just not viable. The inevitable consequence of the state committing itself to an urban agenda that simply has no place for millions of people will be a radical escalation of the already intense conflict in our cities. To put it plainly guns will become even more central to how our cities are governed. Sisulu's comments amount to a declaration of war.

Dr. Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University.

- allAfrica

Cape Town's Joe Slovo residents “too young” for houses

Residents of Joe Slovo informal settlement, Langa, have been left homeless after they started demolishing their shacks under the impression that keys to new housing units would be handed over to them. The MEC for Human Settlements, Bonginkosi Madikizela, has said that the shack demolitions were premature and that many of the beneficiaries are “too young” to be prioritised for housing. By Daneel Knoetze for GROUND UP.

On Wednesday, when community leaders told Ntombi Mpozolo, 26, and dozens of her neighbours to move out of their shacks in anticipation of receiving new houses, they were happy to oblige. Mpozolo’s section of Langa’s Joe Slovo informal settlement borders the newly completed Phase 3 of the N2 Gateway Housing Development. She and 55 neighbouring households claim that they have been registered as beneficiaries in line for new houses at the development since 2010. Title deeds for the units have already been signed, she says.

“We have been waiting for those houses a long time. Our ID numbers are all on the list and we were not expecting to be so disappointed. Instead of sleeping in our new houses, we were left outside to sleep among our possessions.”

Mpozolo showed GroundUp to the hearth around which some of the families slept the night before. The coals were still smouldering, which would make it easier to light the fire later, she said. Couches, fridges, kitchen cabinets, luggage, clothing and remnants of shacks lay scattered about.

Nearby, Mzwanele Zulu, of the Joe Slovo Task Team, had convened an impromptu community meeting. He used a loud hailer to address some 200 people who had gathered.

The Task Team is the community’s liaison to government and the N2 Gateway project managers - the Housing Development Agency.

“There is a lot of sudden confusion on our side and, more so, from the community,” he told GroundUp after the meeting.

“We are just here to show that we are in solidarity with them. Last night I was here until 2am, sitting with people who had no option but to sleep outside - mothers and infant children.”

Zulu said the Task Team, on instruction from the HDA, told 56 families to move out and to start demolishing their shacks.

“We had a fruitful meeting with the HDA last week and it was agreed that the beneficiaries would move in on Tuesday and Wednesday. Now, suddenly, we are told that these beneficiaries are too young and that they will not receive houses at all. That has come completely out of the blue. The community feels that they have been stabbed in the back. It may seem peaceful now, but this is a recipe for violence.”

The issue of age and housing allocation was addressed by national Minister of Human Settlements, Lindiwe Sisulu, at the 6th Planning Africa Conference in Durban on Tuesday. According to Sapa, Sisulu told reporters that people below the age of 40 are not “a priority” for government housing allocation.

“Our intention in giving free houses was to right the wrongs of the past and make sure that we can give our people dignity. And that group of people is not the people below the age of 40,” she is reported to have said.

“I don't know of a country that gives free houses to young people. Free housing in a few years will be something of the past. You (the young people) have lost nothing (to apartheid).”

The HDA could not confirm reports that the issue of age came up in their discussions with the Joe Slovo Task Team this week. Spokeswoman Kate Shand said that the HDA would only be able to respond to GroundUp’s queries later this week.

Madikizela of the Western Cape Human Settlements department, which is a partner in the N2 Gateway project, acknowledged that expectations had been raised in the Joe Slovo community that keys would be handed over this week.

“But, at no stage were those residents told to move their possessions or to demolish their shacks,” he said.

“The development’s contractor is the only body tasked with doing this. If they do not give the instruction, which they did not do, it would be irresponsible to start the process of moving.”

On the issue of age, Madikizela said:

“There is no way that we are giving houses to kids in their 20s. It cannot be fair that youngsters - who are new on the waiting list - get houses when there are people in their 60s and 70s who have lived in shacks for decades. They may threaten violence, but government will not bow to this pressure.”

But Mpozolo, a mother with a four year old boy, said that she was merely asking for government to make good on previous agreements that she and 55 of her neighbours would move into the new houses.

If they were not handed the keys to the new houses, Mpozolo said, the community would violently resist relocation.

“We are old enough to vote for these politicians to be in power, but now all of a sudden we are not old enough to be given the houses that we were promised.”

“They themselves agree that we have been on the housing waiting list. We qualify for these houses, they are ours. This is unfair and, as you can see, we must now live outside without a roof over our heads.” 

- DM

Housing delivery efforts 'hampered by residents'

CAPE TOWN – Western Cape Human Settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela says some Cape Town residents who are angry over housing issues are hampering housing delivery efforts themselves. 

Madikizela and City of Cape Town officials addressed the Langa community on Sunday. 

The meeting comes after dozens of residents took to the streets earlier this month in violent protests which rendered the township inaccessible for more than a day. 

Shack dwellers and backyarders in the area are demanding houses. 

A community meeting between Langa residents and Western Cape government officials went smoothly despite lingering tensions over housing. 

Madikizela addressed a packed community hall, saying his department has noted residents’ concerns.

He however pointed out that housing delivery has been delayed due to shack dwellers building structures on land earmarked for development. 

Madikizela appealed for patience, informing the community of two other projects currently underway.

- EWN

We are not short of ambition - Now offering 'Housing opportunities'

Lindiwe Sisulu says her department will provide 1.5 million housing opportunities over the next five years.

This past week, we led the international community in the celebration of the greatest struggle icon of our time, Nelson Mandela. Our government plans and the challenges it seeks to address, are linked with what Mandela stood for and fought against.

Addressing the court at the Rivonia Trial, Mandela said: “We fight against two features, which are the hallmarks of African life in South Africa: poverty and the lack of human dignity.”

If we are to be true in honouring his legacy, we should ask ourselves whether we are doing enough to emulate him in addressing those challenges.

Our people are the best judges. They have endorsed the work we have done in the past 20 years. They resoundingly proclaimed that under the ANC government, South Africa is better than it was 20 years ago. This has also been acknowledged by all the opposition parties.

But it should not blind us to the challenges ahead. As we try to address the seemingly intractable legacy of apartheid, we have had to contend with new challenges – arguably all linked to this ugly past.

We have brought back dignity to the more than 3 million households that have benefited from our pro-poor policies.

The mushrooming of squatter camps and informal settlements that blight our otherwise beautiful landscape are a consequence of land hunger – and economic dispossession spawned by apartheid.

We are not unmindful of the growing sense of desperation and impatience that has been expressed by our people.

Our analysis suggests South Africans are beginning to ask the difficult questions. One of which is, when will the backlog and waiting list of 1994 be eliminated?

Some housing experts are suggesting there must be a cut-off date for young people and we must focus on elders. They also suggest the government consider other forms of assistance to those younger than 60.

Developers, bankers and construction companies expect the minister to intervene to unblock red tape in municipalities.

Taxpayers expect the minister to ensure the houses built with their money are of quality and given to the right owners.

NGOs, in particular those operating in informal settlements, find the government unreasonable and uncaring about the plight of people living in informal settlements.

Low-income earners (R3 500 to R10 000) are struggling to find houses they can purchase within the price range of between R150 000 to R300 000. They cannot find affordable serviced stands to purchase where they can build their own houses. They expect the government to intervene and assist.

Many young people in urban areas who earn less than R5 000 a month are willing to build houses for themselves, but there is a lack of allocated land for them to buy and on which to build.

Town planners and developers believe it is possible for the process of township establishment, re-zoning, environmental impact assessments and approval of building plans to be fast-tracked.

They have specific proposals on how this can be done.

We are not short of ambition. And where ambition is combined with commitment, the sky is the limit.

Our bold measures are aimed at addressing the spatial planning and reversing the geopolitical imagination of apartheid in the next five years.

We must continue to ensure that all South Africans live in decent conditions in suitable settlements that provide inclusive amenities and public transport.

We will provide 1.5 million housing opportunities for qualifying households in urban and rural settlements over the next five years.

These will include fully subsidised houses, affordable low-income houses, social housing units and community residential units.

We will also accelerate the provision of basic services and infrastructure in all existing informal settlements.

Greater co-ordination among key role-players remains a key ingredient for success in this drive to improve living conditions of the 750 000 households found in informal settlements.

We will increase the supply of affordable housing for teachers, nurses, police officers, office workers and many others in the gap market.

Work is at an advanced stage with the Ministry of Public Service and Administration to introduce a programme to help meet the housing needs of public servants.

We will work with financial institutions, private sector organisations, co-operatives and social partners to increase the provision of capital for housing and overcome barriers to affordable housing finance.

Our considered view is that housing development will not be a drag to the economy, but will be a skills generator and a catalyst to many economic opportunities. As the government, we have made a commitment.

As I have indicated above, we can’t do this alone. This is a call for partnership for all society to place all hands on deck.

* Lindiwe Sisulu is the Minister of Human Settlements.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.

- The Star

Sisulu promises 1.5-million houses in five years

THE Department of Human Settlements plans to facilitate the construction of 1.5-million homes and informal housing upgrades over the next five years, Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Tuesday.

But to achieve this, more financial resources would be required, the minister said at a media briefing ahead of her budget vote speech during an extended committee of the National Assembly.

A delivery budget of R29bn was allocated to the department this year, and it will rise to R32bn and R34bn over the next two years. In addition, the government will be trying to encourage greater private sector financing in housing projects. This will be necessary to address the backlog of about 2.3-million housing units and the 2,200 informal settlements mushrooming around the country.

Ms Sisulu said a decision had been taken to only construct "mega" projects involving a minimum of 10,000 units, both to achieve economies of scale and to fast-track delivery. Fifty national priority mega projects would be identified throughout the country for integrated and sustainable developments which would include economic and social amenities.

In terms of the department’s master plan, 30% of these houses would be houses for the indigent, 20% gap houses for those earning between R1,500 to R10,000 a month, 20% for rental accommodation, 10% would be social housing and 20% would be serviced sites in informal settlements.

"We believe the building of houses must be a catalyst for skills development and job creation. South Africa is about to become the biggest construction site in Africa and most probably in the developing world. We will build close to 270,000 houses annually as a sector.

"After reviewing housing delivery from 2005 to 2009 and 2009 to 2014 we have come to the conclusion that we need to change our approach. We need to move from small projects of 200 houses to mega projects of integrated housing mix to cater for different incomes and needs."

In her speech, the minister stressed the need for comprehensive, accurate housing lists, noting with concern the number of people who sold the houses they received and then put their names again on the lists. Also of concern were the number of 18 year olds who expected the state to provide them with a house.

A national database will be developed to ensure proper record keeping and to clear out fraud.

Between August and December this year 1,956 houses would be built in each province by women for women to celebrate Women’s Month in August.

Another objective for the next 100 days will be for the Estate Agency Affairs Board to prioritise the issue of title deeds for pre- and post-1994 housing stock. A dedicated unit will be established to fast-track this process so owners can realise their "dead assets".

The N2 Gateway Project in Cape Town will be taken over as a national project owned by all provinces — with the agreement of the Western Cape government — in order to overcome bottlenecks and to expedite delivery.

Ms Sisulu said this was a pilot project which would provide insights into how these projects should be undertaken. The Western Cape government will be responsible for allocating houses.

Another priority for the next five years will be to revitalise mining towns.

Ms Sisulu said the banking sector had been reluctant to enter this market for fear of these towns becoming ghost towns after the closure of the mines. The towns would have to be made economically viable.

The Housing Development Agency will become a fully fledged property development agency mandated to acquire and prepare land, and act as project managers for municipalities.

- BDLive

Lindiwe Sisulu to fast-track building of houses

Newly appointed Minister for Human Settlements Lindiwe Sisulu has promised to fast-track the delivery of “decent” houses as she takes up her new role.

She said the provision of housing was not only about chasing numbers.

It was about ensuring that all houses built by government were of high quality that afforded beneficiaries decent accommodation.

“Our primary task is to ensure that we provide decent housing and create an environment whereby the private sector will invest in low-income housing projects… ,” she said in a statement on Wednesday.

It will be Sisulu’s second stint in charge of the ministry. She headed the portfolio in 2004.

Sisulu said her office would play a critical role in implementing and delivering on the promises made by the African National Congress of improving people’s living conditions.

“The president has made it clear to all of us that the next five years are about fast-tracked service delivery, and I am happy that I have been given this task of leading such a critical service delivery department,” she said.

- Sapa

Minster from the past back to haunt us - Rapid urbanisation '"Still" a serious problem'

Rapid urbanisation is causing the demand for housing to grow faster than the government can deliver it, Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu said on Friday. "At this rate, we are not going to get very far. We have a serious problem," she told the annual conference of the Black Management Forum in Johannesburg.

Rapid urbanisation is causing the demand for housing to grow faster than the government can deliver it, Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu said on Friday.

“At this rate, we are not going to get very far. We have a serious problem,” she told the annual conference of the Black Management Forum in Johannesburg.

Of South Africa’s 2,4-million informal households, only 800 000 are on the government’s waiting list, she said.

Africa’s urban growth rate is currently 4%, twice as high as that of Latin America and Asia, and its speed has caught governments unaware.

“We have created 1,8-million houses in the last 10 years, but it hasn’t taken us very far.”

Referring to the recent eviction of slum dwellers in Zimbabwe, Sisulu said other African countries risk finding themselves in similar situations unless governments take action.

The top three areas in South Africa that are urbanising most rapidly and are severely affected by the housing shortage are Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni.

“All these areas of rapid urbanisation are [at present] a crisis for us,” she said.

Sisulu appealed to the private sector and construction companies to help the government solve the housing crisis.

A culture of responsibility also has to be created so that people improve the houses they receive, instead of selling them and returning to live in townships, she added.

Sisulu could not say how much of the government’s housing money is lost to corruption, but said the housing ministry will embark on a study with the auditor general to determine the extent of corruption in provinces like Limpopo.

Another problem is shoddy workmanship by construction companies. She acknowledged that in areas of the Free State this is a “serious problem”.

“We are putting together a housing code so that we can apply a uniform standard and are going to have a ‘living-worthy certificate’.”

She rejected the idea of turning dagga plants into bricks as a cheaper alternative to building materials.

“It’s a very cooling method of building a house, but not what we advocate.”

Published 14 Oct 2005 - Sapa

This X/revived minister of Human Settlements spent R40 Million is flights between 2009-2012. Her flights of fancy and N2 Gateway Legacy Failure are but a few of her characteristics - InternAfrica hold no faith in the re-appointed Minister of Human Settlements, and expect more of the same of her previous performance.

2010 Stadium all over again - housing ‘football’

Cape Town - Western Cape premier Helen Zille accused the ANC on Friday of playing “political football” with housing in the province.

“They have repeatedly claimed that when they were in government in the province 'they built 16,000 houses per year, while the Democratic Alliance has only been able to build 10,000 houses per year',” she said during her state-of-the-province address in Cape Town.

She said she was sceptical of the African National Congress's claims and asked her department's forensic investigation unit (FIU) to do an audit on the source of this data, namely the 2008/9 annual local government and housing report produced under the ANC administration.

She said the report claimed the ANC completed 15 717 houses during that period but that the FIU found this claim could not be verified.

“For a start, the ANC's thumb-suck figure includes programmes that had nothing to do with building and delivering housing units,” Zille claimed.

“And it also shows that the ANC simply shifted the deadline, and counted units that had not been completed by the end of the financial year.”

The premier alleged the party “got away” with this conduct because the auditor general (AG) was not verifying statistics at that stage by actually counting the finalised housing total by the cut-off date.

She said the AG had noted in the report that the evidence provided to support the department's performance was “materially inconsistent” in a number of instances with the reported performance.

Opposition MPLs jeered at Zille's remarks and claimed her administration had not even managed to build as many as 10 000 houses per year.

Leader of the opposition in the legislature Lynne Brown criticised the FIU by shouting: “How much did that cost?”

Zille continued after order had been called.

“That is AG speak for 'you were talking nonsense'... In short, their claim to have built 16 000 houses each year is without foundation.

“I would use stronger terms than this but it would probably be unparliamentary, Mr Speaker.”

- Sapa

Cape Town blaze leaves many homeless

Cape Town - Sixteen people have been displaced because of fires across Cape Town, a city official said on Wednesday.

Seven people escaped injury when two shacks caught alight in the Wallacedene informal settlement in Kraaifontein East around 4.20am on Wednesday, said disaster risk management centre spokesman Wilfred Solomons-Johannes.

On Tuesday, a fire broke out at the N2 Gateway Development in Delft just after midnight, causing structural damage to a property.

Three people were displaced.

“It is suspected that the fire was caused due to a short circuit in electrical wiring and overheating, igniting insulation,” Solomons-Johannes said.

At 7.50am on Tuesday, a fire was reported at WB section in Khayelitsha.

A shack was destroyed when a cooking pot was apparently left unattended on the stove.

Six people were left homeless.

“The city’s disaster response teams assisted the fire victims with the supply of food parcels, blankets, baby packs, clothing, and building material.”

- Sapa

Tokyo Sexwale – Minister of Human Settlements - cio

Minister since: 2009 - 2013

Problems inherited: His predecessor, Lindiwe Sisulu, launched the N2 Gateway project, which she termed the “biggest housing project ever undertaken by any government”, in 2005. It became Sexwale’s responsibility. Still incomplete after eight years, it will now be passed on to new Human Settlements Minister Connie September.

Failures: 

Sexwale has previously termed his portfolio a “daunting challenge”, with a housing backlog of more than 2 million units, affecting about 8 million people. With a 2030 deadline to remove the backlog, the department had to provide 200 000 houses a year, a target it could not meet. Sexwale admitted that the bill to fix the problems was R50 billion – nearly twice his annual budget.

Sanitation has proved to be a major political point scorer ahead of next year’s election, and Sexwale earlier this year admitted that his department, with a sanitation backlog of more than 2 million households, was unlikely to meet the December 2014 deadline to eradicate the bucket system. He attributed this to poor performance by municipalities, and growing numbers of migrant workers...

- IOL

In Langa, Cape Town: A dark combo of housing corruption & police brutality

Twenty-seven-year-old Siyabonga Magcida is in Groote Schuur Hospital today, under 24-hour police surveillance, because he is considered a flight risk. Yet he is severely injured, is connected to drips on both arms and is unable to walk or even speak. By JARED SACKS - DM.

The answer will take us back a full six years, when the Joe Slovo community first rose up to fight their pending eviction to the peri-urban township called Delft on the outskirts of Cape Town. Now, Magcida’s enemy is not just the housing department, but also his former comrades.

In September 2007 the community of Joe Slovo, a shack settlement in the township of Langa, rebelled against the directives of then Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu's flagship N2 Gateway housing project. Spearheaded by the newly elected Joe Slovo Task Team, which was frustrated with Sisulu's perceived 'arrogance' for refusing to meet with them, the community decided to make their voices heard on the streets. They blockaded the N2 freeway for hours and were shot at when police decided to send the community back home.

Years later, the community still remembers this action as the turning point in its struggle against what was seen as an Apartheid-like eviction to a desolate township far from work, decent schools and other services. Despite losing (with conditions) at the Constitutional Court in 2009, public pressure against the eviction eventually forced its suspension.

One would think that this was a happy ending for the Joe Slovo community, as Minister Tokyo Sexwale and MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela triumphantly agreed to upgrade the settlement rather than evict them. However, this process seems to have been only the beginning of Joe Slovo's woes.

The development of Joe Slovo began with the involvement of Gates Foundation-funded NGO called Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) which has been instrumental in facilitating negotiations between the community and the provincial housing department. SDI quickly co-opted a number of Task Team leaders into their organisation, specifically hiring the respected Mzwanele Zulu to lead a newly formed Informal Settlement Network.

They then expedited an agreement between the community via the Task Team and the Provincial Department of Human Settlements. So far, so good. The community was happy they would get houses. The Province could claim to have turned around the failed N2 Gateway initiative.

However, eventually things started going very wrong. There was a fight amongst the Task Team. People were resentful of Zulu's beneficial relationship as an employee at SDI. Also, a rival grouping called the ‘Residents’ Committee’ began to attract various sidelined community members.

Then, as the house building began, community members started to complain that the Task Team leaders were being hired as Community Liaison Officers and applying for tenders as subcontractors within the project. Zulu, for instance, is said to run a security company operating at the project.

Then the housing allocation process began. The agreement made by the community as a whole was that the elderly residents would get the first houses that were built, followed by long-term Joe Slovo residents. The remaining houses would later go to newer residents that had moved into Joe Slovo in recent years.

Yet, according to former Task Team member Mzimasi Ntwanambi, this allocation process was never followed. The Task Team apparently changed its strategy and allegedly began allocating the new houses to friends, to family, and to people who never resided in Joe Slovo but were willing to pay them a fee.

Those said to have drawn up new allocation lists that contradicted the older City list are Task Team members Zulu, Zikali and Dlamini, with the help of Housing Development Agency (HDA – formerly the infamous Thubelisha Homes) representatives known as Bongani and Thulani. The group is said to be behind the bulk of the housing misallocation in the project. Interestingly, Bongani and Thulani are also named by Abahlali baseMjondolo as being involved in the selling of temporary structures in the HDA-managed Langa Intersite.

As Cindy Ketani, an Abahlali activist, remarked, “I'm not surprised when they [the Joe Slovo community] are complaining, because we have experienced the same problem of corruption - where HDA works directly with the Intersite committee to sell temporary houses.”

In September, after most of the Task Team was among the first group of community members to be allocated homes, the Daily Maverick was present at a spontaneous protest by hundreds of residents who converged on the new home of Task Team chairperson Sifiso Mapasa. Then in December 2012, some disgruntled residents met with MEC Madikizela, who promised to immediately investigate the allegations of corruption. (There seems to have been no follow-up by the MEC's office.) Tensions remained high and on 13 January, a section of the community elected a new committee called the Area Committee.

There were now three committees in Joe Slovo vying for power: the Task Team, the Residents’ Committee and the Area Committee.

When the Task Team was asked to step down for being “illegitimate” and because they “no longer lived in Joe Slovo but in the new houses”, an Area Committee member named Peko recounts that Mzwanele Zulu told the community that “I will leave Joe Slovo when I die. It doesn't matter if I live in Joe Slovo or not. I am the leader here.”

(However, when the Daily Maverick spoke to Zulu, he turned the tables, accusing the Area Committee of lacking popular support except only amongst “a small minority of the community”. Zulu alleges that this new committee is causing problems and stalling development because they are “power-hungry”.)

Then everything came to a head. The Area Committee heard through the grapevine that the Task Team was going to demolish Chris Hani Hall – a structure built years ago to act as a community meeting-place for residents. When the Task Team moved into their new houses, they stopped holding meetings in the hall. During the day, it was then taken over by a crèche. By night, the hall became a place to hold Area Committee and community meetings.

Zulu explained the need to demolish the hall to make way for a road that would be extended through the settlement. Yet Area Committee members, upset that the community was not informed about this, retort that the road will not be built for at least a year and that surrounding shacks were not yet slated to be demolished. Why the hall? They say the real reason for the destruction of Chris Hani Hall was to prevent their committee from being able to meet.

On Tuesday morning, the Area Committee mobilised community members against the destruction of the hall. Zulu and Zikali of the Task Team arrived and then drove off. Only ten minutes later, six Law Enforcement and four SAPS vehicles arrived. In front of the community, Mzimasi recounts hearing an official speaking to Zikali over the phone. Area Committee leadership was said to have been named for arrest. Peko was identified as “the one who is wearing a Springbok t-shirt”.

As Mzimasi tells it, when the community resisted the demolition of the hall, Peko was grabbed, slapped around, pepper-sprayed and put into a Law Enforcement bakkie.

Photo: Police assaulting Peko, an Area Committee member.

Siyabonga Magcida was also grabbed and as photo evidence suggests, possibly choked by police. An entire can of pepper-spray is said to have been used on him as he tried to get out of the bakkie. As further punishment, Siyabonga was punched and kicked and had the bakkie's back door slammed repeatedly on his legs. Further photo evidence taken by two eyewitnesses and in possession of the Daily Maverick suggests these allegations of police brutality have merit.

Photo: Law Enforcement forcing Siyabonga Magcida into a police van where he is allegedly assulted and has the door slammed repeatedly on his legs.

While Peko was able to escape the bakkie when community members distracted police by throwing rocks, Siyabonga was out cold and wasn't so lucky. He was taken to Langa police station and then for a quick visit to Vanguard Clinic before getting locked up once again at the station. For at least five hours, Siyabonga's family was not allowed to visit him. Once he was seen by family, his condition was so bad that they were able to convince the station commissioner to send him to the hospital. Owing to the severity of his injuries, he was immediately transferred on arrival from Somerset Hospital to Groote Schuur.

Photo: Siyabonga Magcida in hospital.

Photographs taken of Siyabonga in hospital show serious discoloration and injury to the head as well as appalling gashes running the length of his legs. Currently, he is unable to walk, talk or respond to anyone who visits him.

Police were not available in time for deadline to comment on the case. Task Team Chairperson, Sifiso Mapasa, also was unaware of what exactly happened yesterday. He said he'd get back to the Daily Maverick once he knew. However, when Mzwanele Zulu was called late last night, his response to what happened to Siyabonga was to say that while he wasn't present during the alleged police brutality, he blames everything on the Area Committee, who he says started the violence. Zulu was unapologetic: Siyabonga “is suffering from a disease. He deserves what happened because it is the end result of his behaviour”.

This lack of empathy was astonishing coming from someone this Daily Maverick reporter has known for years. In fact, it was more astonishing than the actions of the police, who are often called out to back up well-connected locals against their political rivals.

In an email conversion, politics lecturer Richard Pithouse explained that “full measure has not been taken of the degree to which police violence is routinely deployed on the instruction of local political elites - councillors, their ward committees and so on. The reality is that for many people, the police are little more than thugs who act with impunity and in flagrant disregard for the law. They work in the interests of powerful people or are mediated through local political party or service delivery structures.”

Police rarely act as independent and unbiased arbitrators of disputes who carry out justice on both sides. Instead, they tend to pick sides and favour those who already have wider political favour. In this case, if accusations hold weight, the police are acting on the instruction of the Joe Slovo Task Team, who are backed up by powerful NGOs such as SDI, and important parastatal groups such as HDA and government departments (in this case, Human Settlements).

However, Siyabonga Magcida's aunt, who identified herself only as Noncedo, only “wants justice to be done”. DM

Main photo: Law Enforcement forcing Siyabonga Magcida into a police van where he is allegedly assulted and has the door slammed repeatedly on his legs.

All photos supplied by the community.

R886m of housing budget unspent

Cape Town - MPs said they were “sick to the stomach” when they heard that as much as R886 million of the human settlements budget was likely to remain unspent by the end of the fiscal year and be surrendered to the Treasury.

“I look forward to the day, maybe I won’t be here, when we come with a report where we’re up to date with everything, people are getting delivery on the ground,” said ANC MP Gloria Borman, after the Human Settlements Department had presented a report in Parliament on Wednesday on its underexpenditure.

“I feel sick to my stomach when I think of the money that is not being spent. I hear all the reasons – we’ve heard them all before – but when you see the need out there and how people are struggling, it’s very sad,” Borman said.

Stevens Mokgalapa, of the DA, shared her views. “The bottom line is that underspending is continuing and the demand out there is huge. We all know that housing is in demand and you see that a lot of unspent monies are taken back, it’s quite sad,” he said.

The main culprits were the provincial departments of Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, which are set to forfeit R294m and R284m respectively of the Human Settlements Development Grant they had been unable to use.

The national department was set to surrender R144m of its operational budget, while spending for the Rural Household Infrastructure Grant, intended for sanitation, would fall short by R164m. The R886m total represents 4 percent of the human settlements budget of R25bn.

Chief financial officer Funani Matlatsi said the figures were based on projections for the end of the fiscal year, and could improve if delivery was found to have exceeded expectations, especially in errant provinces.

Director-general Thabane Zulu said a decision would be taken on Friday, based on the latest figures, on whether to transfer the outstanding amounts to Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, but this seemed unlikely.

“The decision we arrived at was, if we can’t find existing projects within the pipeline plans, the money must go back to the fiscus. That’s a principle position. Don’t dump the money. Declare the money as savings.”

Zulu said the department had first intervened in October, after establishing that there was a high risk of underspending.

The department had gone as far as demanding to see a cash-flow process in provincial planning “because that’s then guaranteeing the spending”.

“It still didn’t happen. I’m sorry to say, we can only go as far as that in providing leadership,” Zulu said.

But Mokgalapa accused the department of “flip-flopping” on whether it would release the funds.

This would amount to “fiscal dumping” – spending leftover funds on unplanned items so as not to have it subtracted from the baseline for the following budget.

“I wish you wouldn’t refer to savings – it’s underspending,” said Borman.

- IOL

Cape falls short on housing delivery

Cape Town - Municipalities, and not the provincial government, are responsible for building houses in the Western Cape, says Human Settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela.

“They (municipalities) are the implementing agents. We (the department) provide the funds and monitor projects,” Madikizela said.

He was responding after the provincial Treasury revealed in a budget committee meeting that by December, only 2 515 of the planned 4 691 houses had been delivered for the 2012/13 financial year, which ends on March 31. Madikizela admitted that municipalities would not meet this target by the end of the month.

“For the past two years we haven’t met our targets, but this is mainly a result of the huge basic infrastructure backlog,” he said. “The municipalities submit their plans to the department and that is what we base our numbers on. Houses can only be built where there is basic infrastructure.”

For the new financial year, starting next month, the department is expected to fund municipalities to build 12 102 houses. But Madikizela said he would not be “chasing numbers”.

“I would rather under-deliver than build where there is no infrastructure. Chasing these numbers will also result in shoddy workmanship. Then we’ll have to spend even more on repair work when those houses start falling apart,” he said.

Madikizela said it would take at least 30 years to “work through” the Western Cape’s housing backlog.

- Cape Argus

R28m project: houses still stand empty

Four years after First National Bank spent R28-million on a housing project as part of Cape Town's N2 Gateway project, more than 43 houses in Langa remain empty.

The bank has blamed government bureaucracy for the houses remaining vacant, after it had to wait for the city council's approval for the housing units to be sold.

The houses were meant for families whose joint income range between R3500 and R15000 a month, who would not ordinarily qualify for the government's housing subsidy scheme and were not creditworthy to get bonds.

But Abahlali baseMjondolo activist Cindy Ketane responded angrily when told that the houses would not be occupied in the near future.

Ketane said: "There aren't enough houses here [in Joe Slovo] and people won't mind getting those houses because they're standing empty."

The bank had initially planned to build 300 housing units at the N2 Gateway even as critics claimed houses there would never be affordable for families from the Joe Slovo informal settlement.

Ward councillor Mayenzeke Sopaqa said he was fearful that shack dwellers, desperate for housing, would invade the homes, as had happened in Delft.

"They [FNB] promised me that before December 2012 people would've moved [into] those houses but nothing has happened. I haven't heard from them again," said Sopaqa.

FNB home loans spokesman Marius Marais acknowledged the houses had been a hard sell and that the bank would not recover its R28-million investment.

"It is unfortunate that the houses have been vacant for such a long time, but the required certificates from [the city] council took longer to finalise than initially anticipated," said Marais.

The bank also has to spend money to maintain and secure the 43 units to prevent them from being invaded by Langa's homeless.

Disputes over housing allocation at the government-subsidised portion of the N2 Gateway are still raging in the township. Cape Town has more than 350,000 people on its housing waiting list.

Initially some of the houses had been priced just under R600,000 but Marais would not say how much these would currently sell for.

"We are committed, however, to handing over units of good quality to future residents of this development. FNB will commence marketing of the units for occupation as soon as possible," said Marais.

And while potential buyers had signed offers to purchase, human settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela's spokesman Bruce Oom said many failed to qualify for finance because they did not meet the bank's affordability criteria.

Oom said the reason "gap housing" often failed was that many people who were supposed to benefit were not creditworthy.

- Timeslive

Nation's Non-Existent Affordable Housing Programme

The government's recent demolition of houses in Lenasia, apart from anything else, has exposed how inadequate the state is at providing housing for those who neither qualify for bank mortgages, nor for RDP houses.

The Lenasia families seem to fall into the category of those who qualify for so-called "gap housing" on the basis that they earn between R2200 and about R7500 per month and can therefore afford to pay for their homes. However, gap housing is being rolled out at a snail's pace.

There is much fanfare in a city when a "gap" social housing project of 100 or 200 units is unveiled. But these projects only happen about once a year. Many are not built close to the city and some look little better than the national government's upgraded RDP houses, or "Breaking New Ground" dwellings, even though they are much more expensive to buy or rent.

There is clearly a growing number of people who can't afford market-related bonds but who can raise capital of up to R150 000 to buy land, as they did in Lenasia, where they were unfortunately taken advantage of by fraudsters.

However, there is nowhere for this growing group of people to go when they want to stop renting and start buying homes. Like the poor who often find themselves waiting years for a tiny RDP house, potential gap market homeowners are falling through the cracks.

Government claims that it would be impossibly expensive for it to roll out a programme that would actually deliver a house to everyone who needs a home. By this they mean that they would prefer to spend public money on arms deals, subsidies and rebates to private corporations, and lately nuclear power and upgrades to the presidential home at Nkandla. It seems obvious that if there are people who can afford to pay for land or for a portion of a home, that government should be working with these people and not against them.

However, government has failed to develop a proper social housing programme, which could deliver to people who seem capable of raising funds to get onto the property ladder, as the Lenasia case has demonstrated.

A social and gap housing project could consist of government rezoning and then selling vacant state land to people who can afford to buy land and build their own houses, or partnering with non-profit organisations to build 'mixed-income' developments where the poor and not so poor live side by side. In some countries, such a programme involves building housing developments and then selling a 25% share in the home to someone who then purchases the rest of the shares over time.

There is no such national programme in South Africa.

The government's current "gap" housing programme consists of different projects by the municipalities (all involving delivering very tiny numbers of gap houses every year). There are a few scattered partnerships with non-profit companies here and there. But the combined result of these projects is not making a dent in South Africa's housing problem.

Government has set up a Social Housing Regulatory Authority, whose mandate is to "regulate and invest to deliver affordable rental homes and renew communities". Their strategic plan for the next five years is to approve the building of an average of 5,434 social housing "units" per year. Given that there is a housing backlog of millions, these 5,434 units are a drop in the ocean. Since the authority only approved the building of just over 1000 units last year, even this might be over-optimistic. It also doesn't help people who would prefer to spend their money on buying a home rather than renting. It really is not clear whether the Social Housing Regulatory Authority intends to raise its game and start delivering to the millions of people who currently make up the "gap market".

Government's insistence on privatised housing delivery is as much of an obstacle to it providing gap housing as it has been to RDP housing. The private companies hired by government don't only build poor quality houses for the poor; they also build bad houses and flats for the gap market.

The N2 Gateway flats in Langa, Cape Town were supposed to be a flagship demonstration of the future of social housing in South Africa - built for working people who could afford to pay about R600 per month rent. But when these flats were handed over, residents found to their dismay that costs had been cut to such an extent that 28 units could be opened with one key. Just months later, the flats started leaking and cracking. The renters moved out and the only people who eventually benefitted were the private companies involved in building the flats.

Human Settlements minister Tokyo Sexwale has been saying for over 18 months that he is considering setting up a state housing company to speed up delivery and get money-making private companies out of the picture, but these plans are not progressing beyond talk.

Sexwale has also said that there should be a cut off date for the provision of free housing. And his "each one, settle one" campaign launched at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange 15 months ago, where he called upon "captains of industry" to build houses, has also not taken off. He has made several different and conflicting announcements about the future of housing in South Africa, which does not bode well for anyone seeking either an RDP or a gap house.

Meanwhile, working people are continuing to reject the high-priced free market rental system and look for ways to use their money wisely to build their own homes. In Cape Town, the backyard residents of Mandela Park near Khayelitsha were promised 80 plots of land by the Western Cape MEC for Human Settlements, Bonginkosi Madikizela, in 2010. This promise has still not been fulfilled. In the meantime, residents there have cut through the red tape and spent up to R40 000 each building proper houses on the land.

From time to time, Western Cape government officials arrive on the scene and mark their houses for demolition. The tragedy is that this land was earmarked for those residents anyway - the residents are also doing government a favour by spending their own money on building their houses instead of staying in backyards where they could have demanded more free services. Due to the fact that their houses are not being recognised by the state, Mandela Park is another Lenasia just waiting to happen.

Having a home is the first step towards ushering in some certainty in people's lives. It is the foundation for the development of a stable and secure society. Do our leaders not see this?

- allAfrica

Community in fist fight over RDP houses

The N2 Gateway housing project has again led to conflict among the hundreds of people waiting to be allocated houses, this time even degenerating into fist fights during a community meeting.

The Joe Slovo informal settlement held a meeting at the weekend after the names of the beneficiaries for the Gateway Project were released. In the end police were called in after the community accused community leaders of colluding with the Housing Development Agency (HDA) to sell RDP houses to other people.

“Last night the Joe Slovo community held a mass meeting with community leaders such as Sfiso Mapasa. The community is angry because of corruption within the N2 Gateway housing project where it is alleged that certain HDA officials and community leaders are colluding to sell new RDP homes in the project,” said Boitumelo Ramahlele from Temporary Relocation Area(TRA).

“HDA finally released the list of intended beneficiaries to community residents – something residents have been demanding for a long time.

“But now the Joe Slovo leadership is refusing to release that list to residents to conduct their own investigation into corruption.

“The leadership says only itself can conduct investigations of the alleged corruption. But the community does not trust these leaders. We therefore have every right to conduct an independent door-to-door investigation,” he said.

Abahlali Basemjondolo, an organisation that monitors the plight of people living in informal settlements, confirmed that on Saturday night there was a fight between the community and its leadership.

Abahlali baseMjondolo and the community held a follow up meeting yesterday afternoon.

The Gateway Project has been at the centre of controversy for many years with various informal settlement communities fighting over to whom the houses be allocated.

- The New Age