Child-headed families increasing at alarming rate

The number of child-headed families is increasing every day and in South Africa more than two million children were orphaned in 2004, nearly half of them by Aids, according to the Joint UN Programme of HIV/Aids (UNAids) statistics.

The burden of caring for the younger children usually falls on the oldest sibling as is being experienced by a family of three in Kimberley. They are currently struggling because the eldest is too young to apply for a grant. Naledi and Akanyang have a home, lots of love and occasionally a full stomach and they have an elder sister, 17-year-old Kelebogile. She helps her sisters with their homework, clothes them and cooks their food, in short, she’s their mother.

InternAfrica has its key focus set on assisting HIV+ women with dependants. We recognise the UN Data and the problem this will be on society shortly.

Our core focus is to ensure mothers the security and knowledge that their children will survive them in a secure fire proof home.

Social Impact sans Compact

35 000 child-headed homes exist across the country already.

Things InternAfrica has learnt from WUF3

Many new ideas are coming from the World Urban Forum 3 being held in Vancouver Canada.

The most important of which we are making plans to share with Local Government and Housing. Planning is very important to sustainable development.

Eg. Planning development with the 50-year flood plain in mind.

Important Notes:

• Make planning the tool for effective urban governance

• No sustainable development without sustainable urbanisation

  No sustainable urbanisation without effective and accountable planning

• Urban planning is a precondition of sustainability

• NO Development without open transparent public participation and consultation!
  

  DIALOGUE 2
  The Shape of Cities: Urban Planning and Management

• WUF3 Webcast
  

Langa outrage over Gateway integration

Emotions ran high as Langa residents demanded answers from Local Government and Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi in a meeting over the controversial N2 Gateway housing project on Thursday night.

It was evident that Dyantyi would have his work cut out for him at the community hall, packed with more than 1 000 residents begging for clarity.

‘People from other areas are going to apply’

Dyantyi said: “The demand for housing is big and the backlog is growing each year. One of the mistakes that we have made with this project was to think of housing the people living in shacks without thinking of those living in back yards. But this is a lesson that there are other things we must take into account.”

He later added that the 70-30 split between Joe Slovo fire victims and shack dwellers (70 percent) and backyard dwellers still applied, but there was room for that policy to be revised depending on the outcome of the application process.

A particular bone of contention was the assertion by the government that would open the application process for the now complete phase one to residents in Bonteheuwel and Bokmakierie.

Resident Pamela Ngcayi was upset about people from outside of Langa being allowed to apply.

“My concern is that I have been staying in a bungalow where I was born in the back yard of my family’s house for years,” she said.

‘The N2 project is going to be benefit all the communities along the N2′

“I am now 45 years old and I still don’t have a house. Government is too slow. These houses are not enough and now people from other areas are going to apply.”

Dyantyi said the application process for the first 705 flats remained open to residents from Bonteheuwel, Bokmakierie, Crossroads, District Six and other areas that will eventually form part of the N2 Gateway project.

“The N2 project is going to be benefit all the communities along the N2. That includes District Six, Crossroads, Bokmakierie, Bonteheuwel and other areas.

“We won’t leave them behind.”

To promote integration, the application process included residents of the traditionally coloured areas of Bokmakierie and Bonteheuwel.

Other residents were concerned that very few specifics were included in the information given by the housing department, and the city before them.

The meeting heard that:

Applications for housing in phase one of the N2 Gateway project close on Monday.

Phase one flats will be rental units.

Phase two will consist of 1 000 houses with yards. It was not clear how large these houses would be.

Rent for the flats would be between R165 and R200 for “small flats” and R690 for larger units.

Cape Argus

Allocation of Gateway units extended

The process of allocating the 705 completed housing units to all eligible beneficiaries on the N2 Gateway Housing Project at Langa on the Cape Flats could be extended until the end of the month. It was due to end on Monday.

The possible extension has emerged after Richard Dyantyi, Western Cape housing and local government minister, addressed hundreds of residents at a public meeting at Langa last night. Dyantyi says the allocation of residents to the double-storied flats will be done on an affordability basis. ~ SABC

NO Development without open transparent public participation and consultation!

InternAfrica has Joined FEDUP - in this monkeybusiness of local or national housing.

This has become a sideshow of note: Restraining our severe urge to comment harshly:

Gateway not supposed to follow rules - MEC

Housing and Local Government MEC Richard Dyantyi has shrugged off investigations by the DA-led City of Cape Town administration into N2 Gateway tenders, saying it was not intended that they would “follow normal bureaucracy”.

The need for houses was so urgent that the project had to be “fast-tracked”.

When the city council stopped playing “games”, the provincial and national governments’ doors would be “open for them to come back”, Dyantyi said during a debate in the National Council of Provinces.

“So what if work began before contracts were signed? This is a pilot project that we are testing in this province. So, if it happened that we put the first brick down before the contract was signed, so what?

“The houses are standing.”…

“The N2 project is not funds-driven, it is needs-driven,” Dyantyi said.

Idea: 5.2 Visionary Design: Circular Cities and Biomimicry

Conventional buildings are huge energy consumers, challenging those who aspire to use ecological principles and tap into nature’s solutions Some visionaries are going beyond energy efficiency and traditional techniques of passive solar heating, daylighting, and natural ventilation to take design in bold new directions. If the vision holds true, these cities will generate more power than they consume through smart building techniques and solar technology.

William McDonough, an architect and author of the landmark book Cradle to Cradle, contends that every material used in the manufacturing process should ultimately either biodegrade harmlessly or be reusable with no loss of quality.

World Urban Forum 3 - Actionable Ideas

Cannabrick reduce the carbon footprint. Naturally.

“Build a Cannabrick Home” Manual

N2 Gateway audit ‘to continue’

Cape Town - The forensic audit, ordered by the multi-party Cape Town government, into the N2 Gateway housing project will continue, Democratic Alliance MP Denise Robinson told the National Council of Provinces on Wednesday.

Robinson, a former city councillor, said this would happen in spite of Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s decision to kick the city - which in March voted the African National Congress out of the local government - off the project.

The project adjacent to the Joe Slovo informal settlement is not far from the city’s international airport.

Robinson said the new city government had, nevertheless, committed itself to finishing the N2 Gateway but only “as and when the national government made funds available”.

She noted that the project - expected to house 22 000 families - had cost nearly R135m more than originally intended.

As of June this year only 705 housing units were ready - 3% of the target.

The units, which were all rental units, would not be owned by their intended occupants “as they are completely unaffordable to the people most in need of homes”.

In addition the project was being built on a 50-year floodplain “adding to the city’s costs”, while contractors were still owed millions of rands. - FIN24

Lawyers warned city about N2 project firm

As the row over the controversial and costly N2 Gateway project flares again on Wednesday with renewed debate in the city and in parliament, the spotlight falls on a top-level hazard warning by lawyers more than a year ago.

It has emerged that in a confidential memorandum to Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, provincial Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi and former mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo, Cape Town law firm Cheadle, Thompson & Haysom highlighted concerns about the appointment of Johannesburg firm Cyberia Technologies - an IT company - as project managers for the N2 Gateway scheme.

The lawyers’ investigation, in March 2005, was apparently commissioned by the political threesome, known as “M3″.

It is understood that the report found that while the tender adjudicators in the city rated Cyberia the least favourite of six rivals for the job, the council’s Goods and Services Property Advisory Board placed it first.

They lost millions as a result of the bungled handling of the development

The contract, which was eventually increased to more than R12m from R5m, was approved in a closed tender process.

More than R4m was injected into the project a month before Cyberia’s contract was terminated in January this year.

The city law firm’s memorandum concluded that while the appointment process may have been flawed, there was “no conclusive evidence of direct political interference in the process” or of “improper behaviour by the project managers”.

The memorandum does advise that “concerns about the competencies of the project managers” be dealt with.

It also highlights “possible problems in the procurement process” and the “lack of integration” between the three spheres of government involved.

It is apparent from the multimillion-rand cost overruns, and claims by developers who say they lost millions as a result of the bungled handling of the development that last year’s warnings were not heeded or acted on.

The row over the project escalated last week when Sisulu cut the city out of the project in the wake of Mayco’s pointed questioning of officials about who approved funding or issued instructions on the project.

Mayco decided it could not foot the bill for overruns or contractors’ claims until these questions were answered.

At the last Mayco meeting, councillors were told that some of the problems were “to a degree a result of poor project management and a lack of capacity in oversight on what those managers were doing at that time”.

The N2 Gateway controversy is a hot topic again today with a fresh round of debate in Mayco and also in the National Council of Provinces.

Several other housing matters account for a significant portion of Mayco’s 1 008-page agenda for its last meeting on Wednesday before the holiday recess starts.

Councillors are being asked to approve a key shift from delivering “full package” (a completed house) to “incremental” (site and service, or informal settlement upgrades) solutions, and also to find an extra R120m to push up the total delivery for the year from 8 000 to 20 000 “housing opportunities”.

A report notes “the present housing delivery approach is not denting the housing backlog significantly” and that “the demand of housing is more than the available resources” and needs accelerated delivery.

Mayco is being asked to enter into urgent discussions with the SA National Defence Force over the city’s plan to use Wingfield land to build about 4 200 houses. - Cape Argus

W Cape lags badly in low-cost housing

If figures issued by Statistics South Africa can be believed, the Western Cape lagged badly behind the other provinces in providing low-cost subsidised housing in the year ended March.

According to these figures, only 2 040 low-cost houses were built in the province in this period. This compares with 16 874 built in the Eastern Cape, 17 635 in the Free State, 21 603 in KwaZulu-Natal, 23 409 in Gauteng and 21 973 in Limpopo. These houses all cost just under R26 000.

However, the provision of low-cost housing in the Western Cape province has been on a downward path for some years. In 2002 a total of 19 534 houses were built. This number fell to 16 926 in 2003 and to 12 751 in 2004.

This does not seem sufficient to provide for the more than 30 000 people which Statistics South Africa reported migrate to the Western Cape every year.

In the private sector there are signs of some levelling off in new construction. In the four months ended April, local authorities approved the construction of new buildings worth R5.2 billion. This was 8.1% more than in the same period last year. However, when increases in costs are taken into account the physical volume of work is probably no more than last year.

There was a big increase in the first four months of this year in the number of small houses (less than 80m2) built. However, there was a marked falling off in the construction of new houses, flats and apartments. There was also a significant decline in cost increases and it seems possible that this and the reduced amount of business on offer could be connected.

Plans for 2 088 houses with a floor area of less than 80m2 were approved. The average cost was R67 562, which was only 1.6% above the 2005 price.

In contrast there was a distinct drop from last year in the number of houses planned with a floor area of 80m2 from 2 627 to 2 274.

But the average cost rose some 4% from R649 000 in the first four months of last year to R676 000 in the same period this year.

A little surprising was the decline in the number of flats and townhouses planned.

In the four months ended April this year only 1 603 were approved, which was sharply down from 1 941 last year. However, the 12% increase in average prices from R345 000 last year to R386 000 this year is possibly constraining developers.

But a development that should gladden the local construction industry is the big increase in the number of commercial buildings in the pipeline.

Plans for office and banking space costing R277 million were approved, which was 144% higher than last year. The amount of money to be spent on new industrial and warehousing space was also substantially higher, jumping 82% from R408m to R742m.

The strong increase in the cost of new buildings over the years has made it more effective for house owners to improve their existing houses.

This resulted in plans for additions and alterations to dwelling houses costing R1.24bn to be submitted to local authorities in the Western Cape for their approval this year.

Alterations and additions to non-residential buildings costing R444.5m were also approved. This was 16% more than last year.
The half-a-percent increase earlier this month in the interest rate is not likely to have much effect on the building industry.

The increase is seen as extremely modest and not likely to push up building costs.

Only if it is regarded as the start of a trend towards dearer money will the increase in rates begin to have an impact on building plans. - Cape Argus

Inspired by Rose & WUF3

Having just watched the web cast of the WUF3 day one plenary session we are inspired that people around the world are realising the complexity of the issues, and key issues we all experience in the global human habitat appear to be the same.

If you want to meet the Cities without slums and MDG by 2020 do it yourself.

Following the SABC 3 Special Assignment on the N2 Gateway Project - Housed in Controversy. It is clear that government members are very well dressed, and unable to deliver. Thus being FEDUP is quite understandable.

Fire fumes kill dad and 2 children

A father and his two children died in their sleep, apparently of asphyxiation, after the family neglected to put out a brazier on Saturday night.

“It appears the man and his wife used the metal bin found in their bedroom to make a fire to warm the house but left it burning when they went to sleep,” Superintendent Billy Jones said on Sunday.

He said relatives who went to visit the family in Nyanga on Sunday had found the children - aged seven months and four years old - dead, and their parents unconscious. The two were rushed to hospital where the man later died. - Sapa

Africans struggling to prevent child burn injuries

CAPE TOWN — The cold of winter has arrived in the tiny shacks of Langa township, near the southern tip of Africa. People light small fires on dirt floors, warming their hands close to the blaze. In some homes, such as Nosathini Sikobongeli’s , kerosene cookers shoot flames a foot high.

Arrie Odendaal winced when he walked into Sikobongeli’s shack, which doubles as a shabeen, or local drinking spot. He started to reach out for her 2-year-old daughter, Sandra , as she skipped by the open flame. “I’m worried about that fire,” said Odendaal, a researcher on injury prevention for South Africa’s Medical Research Council .

“I know,” the mother replied. “But I don’t have anything else to keep us warm.”

Odendaal was working on a project studying safety attitudes and precautions among parents in South Africa’s townships. That work is part of a growing recognition around Africa of the extraordinary number of children who suffer from serious burns inside poor people’s homes and then receive almost no help afterward.

“It’s a pretty devastating injury, and it’s for life,” said Dr. Rene Albertyn, a pain specialist at Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, the only hospital devoted solely to children south of the Sahara.

“There’s very little support for a burnt, disfigured child in Africa. If we push out 1,000 children after treating them each year, where are those children going? The answer is that they become hidden figures in society. It’s a desperate situation for them.”

…A household survey in Mozambique found that burns were the number one cause of injuries to children…

Everywhere in the world, young children are at a greater risk than adults of being burned. Their skin is much thinner than an adult’s. Their natural curiosity attracts them to many hot sources. Toddlers tip easily. - Boston Globe

WE TOLD YOU SO!!!

A geological setback, high rentals and a budget overrun throws the N2 housing project into a crisis.

The beleaguered N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town has been dealt a further financial blow by the discovery that 705 units comprising the projects first phase have been built on a 50-year-flood plain.

The city has had to fork out a further R10m to build a culvert to divert possible flood waters, Democratic Alliance councillor, Niel Ross, chairperson of the city’s housing committee confirmed this week.

The floodplain setback was part of a triple whammy for the R1.2bn project this week, also including: The discovery that only 11 families of a sample of 200 waiting for houses in the city could afford rentals in phase one; and the disclosure in a council debate this week that the development had incurred a R35m overrun in building costs. SHF - M&G

Housed in Controversy

As you come in to land at Cape Town International, a near-endless sea of shacks is visible from the air. Every day people arrive in the Mother City from the rural areas, in search of greener pastures. They are desperate for jobs, they require health care. Most importantly, perhaps, they need housing. It’s a mammoth job, but one that demands political will and careful managing.

The politics of the Western Cape has in recent years been marked by uncertainty and inter-party squabbling. And it’s affecting the delivery of housing.

The N2 Gateway project probably has the highest profile of all housing projects undertaken since 1994. It aims to build houses for the poor along the N2, in line with government’s objective to eliminate the informal settlements that line the highway linking the airport to the city centre. But even this praiseworthy project has been bedevilled by politics. That the City Metro under Mayor Helen Zille has been “removed” from the project by the Minister of Housing is an indication of this political sensitivity.

On the ground, there is also tension. The first phase of the five-phase project is almost finished and has 705 units. Who gets to move in has become a source of conflict in the surrounding areas. Those living in informal settlements expect to be housed there first, especially the residents of the Joe Slovo settlement, who were originally re-located to make way for the construction.

Many would argue that one of the greatest challenges in post-apartheid South Africa is to integrate the poor into the life of the cities. So far the government has only paid lip service to the idea. The segregated landscape of the past is still intact and, in fact, has been perpetuated by the new government in its hurry to house the electorate.

In this investigation Special Assignment looks into other options available to house the poor in South Africa and assesses the effects of uncertainty and political in-fighting on delivery.

SABC Special Assignment Tuesday 19/6 SABC3 21:30