Municipalities ‘must plan’ for realities of global warming

Unless municipalities plan better, catastrophe awaits Western Cape residents living on floodplains or within the setback line along the coast, a Cape Times report has warned.

Government experts presented research reports on climate change and global warming to the provincial standing committee on development recently. ‘Sea levels will rise and affect the setback line of buildings and developments along the coast,’ said Dipolelo Elford, chief director at the Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning.

As temperatures rose, the frequency of floods would increase. Municipalities needed to ensure there was no further development on floodplains and disaster management authorities should prepare for ‘what if’ scenarios, Elford said.

The department’s deputy director for climate change and biodiversity management, Dennis Laidler, said: ‘It’s not just flood lines - it’s energy consumption and all sorts of things. Also, it is not what you do when you have a disaster. A lot is about planning to (avert) a disaster’. Legalbrief

Shack dwellers stuck with their buckets

The bucket system will not be eradicated as long as informal housing persists in Cape Town, city officials say.

This comes in response to the ANC’s request that steps be taken to implement more acceptable systems in areas where buckets continue to be used to remove sewage.

The council’s portfolio committee on utility services heard on monday that until the backlog of around 400 000 houses had been dealt with, the water and sanitation department could not be expected to provide shack dwellers with a better sanitation system.

Utilities executive director Bulumko Msengana said the city was satisfied the bucket system was not being used in any formal housing areas.

“It is not possible to eliminate the bucket system in informal areas because of their nature… It cannot be achieved,” Msengana said.

He said the city could hope to improve the situation only once people were moved to areas that allowed for proper sanitation services.

Director for water services Sipho Mosai said sub-councils had been asked to monitor the maintenance service provided in informal areas where the bucket system was used.

ANC caucus leader Mbulelo Ncedana and chief whip Peter Gabriel brought a motion before the sub-councils in January that the council investigate the scale of the bucket system and the progress made towards meeting the target President Thabo Mbeki set in his State of the Nation address last year - that of eradicating the bucket system by the end of this year.

InternAfrica would like to point out the government are convinced there are only 1200 buckets in use in the WC

Ncedana told the Cape Argus on Monday he accepted it would be difficult to get rid of the bucket system in informal areas, but did not agree it would not be eradicated.

“That’s not the attitude we want. All informal settlements must be upgraded - that’s our responsibility as councillors.”

Ncedana said the council needed to identify land so people subjected to the bucket system could move to areas with better services.

“These people will not live in shacks for ever. As long as officials have a positive attitude and we use land efficiently and effectively, we cannot say we will never resolve the issue.” Cape Argus

The next day in an interview Rashid Khan regional manager of the department of water affairs and forestry said R44-million had been budgeted in the past and current financial years to eradicate the bucket system in the province’s formal housing areas.

“We will be able to meet the presidential target of December for eliminating the bucket system and we’re hoping to meet the (Western Cape) premier’s deadline of September.”

Existing sewerage works would be able to cope easily with the relatively small number of conversions.

Bulldozing the Gateway

InternAfrica urges all Cityzens of the City of Cape Town to read the full M&G Article.

Between the N2 highway and the government’s flagship Gateway housing project, a double-storey shack stands all by itself. Last year Nosandiso Dyonase, who runs a shop from this house, stared down building contractors, government officials, policemen and even bulldozers when they cleared the land around her of shacks and families. A defiant Dyonase and her goats were the only ones left standing.

“Black people are scared of bulldozers because of what the previous government used to do. This government also came with bulldozers and I told them not to touch my shop. I have rights now. I have a lawyer and this is my home and my livelihood and I refuse to be moved to an electricity-less temporary home in Delft, which is far away from Cape Town,” Dyonase said.

“I told those housing people: Bring your bulldozers — I’m not scared. I built this house and this business with my own hands. I live here and I don’t support this government any more. I only support my family and it’s my right to live here because 12 years ago, when I moved here from Langa, I cleared the bushes off this land myself,” she said.

Government’s biggest and most ambitious housing project, the N2 Gateway, is facing a fresh wave of controversy after Dyonase and about 500 other families appointed their own legal representative to oppose what they call government’s “forced removals” of thousands of squatter families to make way for the project…

This week Thubelisha Homes, project managers of the Gateway project, confirmed that construction of phases two and three of this massive 22 000-unit development cannot proceed unless residents and their shacks are moved. The project is already more than a year behind schedule.

National Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu had promised it would be completed nine months ago, but to date only 705 units in phase one have been completed, and phases two and three have not even been started….

The N2 Gateway pilot housing project has been contentious from the outset. Apart from the R135-million budget overrun on the project, Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu kicked the DA-led Cape Town city council off the project last year. The ANC and the DA have accused each other of obstructing progress on the project ever since…

A senior councillor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the forensic audit uncovered various instances of “unauthorised payments made to contractors of the N2 Gateway project”. The Auditor General is expected to release his report soon. – M&G

Fire destroys 15 shacks in Cape Town

Between 50 and 60 people have been displaced after a fire destroyed 15 shacks in Langa, Cape Town Fire Control said on Sunday.

Spokesperson Sharon Bosch said the fire in Washington Avenue was first reported at 4.42pm on Sunday afternoon.

There were no injuries.

Bosch said food and blankets would be provided to those affected by Cape Town Disaster Management. - Sapa

N2 Gateway construction halted

Building ground to a halt at the N2 Gateway in Delft on Thursday when sub-contractors downed tools over money.

The protest by 60 sub-contractors caused yet another delay to the national government’s low-cost flagship housing project.

Protesting workers claimed the consortium that won the main contract, Buyile, was short-changing them. They presented their grievances to Thubelisha, the agency that manages the multimillion project on behalf of the national Department of Housing.

Thubelisha hastily convened a meeting with a steering committee representing the disgruntled sub-contractors on Thursday afternoon.

The agency’s Prince Maluleke said Thubelisha ought not to get involved in the dispute between the sub-contractors and the main contractors, but the company had intervened to ensure there were no further delays.

The meeting ended without any solution and a follow-up meeting was scheduled for Monday.

Spokesperson for the steering committee, Nicholas Maziya, said the main gripe was over payment.

“The sub-contractors are being exploited. We even wrote letters to Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and Local Government and Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi about what is happening on the site,” he said…

The department of housing took over the project from the City of Cape Town last year after it accusing the city of causing the delays and building sub-standard housing.

Patrick Mackenzie, chairperson of the provincial standing committee on housing in the Western Cape legislature, condemned the delays and said it was not the first time construction had been halted because of disputes over payment.

Mackenzie, who toured the project with the national assembly’s portfolio committee of housing earlier this month, blamed problems on a “lack of political management”.

“I am also concerned with Thubelisha being both player and referee by managing the allocation of houses and collection of rentals,” he said.

He also slammed the size of the completed houses as too small: “During the imbizo, some people said they would rather stay in their shacks than move into the finished houses. The houses are unacceptable. The bedrooms are so small a bed takes up the whole space.” - Cape Times

Western Cape faces yet another housing debacle

The Western Cape is facing yet another housing debacle. Farmworkers from a town nearby Franshhoek are refusing to move into homes built especially for them. They say the homes are of a poor quality.

Anglo-American Farms is disputing this, saying the housing development has received international recognition. Last year the project won the Southern African Housing Foundation’s Special Merit Award.

Hundreds of families have already moved in but 20 remaining families are refusing to move in. Their reasons include cracked walls, weak ceilings, exposed electrical wires, poor foundations, and roofs that fly off when the wind blows.

While the workers cite a list of reasons for their unhappiness, Anglo American Farms say they are very proud of the project though they will have to address these concerns. Don Tooth, the managing director of Anglo American Farms, says the situation has to be investigated.

The Cape Winelands District Municipality also says it wants to convene a meeting with the stakeholders to verify its contractual obligations. - SABC

Housing backlog at 2.4m units

Pretoria - The backlog of housing currently stands at 2.4 million houses across South Africa, and the government hopes to reduce or do away with the shortfall by 2014.

“Yes, there is a problem with the backlog,” housing director-general Itumeleng Kotsoane said in an interview in Pretoria on Thursday.

Kotsoane detailed the obstacles faced in the housing sector and outlined current plans to tackle the problem.

He said the government built around 250,000 houses a year, and 2.3 million houses had been built since 1994.

However, many South Africans tended to gloss over the issue of backlogs in the housing department without putting the matter into context.

“Historically policies of the previous government excluded African people from having access to land for housing and when the takeover took place in 1994, we knew drastic measures were needed.

“We didn’t understand the depth of need by people and recently when we reviewed progress made in the past ten years, we found that gaps in our delivery process had to do with planning,” he said.

“Poor construction work and availability of land are some of the hindrances we have in the delivery programme but we are on target.”

Government is in the process of finalising the policy for Inclusionary Housing which will see low cost houses being built in the same area as high cost housing.

There are currently ten programmes which have integrated this system, with one being launched next to the R59 in Pretoria on Friday.

Kotsoane said research done in the US and United Kingdom showed that these countries had implemented Inclusionary Housing.

“It is possible for people to live together in harmony irrespective of race and class,” he said.

On whether such a plan would work in South Africa, Kotsoane said: “It must work. It’s going to be legislation enforced by law.”

Inclusionary Housing will be applicable irrespective of whether or not the land is privately owned.

While people argue about putting the poor and rich next to each other, most dwellers in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses complain that government-built houses are falling apart.

The problem started when big developers in 1998 moved out of the low cost housing market.

Kotsoane said these were replaced by emerging contractors who occupied their space and their “quality of work wasn’t up to scratch”.

“We are in the process of correcting this with the help of the National Home Builders Registration Council and each province is busy with audits on the damage of houses.”

Provinces like Gauteng, Limpopo have already started with the audits.

“We will only be looking at the houses that became defective as a result of poor workmanship.”

He said owners of RDP houses needed to be aware that regardless of whether the house was free, it was an asset and the value of it was based on how one took care of it.

“We need to educate people about title deeds and about what they mean and that having a house is a great asset as property appreciates over time,” Kotsoane said. - SAPA

Government short-sighted in dealing with poverty

If programmes to alleviate poverty are to have any real impact, they have to be sustainable beyond “the first generation” so that the children of the poor stood a chance of improving their lives.

In a paper delivered at the Living on the Margins conference at Spier, University of Cape Town poverty researchers, Sue Parnell and Edgar Pieterse, said the government was short-sighted in its attempts to help the poor.

“There is no question the political will to help the poor exists,” Parnell said. “What is a problem, is that many of the steps being taken now will not improve the lives of future generations of the poor.”

She said the Development Facilitation Act allows for compromises on the usual laws that govern the establishment of communities in areas zoned for low-cost housing.

“It makes it legal to cut corners to keep costs down.”

While this introduced a host of controversial issues in the development of low-cost housing, Parnell and Pieterse’s concern is that the act unwittingly maintained the status quo with the poor destined to remain poor despite the attempt at a leg-up by government.

“Any relevant development by the formal sector within these communities becomes impossible because the infrastructure to support development doesn’t exist or has been compromised.

“A major shopping chain couldn’t build a complex within a low-cost community because, for example, the pipes used for sewerage might be to small to support the development,” Parnell said.

People living in new low-cost communities were destined to a life of spaza shops and street trading, never enjoying the benefits of the first economy. - Cape Times

Housing office closure angers residents

Supporters of the Proudly Manenberg campaign say they will protest against the City of Cape Town if it closes the housing office in Manenberg Avenue on Monday.

And Mario Wanza, chairperson of Proudly Manenberg, has called for an urgent meeting with Mayor Helen Zille, after hearing that the city decided to close the office because of escalating gang violence in the area.

“I am disappointed in the mayor. We met with them (the city) on Thursday and at no point did they indicate they would be closing the office.”

Wanza, who was told of the office’s closure when contacted by media on Sunday for comment, said representatives of the campaign had objected at the meeting to the proposal to close the office.

“There are 70,000 residents there who cannot just pull out of Manenberg. The government is supposed to be dealing with the issues of crime and violence, not running away.”

Wanza said the organisation had agreed that a police satellite office would be set up near the housing office. He said there was also talk of deploying metro police to the area.

“But this is contrary to what we agreed. I am shocked.”

The city has said the decision to temporarily close the office was “not taken lightly”. But increasing violence, that sometimes forced staff to hide under their desks for cover, prompted the council to take drastic measures… - Cape Times

Shacks burn down near Cape Town

Ten shacks were burnt down at the Dunoon informal settlements in Milnerton, Cape Town, SABC news reported on Sunday.

The Cape Town fire department said that the blaze occurred early Sunday morning and was quickly brought under control.

No one was injured. About 30 people were displaced and accommodated with friends and family. The cause of the fire was still be investigated. - Sapa

N2 Gateway: things fall apart

The N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town is literally cracking up and in some places falling apart because of substandard workmanship. The Rental Tribunal Office in Cape Town has confirmed that it is “inundated by complaints” from resi­dents who moved into the housing complex less than six months ago.

This week, Xhanti Sigcawu, the general manager of Thubelisha Homes, the project managers for the N2 Gateway housing project, confirmed that although tenants have moved in and are paying full rent for their units, they have not yet signed off on the completion certificate because of “unhappiness with the standard of the work”.

“We’re retaining 5% of the total money to be paid to Sobambisana, the project’s largest consortium, until we’re happy with final completion,” Sigcawu said. Sobambisana has accepted liability and is apparently going “to fix” problems at the government’s flagship housing project. Sobambisana did not respond to questions this week.

According to the N2 residents’ committee, every tenant living in the flats has either already filed a complaint with the Rental Tribunal Office or is in the process of doing so. “We’ve delivered hundreds of complaints to this office and still need to deliver about 200 more,” said Luthando Ndabambi, of the tenants committee, this week.

The Rental Tribunal Office’s deputy director, Andre Rossouw, confirmed that it had received “more than 100 complaints and we’re excepting more”. Rossouw could not say whether complainants are pursuing legal action against the department of housing or are still trying to resolve the matter out of court.

Riedwaan Davids, the N2 Gateway’s project manager, who is employed by Thubelisha Homes, said that the company had attended to “about 1 000 complaints” — while there are only 705 units in the complex.

This week a Cape Town city civil engineer and professional construction manager accompanied the Mail & Guardian to the housing development and said the workmanship was “shocking and substandard”.

The engineer, who wants to remain anonymous, visited numerous units and walked through the entire complex: “Some of the walls I’ve seen need to be rebuilt because it was clearly built without brick-force, which re-enforces walls. No steel-stiffeners, as re-enforcement, were used in a lot of the walls, meaning that the walls will probably not last for a long time — it’s also dangerous because these walls are only one brick-layer thick and if an adult runs into it, it could collapse. Some of the building work done, is simply done wrongly and cannot be fixed — it will have to be re-built,” the engineer said.

“I’m seeing cracks that one should only start seeing after three or four years. Corners were cut; the builders were probably in a hurry and I’m guessing there was very little supervision happening while the building was in progress,” he added.

Most of the complaints from residents are about substandard plumbing. In one unit a toilet pipe leaks effluent water every time the toilet is flushed, flooding that unit as well as the one next door. Unless the units’ front doors are open, both houses reek of sewerage.

The project, which was supposed to provide 22,000 new housing units to shack-dwellers by June last year, has thus far delivered only 705 units. Few of these units are housing squatters because the enormous costs involved in the construction have made the rent — which is between R450 and R1 150 a month — unaffordable by most homeless and unemployed people on housing waiting lists.

Thus far the expenditure overrun on the N2 housing project is estimated at R135-million. Each unit was budgeted to cost R80 000 but upon completion by the middle of last year, the cost had escalated to more than R130 000 per unit.

In response to the M&G’s questions about the project, the department of housing seconded several senior staff members to a meeting at the N2 project site.

Saths Moodley, special adviser to housing minister Lindiwe Sisulu, said: “Minister Sisulu demands that this entire N2 process should be completely transparent. This is a flagship-project. The issue of building standards is serious. If people didn’t do their work, they will be fired. Somebody should be listening to the tenants and taking their complaints seriously. Minister Sisulu will indeed be very angry to hear about this state of affairs.” M&G

Build 75 000 houses every year, says YCL

The City of Cape Town must plough most of its funds into building 75,000 houses every year to drastically reduce Cape Town’s housing backlog, the Young Communist League (YCL) said.

In a memorandum to the council, the SA Communist Party youth wing said that,

if billions of rands could be allocated to build a stadium, the council could afford (to build) decent houses instead of the small ones built in areas such as Delft and Khayelitsha.

The memorandum was received by Dan Plato, mayoral committee member for housing, after a YCL protest march through Cape Town on Thursday.

The organisation claimed it represented the interests of working-class youth in the Western Cape and that most of them were homeless, lived in shacks or poorly built houses which were worse than those built under apartheid.

“The YCL demands decent housing, departure of apartheid spatial planning, further expansion of the N2 Gateway and the immediate stop to the building of ooVezinyawo houses,” the memorandum read. “These ooVezinyawo (meaning ’show your feet while sleeping’) houses are so tiny, people think they were built for a particular use and not for domicile. They remove the privacy and dignity of people.”

YCL Hout Bay branch secretary Lovers Magwala said many families struggled with overcrowding which resulted in domestic problems. “Our appeal is that the city and the national government build decent structures … The constant politicking between the council and provincial government does not interest us. One of our main concerns is that people get decent houses and service delivery takes place.”

Plato told the 57 marchers that the council was busy improving its services, such as (getting rid of) the bucket system and the general upgrading of informal settlements.

With reference to the Imizamo Yethu informal settlement in Hout Bay, he said processes were in place to deal with housing problems there, as well as in other areas.

“We have 240 informal settlements in Cape Town and we don’t want to single out specific informal settlements. We try to look at informal settlements in a holistic manner and want to deal with the problem holistically,” Plato said. - Cape Times

Corruption is a crime against the poor

“Corruption is about the abuse of entrusted power and office for illegitimate, illegal private gain and is costing South Africa between R50 billion and R150 billion per year, money that could be used for housing, unemployment, and other social services.

Corruption undermines revenue collection and stimulates the underground economy. The more we allow this underground or informal economy to thrive, the more serious the consequences in terms of the amount of money the country is able to generate, which eventually gets redistributed or channelled into service delivery projects, into health, housing, education, pensions etc. Public resources are wasted through corruption.

In terms of social development, the Department of Social Development has been actively aggressive in terms of rooting out corruption within the department, after noticing that an estimated R1.4 billion was being lost to the department over a number of years. In spite of that amount being lost, the amount that was actually being spent on pensions, was increasing in the years. The country has to accommodate the amount of money that it is losing to corruption as well as trying to increase the provision and delivery of social security or social assistance to those most in need.

Corruption undermines efficiency and exacerbates poverty and inequality and encourages corrupt practice in the informal economy as well. One feels that you have no choice but to engage in corruption because you won’t get anywhere if you don’t, and the problem is once you start, you can’t stop.

The problem with corruption is that it impacts indirectly and directly on the poor. - Legalbrief

Cape to crack down on shacks

In a move aimed at combating the building of shacks in open public spaces, the city had vowed “to take swift action each time the unlawful occupation of land takes place”.

Following the dismantling of the “illegally” built shacks of 18 Joe Slovo Park families living in a stormwater retention compound in Milnerton on Wednesday night, the city’s human settlement services director Seth Maqethuka said it could not condone unlawful land invasions.

“The city does not offer unlawful land invaders halls, tents or alternative land. The city cannot condone unlawful land invasions by issuing starter packs. We have not done so in the past,” said Maqethuka.

The breaking down of the shacks by the City of Cape Town’s land invasion unit left the families collecting their belongings and scrambling for a place to sleep.

On Thursday night the city ward councillor for the Joe Slovo Park area, Elizabeth Berry of the DA, said: “That is my area, but I never heard anything about that.”

A committee member for the area, Patricia Mahitsha, condemned officials of the city’s land invasion unit for not issuing a warning and for conducting their action just after sunset.

But Maqethuka replied: “There was no need [for a warning] in this case as when our staff arrived on the scene, they [the shack dwellers] started removing their belongings themselves.

“We assume that they knew what they were doing was illegal as we have had previous actions of this sort in this area.”

However, Maqethuka said that, in the normal case of events, the city does warn unlawful occupants of land that their actions are illegal and that the city would take measures against them.

A city official in the housing unit, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that the city’s no-nonsense approach to land invasions would be the start of a “very hard but effective process” in controlling land.

“The tough action against Joe Slovo residents would set a precedent for whoever intends doing likewise in future. People are clever - they had just arrived in the city, then they occupy any open space hoping to be prioritised by the city when it comes to housing or land allocation.

“What about the thousands of homeless who have been waiting for years in the midst of this staggering housing backlog of more than 350,000 units? Any preferential treatment to them would sound very unfair to others. The bottom line is that people must know there is limited land and more people are wanting a roof over their heads,” said the official. - Cape Argus