Angry Cape residents barricade roads

Four people have been arrested on charges of public violence after a meeting with Cape Town Mayor Dan Plato turned violent, moments after he left the Overcome Heights informal settlement in Steenberg yesterday.

Police and metro police officers fired rubber bullets to disperse the angry mob who barricaded roads and set portable toilets alight.

Protesting residents prevented local ward councillor Demetri Qually from leaving the venue, accusing him and the mayor of lying to them.

Plato and Qually met with residents yesterday to inform them that the city council had on Thursday approved plans to electrify their shacks.

Qually said they were in the area to give the community positive feedback.

"I am very disappointed, it was good news for the bulk of the people but a few turned violent after the mayor left," he said.

He said he was busy packing up with one of his staff members when residents started demonstrating and blocking off the road.

"We told them that the process will start early next year but some of the demonstrators were determined to make a political issue out of the fact that council did not give a precise date," he added.

Qually said police and metro police reacted swiftly and brought the situation under control.

Police captain Stephen Knapp said last night that the four people had been charged with public violence and are due to appear in court soon.

- Cape Argus

Housing corruption at Department of Public Works

Public Works Minister Geoff Doidge has called in the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to probe the theft of furniture from government offices and ministers' houses, as well as officials colluding with contractors to overcharge the department.The department was billed millions for carpets and inflated prices for furniture in ministers' and other state houses. Doidge cited an example in which two residences together worth R3 million were refurbished and renovated at a total cost of R11 million.

"Even after the work was completed, the houses remain unsuitable. Workmanship was poor and the costs are deemed wasteful expenditure."

It is understood that some ministers and deputy ministers could not move into their houses because they were in bad shape, while contractors claimed their millions.

Hofmeyr said part of the investigation would be to determine why officials signed off the contracts when the "quality was poor". (from IOL)

Award-winning house system snubbed locally

AN Eastern Cape company has won a top African award for its super-fast house-building system and has just signed a deal with India. But its chief executive says despite exports to several developing countries, the provincial government has yet to recognise the value of this innovative system.

Indian-based property company Karle Group partner Sudarshan Karle was at Moladi this week to put in an order for the product. Karle said there was a demand for more than 100-million houses in India.

“In India we have 1, 2 billion people and about 60% of them will never own a house. Nobody is offering a product for the lower middle-class families. For nearly two years we did market research on how to develop low-cost housing and eventually zeroed in on Moladi,” Karle said.

“The need for low-cost affordable homes is a global demand,” Botes said.

Read more at The Weekend Post

Sisulu in blistering attack on Sexwale

Defence and Military Veterans Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has launched a blistering attack on Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale, accusing him of failing to come up with new programmes and for claiming credit for initiatives she introduced while she was still minister of housing.

In a blunt message delivered yesterday, Sisulu noted that Sexwale "has not launched a single project" since he took over the portfolio.

The extraordinary attack by one cabinet minister on another appears to have been triggered by revelations that the Department of Housing, since renamed, spent more than R22 million during Sisulu's tenure on a play, performances of which Sexwale has halted.

What sparked Sisulu's ire appears to have been comments by Sexwale on 702

What sparked Sisulu's ire appears to have been comments by Sexwale on Gauteng-based talk radio station 702, when he said that he had "no time for plays and theatre that have nothing to do with building houses".

The Cape Times reported yesterday that the industrial theatre production A re Ageng Mzanzi (Let's Build South Africa) netted R5,5m for a production company owned by former soapie actor Mpho Tsedu.

In a terse statement released yesterday, Sisulu told Sexwale, who was in Boksburg telling reporters that 40 000 RDP homes were so defective they would have to be demolished and rebuilt, to "spend some time in the office reading reports and cabinet memos from 2004".

She said these would inform him that the human settlements concept was not new, but had actually been approved in 2004, the year she took over as minister of housing

The name of the department was changed after the elections, as part of a broader reconfiguration of government under President Jacob Zuma.

Failed to respond to repeated calls and SMSs

Sisulu told Sexwale that housing developments such as Cosmo City in Gauteng, built during her tenure, were based on the very same human settlements model.

Sisulu, a national working committee member of the ANC, sees herself as politically senior to Sexwale, who only sits on the ruling party's national executive committee. Her length of experience as a cabinet minister is also much greater.

She defended the decision to commission the play, saying it was necessary to inform the public about new government plans for housing.

"He (Sexwale) will discover that when you implement a new plan and a housing project, you need to communicate with all stakeholders. Beneficiaries of government housing programmes must be educated on their responsibilities, how they can economically benefit from the project, how to report fraud and corruption and to ensure that contractors do not take advantage of them."

Sisulu said a number of projects Sexwale had claimed credit for, including plans to repair defective RDP houses at a cost of R1 billion, and bringing in the Special Investigating Unit to investigate low-cost housing fraud, had been initiated on her watch.

"Noting that since his appointment, the minister has not launched a single project, and we have not seen his plan for human settlements which differs from the one approved and launched in 2004, (and) based on five years' experience and delivery of over 1,5 million houses, we are convinced that when the minister starts building houses or finalising his priorities he will realise that community participation and consumer education is central to housing delivery," Sisulu said.

Sexwale's spokesperson Chris Vick failed to respond to repeated calls and SMSs.

Sisulu's lashing of Sexwale could lie in the distrust some senior ANC leaders have for the former business mogul, who harboured his own presidential ambitions before throwing in his lot with Zuma on the eve of the ANC's Polokwane conference in 2007. It is believed Sexwale has not abandoned his presidential ambitions and has his sights set on the ANC's next elective conference in Mangaung in 2012.

DA housing spokesperson Butch Steyn has written to auditor-general Terence Nombembe asking for a special investigation into the play.

• This article was originally published on page 1 of The Cape Times

Housing probe deepens - Rebuilding costs steepen

Negligent housing inspectors and engineers who approved some of the defective low-cost houses, which are now costing the province millions of rands to repair, are also being investigated and could face disciplinary action.

Human Settlements MEC Maggie Govender said yesterday that investigations being conducted by the Special Investigations Unit would also focus on the role of the inspectors and engineers who approved the defective housing units.

"We are not looking at contractors as the only guilty party. We are also looking at the role of other professionals and inspectors in this. All of this forms part of the ongoing investigations."

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale has already described the scandal as a national shame.

"It is money that should have been spent on new houses," he told Alphendale residents in East London this month, where demolition started on 339 poorly constructed houses that have to be rebuilt.

KwaZulu-Natal has, so far, approved rectification of more than 9 000 houses in nine housing projects worth about R561-million.

The costs could be much higher because a further 31 200 houses have been identified as defective units in 48 housing projects across the province.

It is estimated that 50,000 of these sub-standard houses need to be rebuilt nationwide.

These houses are, however, still being assessed to ascertain what type of rectification needs to be done on them. Earlier this month, Govender said this could push the cost of fixing and rebuilding to at least R1-billion.

If this figure is accurate, it would push the national cost to rebuild badly constructed houses provided under the government's housing programme from R1,3bn to close to R2bn.

Govender admitted that strengthening of her department's quality monitoring unit was needed to prevent the recurrence of blunders which has led to thousands of defective low-cost houses having to be repaired or rebuilt.

There have been cases where contractors have been slipshod because of poor monitoring.

"In one case in Newcastle, we found that a contractor had been mixing one bag of cement to 26 wheelbarrows of sand."

She said to curb similar occurrences, her department had appointed 13 project managers who were expected to start work soon. She, however, admitted that more resources were needed in the quality assurance department.

"Yes this is not enough, but it's what we can do with the available resources. As more money becomes available we will look at employing more people to strengthen capacity in this area. For now, we will have to use them more creatively," she said.

She said her department would also play a hands-on role in housing development in the province.

"We no longer want to leave the delivery of human settlements to municipalities, but we want to play a more active role in it," she said.

While the rectification process is expected to run into hundreds of millions of rands, Govender said the department would try to ensure that most of the funds did not come out of the public purse.

The department will first try to recoup the funds from the concerned contractors by forcing them to foot the bill or by getting them to do the rectification.

However, this is not possible in some cases.

For example, in the case of one contractor, Effingham Housing, which had been contracted to build houses in Durban's Quarry Heights, the department has had to foot the R80m bill to rectify the houses because the company has since been liquidated.

As part of ensuring quality standards are met, the department will also include in its contracts a punitive or penalty clause for contractors.

Contractors who do not meet the standards can also be suspended by the department because the current framework does not allow for contractors to be blacklisted.

- Daily News

Residents protect 'illegal' orphanage

About 400 residents of Atlantis, near Cape Town, burnt tyres and barred police from evicting people from an orphanage in the area on Thursday, said a community member.

"Community members are standing at the gate refusing police entry into the orphanage home," said Fiona Ranck.

"They believe that the orphanage belongs to the community," she said.

Ranck said about 40 policemen were trying to remove a family and 60 children and their belongings from the property.

Matilda and Ronald Koopman, who head the Ebenezer church, lived in the house for years with their six children.

In 2005 they started taking in orphans and abused children.

With the aid of Swiss funding, obtained by the Atlantis Forum, a new, bigger house was built on the property to accommodate the children.

However, the orphanage was not registered and earlier this month the department of social services threatened to close it down because it was illegal.

It was when the Koopmans tried to get members of the community involved in the administration of the orphanage, that the forum claimed that the house was its property and took the matter to court, obtaining the eviction order, said Ranck.

Western Cape ANC organiser Mandla Nqwane said the standoff between police and the community started three days ago.

"The community is protesting [against] the removal of this family and they will not go away.

"They [community members] have been here for three days now, some of them go to their houses to eat and then return," he said

Lawyers for the Koopman family will lodge an urgent application to halt the eviction on Thursday afternoon. - Sapa

Fish Hoek residents to march

The Hillview Residents Association will march to the municipal offices in Fish Hoek on Thursday to demand electricity and tenure security.

Residents of the informal settlement, Overcome Heights, claim they were not given access to electricity.

"This despite written promises from the council that they would, in fact, be electrified," the Hillview Residents Association said in a statement.

"About a month ago, the council made it clear that they were backtracking on their promise, and thus residents will march to demand that electricity be delivered, immediately." - Sapa

Hundreds arrested for housing fraud

A total of 923 government officials at national and provincial level have been brought to book by the human settlements department's crackdown on corruption, Minister Tokyo Sexwale said.

"We are hot on the steps of other people in government," Sexwale said at a housing settlement meeting in Boksburg, Johannesburg.

"We cannot allow people to turn the poor into a business. This is morally reprehensible."

He said his department was not just "mouthing slogans", but "giving teeth" to its drive to root out corruption.

Five members of the legal fraternity had also been struck of the roll for housing corruption.

The meeting was held to build a partnerships between the government and private sector in the drive to build sustainable housing settlements in the country.

- Times Live

Sexwale cans R22m show

Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu was housing minister when the housing department approved a R22.5-million theatre production - but she is not liable for the overspending.

Sisulu 'not required to explain production's cost'

Her spokesman, Ndivhuwo Mabaya, yesterday passed the buck to accounting officers, saying Sisulu would not comment on the show, A re Ageng Mzansi (Let's build South Africa).

The cost of the show led to the department of human settlements exceeding its marketing budget by 195%.

A reply to a question about the play posed in Parliament yesterday led to the revelation that R22.6-million had been spent on 58 performances of the show.

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale yesterday canned the project, to which R4.4m was allocated in this year's budget.

But Mabaya said: "We are not going to comment because there is a communications department within human settlements that deals with such issues.

"I even think that the amount is incorrect. It may have cost R5-million. In our view, how can a minister be liable for overspending when there is a chief finance officer and accounting officer in the communication department who deal with this? The matter must go back to the human settlements department."

The DA is demanding that the auditor-general and public protector investigate the matter.

DA spokesman Butch Steyn said: "We need to identify who is responsible for sanctioning it. The former minister must have known about this expenditure. An investigation by the AG urgently needs to take place.

"That money could have been used to build 420 houses, which are really needed in the country. While the department's total budget for all marketing and advertising was R20.3-million last year, it ended up spending a total of 60-million.

"It is simply inconceivable to think that any government department would see it fit to spend such a huge amount of money on a theatre production."

Human Settlements spokesman Chris Vick said the department, under Tokyo Sexwale's watch, had stopped the production because it focused more on "housing than on human settlements".

Steyn said Sexwale could not be held accountable: "It wasn't during his time. I think that all he can do to redeem the matter is to make sure that it never happens again. I am sending him a letter out of courtesy to tell him that I am asking the AG to investigate the overexpenditure."

- Times Live

Sisulu 'not required to explain production's cost'

Former Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu does not need to explain how a R22 million Sarafina-style theatre production was arranged, her spokesman said.

"To call on the former Minister of housing to explain the costs and the play is sensational and politicking that is not necessary,"said Sisulu's spokesman Ndivhuwo Mabaya in a statement.

Sisulu was responding to a call by a Democratic Alliance MP for the expenditure over the theatre production to be investigated by the Auditor-General.

A parliamentary reply from Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale revealed on Tuesday that the theatre production, for the human settlements department in the 2008/09 financial year, cost R22,569,656 over three phases of production.

The DA's Butch Steyn said the R22m costs contributed significantly to the enormous 195 percent overspend of the department's advertising budget in 2008/09.

"The Auditor General also needs to look into the award of this tender, since we are dealing with such an enormous overspend ... We need to identify who was responsible for sanctioning it."

Sisulu, as former minister, must have known about the expenditure, he said.

In response Mabaya said that the DA's call for "Sisulu to explain the costs" could be seen as ignorant.

"It would be easy to dismiss this call as ignorance of the DA member of Parliament Mr Steyn on how government works. But we will provide him with free education to avoid the confusion," said Mabaya.

"Every Government Department has a communication section, this communication section has a budget and a programme approved and is their daily function to implement their programmes whether there is a Minister or not.

"It is not the responsibility of the Minister to implement communication campaigns and to approve budgets for those campaigns," he said.

Earlier current Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale's special advisor Chris Vick said the minister was not in a position to comment specifically on the expenditure.

Sexwale had however, promised his management and staff "not to allow expenditure of this sort".

"The production in question is no longer running, and the minister of human settlements has specifically stated to his management and staff: 'This sort of expenditure will not happen on my watch'," Vick said. - Times live

'R22m wasted on housing production'

A R22-million Sarafina-style theatre production, arranged under former housing minister Lindiwe Sisulu, needs to be investigated by the Auditor-General, a Democratic Alliance MP said on Wednesday.

A parliamentary reply from Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale revealed on Tuesday that the theatre production, for the human settlements department in the 2008/09 financial year, cost R22 569 656 over three phases of production.

"The funds were spent on 58 performances of the play, along with the associated production, logistical, translation and DVD recording costs," Butch Steyn said.

"Also included were costs associated with scripting and 'public mobilisation'. Notably, the cost of R22,5-million is even more than the health department's Sarafina II play, which cost R14-million, or R19-million adjusted for inflation, back in 1996."

Steyn said the human settlements department faced an enormous backlog, including the more than R1-billion needed to fix poorly-built RDP houses.

"How could the ANC government possibly have seen this as appropriate expenditure?" he asked.

The R22m costs contributed significantly to the enormous 195 percent overspend of the department's advertising budget in 2008/09.

"While the department's total budget for all marketing and advertising was R20,3-million last year, it ended up spending a total of R60-million. The R22,5-million spent on the play alone, was enough to exceed the budget.

"This suggests that the play itself has gone significantly over budget, or was possibly not even budgeted for, and I will be submitting further parliamentary questions to further investigate this matter.

"The Auditor General also needs to look into the award of this tender, since we are dealing with such an enormous overspend."

It is "simply inconceivable" that any government department would see it fit to spend such a huge amount of money on a theatre production, Steyn said, adding that R22-million is enough to have built RDP houses for another 420 families on waiting lists.

"It is too little, too late, for the department to say that they've stopped the production. The R22-million has already been wasted. We need to identify who was responsible for sanctioning it."

Sisulu, as former minister, must have known about the expenditure, he said.

"An investigation by the Auditor General urgently needs to take place, and I will also forward this matter to the public protector, as we did in 1996 over the Sarafina II scandal."

Sexwale's special advisor Chris Vick said the minister was not in a position to comment specifically on the expenditure. Sexwale had however, promised his management and staff "not to allow expenditure of this sort".

"The production in question is no longer running, and the minister of human settlements has specifically stated to his management and staff: 'This sort of expenditure will not happen on my watch'," Vick said.

"In addition, the minister has issued a firm directive across all branches in the department for cost-cutting and to ensure, as he put it, that the department gets maximum value for every cent spent. Fiscal discipline is being applied, and applied rigorously."

Vick said expenditure on advertising and marketing in this financial year had been cut to an absolute minimum.

"Thanks to the measures already introduced, and a change in communications focus - making greater use of face-to-face meetings, and working to get editorial coverage rather than buying space - savings of approximately R8-million have already been achieved in this financial year. Further savings are expected.

"It is also a well-known fact that the minister has ensured savings for the public purse in a range of other areas - using his own car, for example, and flying economy class when travelling by air." - Sapa

WC aims to update housing data, admits problems

The Provincial Department of Local Government and Housing on Tuesday announced that they were embarking on a R2.5 million exercise to update their housing demand database.

Housing MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela said the province’s housing backlog was estimated at about 450 000, but there was a lack of information around people’s income levels, their access to basic services, whether they lived in an informal settlement, backyard or were overcrowded in a formal structure.

He said there was also a lack of information regarding disabled people who required housing.

He said the housing demand data support programme would essentially support support municipalities outside of the Cape Town Metropole and provide accurate and up-to-date information which would allow for “much better provincial level planning and policy making”.

The provision of such data would greatly assist municipalities in selecting beneficiaries for housing projects and would assist with forward planning and the formulation of strategy and policy.

“The quality of this information has been a concern for all three spheres of government for a number of years.”

He said “unhappiness” which surrounded some housing projects was a result of lack of communication between government and the beneficiary community and so part of the database exercise was to create a transparent housing list which everyone could have access to.

He said they intended to have a supplier in place by mid-December to “undertake this important work”.

The project would consist of two phases, the first of which would entail assessing the current data collection and management systems, while the second phase would be to design a strategy to support municipalities to improve their data collection and recording systems.

Department of Local Government and Housing Chief Director for Planning and Development Jacqui Samson said: “The first phase is estimated to cost around 2.5 million.” Samson said it was planned to be up and running within ten months. - West Cape News

Housing dept spends R60m on ads

Cape Town - The department of human settlements spent R60m on advertising during the 2008/09 financial year, despite its budget of just R20m.

The department said in reply to a Parliamentary question from the Democratic Alliance that the R60m included the 52 performances of a face-to-face housing consumer campaign and a housing awards ceremony.

"The costs also include all advertising conceptualisation, production and procurement of media space for public broadcast or publication," the department said in its answer.

DA MP Butch Steyn said South Africa could not afford to continue spending massive amounts of money on advertising campaigns and events "which rarely have a direct impact upon rolling out of services".

"There is simply no excuse that funds are being wasted like this - money that should be spent eradicating the massive service delivery backlogs is instead being spent on self-congratulatory public relations campaigns and talk shops," Steyn said.

'Could have been spent on RDP houses'

A reply to a separate question revealed that the department spent R9.6m on conferences, imbizos and seminars for the period January 1 2006 to September 1 2009, and R883 000 on travel costs for the functions.

Particularly concerning is the fact that R23.4m was spent on one particular campaign which, according to the reply, was intended to "continue to profile the housing programmes, developments, achievements and challenges to beneficiaries and the general public," Steyn said.

"It is very difficult to see how R23m could be justified on this kind of self-indulgent marketing.

"This was not the only expenditure item of concern. One awards ceremony cost the department R1.8m to organise and host, another R600 000 for accommodation and transport, and another R930 000 to advertise.

"In other words, it set the public purse back R3.3m.

"This R9.6m, added to the R60m spent on advertising, could have built RDP houses for another 6 500 South Africans," Steyn said.

- SAPA

Police angered by 'community justice'

Police fear "bundu courts" have been revived, claiming the lives of four suspected criminals at the hands of vigilantes in the community.

Over the weekend there were three incidences in Khayelitsha where young men were stoned to death and in Tygerdal, Goodwood, a man was beaten to death. In all the cases, members of the community are believed to have taken the law into their own hands.

Khayelitsha police station commander Aaron Mlenga decried the reappearance of the "bundu courts", first established in the struggle against apartheid to deal with collaborators: "The community is requested to come forward with information to assist the police in the apprehension of these groupings. We need to rid our area of vigilante groups and make our streets safe for our children again."

On Friday morning, the body of a man believed to be in his late 20s was discovered next to a container, used to store refuse, next to Lansdowne Road, adjacent to the RR-section in Site B, Khayelitsha.

When the Cape Times visited the area last night few people were willing to talk but one young woman said the man's crime was believed to have been attempted murder at the nearby BM-section.

"The man lived in Makhaza (Khayelitsha) and his crime was that he had set alight another man's wife. A group of residents from BM-Section, hearing about the incidence which happened on Thursday chased after him and assaulted him with all sorts of weapons," said the woman.

The man's limp body was dragged down Lansdowne Road to RR-Section, across the road from the Mew Hall and where he was struck with further blows to his head.

"I could see that he was still alive when the mob brought him here, he managed to open his eyes. But one man struck a heavy blow to his head and that's when he seemed dead. He was no longer breathing," said the woman.

Khayelitsha police spokesperson Mthokozisi Gama said: "We are still investigating but so far we have managed to arrest three suspects for the different incidents aged 52, 37 and 48. They will appear in the Khayelitsha Magistrate's court soon,"

He added police would maintain a zero tolerance approach against the community members because all they were doing was contributing to crime. - Cape Times