Mabaso: Slums bill not a Zimbabwe-style ‘Operation Murambatsvina’

•Wed, 18 Jul 2007

Ignorance is a potent weapon for those who deliberately want to undermine the facts staring them in the face. This line floated through my head when I read the statement issued to the media by the so-called shack dwellers’ movement in which they are said to be opposed to the newly passed Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Bill.

The arguments provided by the movement as reasons for its rejection of the legislation, which is still awaiting the premier’s signature, are a clear indication of the danger posed to the nation by a lack of reading. These are populist statements based on a debt of ignorance about the intentions of the bill. The objective is simply to grab headlines and to use the bill to popularise the activities of mushrooming “centres” which claim to be fighting poverty and neglect, whereas they use the same to market themselves at the expense of the plight of our people.

Anyone who has read the bill will understand, if you are a South African citizen who lives in a slum because you are in genuine need of a house, you don’t have to worry about the bill for, in the first place, it accepts the reality that there are many of our people who currently live in slums not through their own choosing, but because of circumstances such as neglect by previous oppressive governments.

However, the legislation has become an enemy to those who use informal settlements for their personal gain. The bill is hated by “shack farmers”. I am talking here about individuals who own more than one shack and use them for rental purposes to make money at the expense of our poor people. The bill is disliked by those who have received subsidy houses and decided to illegally rent them out while they continue to live in shacks. Indeed, the bill is hated by illegal land-grabbers who have no respect for other people’s rights to property.

Likewise, property owners who, even though they allow tenants to live in their run-down buildings, still do not maintain them, will have concerns about the bill.

We have no sympathy with the concerns of these individuals because the bill was created precisely to deal with such loopholes in the current legal framework which have given birth to these phenomena. Apart from reversing the gains we have made in terms of housing delivery, this phenomenon of “shack farming” has undermined our progress in eradicating slums because the shack farmers and their ilk can, with gay abandon, illegally occupy land, erect shacks and rent them out. So their concerns must be understood in this context.

The legislation is a threat to their economic base. And we are happy as the Department of Housing, for we will now be in a better position to assist those who are in slums because of a genuine need for houses.

As MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu said when tabling the bill in the legislature,“The bill does not contain any provisions for the eviction of people from land or buildings, that is, should this become necessary.”

Instead, it specifically provides that any eviction of persons under the bill must be carried out in accordance with the applicable provisions of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act, the Constitution and any other national legislation protecting the housing or occupation rights of people.

Therefore, the promulgation of the bill will not result in a wholesale or apartheid-style eviction of people from informal settlements before alternative land has been found or secured for their relocation.

In the event of an eviction of people from an informal settlement being considered necessary by a municipality in the public interest, such as the need to protect the lives or health of the people concerned, the bill makes provision for the establishment of transit areas by municipalities within their areas of jurisdiction and also gives them the right to expropriate land for that purpose should this become necessary.

Adequate housing

The bill operates alongside the sustainable housing development process embarked upon by the province in terms of the Housing Act, to ensure the replacement of slums with adequate housing”.

What our detractors have failed to appreciate is that a lot of thinking went into the crafting of this bill. One of the primary responsibilities placed on our shoulders by this bill is that we should improve our housing delivery programmes, for we will know exactly the challenge we face as opposed to the current reality where we are chasing a moving target. The Constitution enjoins us to provide housing for our people. It is a responsibility we aim to fulfil.

To this end, we have a myriad housing options aimed at providing people with decent houses. These include, among others, rental housing, where people who need accommodation can rent government-owned housing stock on reasonable terms with an option to buy, rather than living in shacks.

We have in situ housing-upgrade projects where, land permitting, we build a house on the same place where the shack was and demolish the shack; we have high-rise options where, if there is a land shortage, we build high-rise buildings to save land and ensure that people are not moved away from areas of economic activity. All these and other programmes are aimed at achieving our objective of housing our people.

We move from a premise that says slums are bad for our province and for our country. It is for this reason that, in the year 2000, this province introduced a slums clearance programme which has since been adopted nationally as one of the critical programmes.

As for the charges that the bill is aimed at evicting people who are living in slums ahead of 2010, we would not like to comment on this because this is just plain absurd.

It is also important to stress that this bill, like all proposed legislation, underwent all parliamentary processes, including public hearings, before it was unanimously voted for by all political parties represented in the provincial legislature.

For the record, one of the sittings of the Housing Portfolio Committee was in Kennedy Road informal settlement. Surely, if the bill was as flawed as we are told, not all political parties in the legislature would have voted for it.

The Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Bill is not about the inhumane eviction of people from where they live. This is not “Operation Murambatsvina” [Zimbabwe’s controversial 2005 “Operation Drive Out the Trash”], but a revolutionary and long-term solution to the challenge of slums and slum conditions. As the MEC said in his concluding remarks, we have piloted this legislation because: “We dream of a tomorrow where all of us can rightfully and proudly proclaim our citizenship. We dream of a tomorrow where unscrupulous shacklords do not take advantage of the desperation of our people. We dream of a tomorrow where children do not suffer from preventable diseases just because they live in unhealthy conditions. We dream of a tomorrow free of slums.”

• Lennox Mabaso is the spokesman for Mike Mabuyakhulu, the MEC for Local Government, Housing and Traditional Affairs.