Business Day: Cracks deepen in housing delivery plan

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=128739

Cracks deepen in housing delivery plan
People are frustrated by substandard houses, big backlogs, writes Bekezela Phakathi

BEKEZELA PHAKATHI

Published: 2010/12/07 06:39:31 AM

FOR thousands of residents living in the poverty-stricken informal settlement of Diepsloot, the wait for an RDP house has been an unending journey filled with empty promises.

Kagiso Sekati has been waiting for 10 years . ” Maybe I should not be complaining because I know some people who have waited for longer,” he says.

He lives in a tiny, corrugated- iron one-roomed dwelling . It has no electricity or running water and an outside toilet is shared by more than 10 families .

“I live here with my wife, my child and my brother — there is no other way. We cook using a paraffin stove. I just have to wait for a house and hopefully it will come soon,” Mr Sekati says.

He admits that his patience is wearing thin. “We always hear the government saying they will speed it up (the delivery of houses) but we never see anything. At times we feel like this government does not care about us, they come here and make all kinds of promises and then they go away to their very big houses.”

Last year Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale spent a night in Diepsloot as part of his “sincere listen campaign”, to get first-hand experience of the living conditions of people there.

The government has been grappling with the housing crisis since the dawn of democracy. The housing backlog has increased from 1,5-million in 1994 to 2,1-million this year.

In his budget speech earlier this year, Mr Sexwale said it could take decades for the backlog to be cleared, considering “continued economic and population growth and the rapid pace of urbanisation”.

Human settlements director- general Thabane Zulu says the backlog can be cleared within two decades as long as “we do business differently”. “We have developed some effective policies in the past but the implementation has been a challenge.

“We will work 24/7 to tighten our implementation strategies,” he says.

Mr Zulu says that he understands the frustration of people on the waiting list. “We cannot continue to do business the same way as the past 15 years. We have to look at alternative, creative and innovative ways to increase our service delivery”.

There has been a big state housing programme. The National Housing Finance Corporation’s Delca Maluleke says the state has delivered more than 2,3-million state-subsidised housing units since 1994.

“This equates to providing roofs over the heads of nearly 11- million people. Of the 300000- odd housing units built per year, the government is responsible for about 80%,” she says.

However, the inroads made have been hampered by shoddy workmanship. Mr Sexwale earlier this year told Parliament that about 50000 RDP houses throughout SA would have to be rebuilt or repaired because of shoddy work by contractors. This would cost the department about R1,3bn — 10% of its budget.

Richard Pithouse, a housing expert and politics lecturer at Rhodes University, says the apartheid government generally constructed better quality housing than that which is provided now. “RDP houses are smaller … more poorly constructed and often more poorly located than apartheid-era township housing,” he says.

Another Diepsloot resident, who prefers to be called Lizzy, says she is considering repairing her RDP house with her own funds. “The foundation is not strong enough, the walls are cracking…. I feel scared at times that the house might one day collapse as I sleep,” she says.

Lizzy moved into her house in 1998 and can remember how excited and relieved she was that she finally had a home

“All that excitement is gone now. Yes I have a home, but how can I be happy when the house is falling apart?” she asks.

phakathib@bdfm.co.za