Category Archives: Kwanele Sosibo

M&G: Socialists accuse state of crackdown

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-07-12-00-socialists-accuse-state-of-crackdown

Socialists accuse state of crackdown

by Kwanele Sosibo

Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) executive member Liv Shange’s visa woes – which may see her barred from re-entering South Africa – are part of a “wider onslaught on democratic rights” and could be linked to attempts to salvage the faltering peace deal in the mining sector, she said this week from Luleå in Sweden.

The DSM has been actively organising mineworkers disillusioned with the National Union of Mineworkers for years – long before the Marikana massacre occurred last year. Its members advised several of the strike committees during the wave of post-Marikana strikes. Continue reading

M&G: Foreigners live in fear in Alex

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-21-foreigners-live-in-fear-alex

Foreigners live in fear in Alex

Kwanele Sosibo

Residents of Alexandra’s RDP houses have reacted to menacing calls for foreigners to vacate RDP houses in the township within seven days with a mixture of fear and nonchalance.

Last weekend groups of residents, some co-ordinating their movements by phone, moved around extensions seven, nine and 10 handing out ­flyers and putting up posters warning foreigners living in RDP houses to vacate within seven days or risk “being pushed like animals or aliens”.

“The resident [sic] of Alexandra doesn’t want to revoke [presumably “revive” is meant] xenophobia, unless you give the cause to do so,” the flyers read.

Anecdotes of exactly when the leaflets surfaced differ. Some residents say youths distributing them last Friday also barricaded streets with burning tyres in extension 10, whereas others in the same section say they were being shoved under doors last Saturday evening.

It is not clear how organised the groups are, although some reports have mentioned that a group calling itself the Alexandra Bonafides has claimed responsibility.

The crude pamphlets specifically mention foreigners who own RDP houses as the targets. But a Zimbabwean resident told the Mail & Guardian that every foreigner appeared to be under fire, whether living in a house or renting an adjoining room. Several single-storey houses in the Far East Bank were flanked by smaller structures occupied by tenants.

The man, a resident of extension seven who asked not to be named, said he was given a flyer on Sunday evening before being coerced into an interrogation about his living situation. “I told them to speak to my landlord, as I am just a tenant here,” he said.

He told the M&G that he was playing it by ear, as he had done in 2008 when xenophobic violence engulfed the township. “There’s no cause for panic just yet, but what I’m afraid of is the possibility of physical violence.”

Census officials

Other residents said they were unsure how to regard the census officials, as they felt some people could use the census as a way of sourcing information about where foreigners are located.

“We aren’t against the census,” said Tswaleka Mathebula. “We just think that some people could hijack the process. Some people came here asking my daughter questions. When she told them her surname was Mathebula, they said: ‘Ja, we know you Mathebulas and Chikanes, you’re all from Maputo.’

“When I heard this, I came out and told them not to talk that shit here. We are from Giyani [in Limpopo province] and I’ve got all the papers for this house and every other document they could need. I didn’t even ask for this house, I got it because they were building a bridge across Stjwetla [an informal settlement in Alexandra], where I lived for 10 years.”

Mathebula, who lives in an RDP house with her three children and her husband, has two tenants in her yard, one from Zimbabwe.

She said that although some people had acquired their houses corruptly, the right approach was to take such grievances to the department of housing or the Alexandra Renewal Project. “They mustn’t come and tell us that every Shangaan-speaking person is from Maputo.”

Although most people who own RDP houses are South Africans, the housing policy does not preclude people with permanent-residence from qualifying for state housing.

The Gauteng minister for local government and housing, Humphrey Mmemezi, has called for people to provide evidence of the corruption they believe is running rampant in the Alexandra Renewal Project, which built the RDP houses.

“If we had evidence of that we would have prosecuted,” said the minister’s spokesperson, Motsamai Motlhaolwa. “The minister has been on record several times saying that people must come to us with evidence. Nobody must be forced to pay for an RDP house as they are for the poor.”

A South African man who rents to a Malawian tenant, Phetole Rakgwahla, said he would not protect his tenant if protests turn violent.

“Our brothers don’t have houses and we don’t know how foreigners got them,” Rakgwahla said, pointing to an RDP house. “The allocation process has gone completely haywire. We can live peacefully with one another but they mustn’t think they are here forever.”

Although the township was calm on Thursday, a community meeting was planned at the corner of 2nd Avenue and John Brand Street.

M&G: A tale of two city struggles

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-06-a-tale-of-two-city-struggles/

A tale of two city struggles

The Social Justice Coalition’s (SJC) perfectly orchestrated march on Freedom Day for safe sanitation featured a long queue for the toilets at the Cape Town mayor’s offices.

The first thing I noticed was that most of the more than 2 000 marchers were children, which made sense — they are especially vulnerable to the heath dangers posed by inadequate sanitation. The second was that the handwritten placards all bore the same handwriting.

Third, most of the marchers had been bused in from Khayelitsha and were sporting SJC T-shirts. And fourth, the posters advertising the march competed in Adderly Street with those displaying ANC and DA candidates in the local government elections.

Clearly, a lot of resources had gone into the protest — about R200 000, according to some estimates. By contrast, on the same day Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape, another Khayelitsha-based organisation, held a shack fire summit in the township’s QQ informal settlement. This was to commemorate those who had lost their lives in shack fires and to launch a campaign for the electrification of shack settlements.

Only 100 people turned out, according to the Cape Times. Other estimates suggested 200. No buses here — most who made it to the Abahlali marquee arrived by their own means, some walking across the vast area that constitutes Khayelitsha to get there. But the SJC and Abahlali differ from each other in more than an unequal access to resources.

Last October, after the protracted civil servants’ strike, Abahlali Western Cape called for a nationwide “month of informal settlement strikes”. The organisation urged affiliates and non-affiliates to take to the streets and barricade them.

“Let us make the whole city of Cape Town ungovernable and let us create chaos throughout the city,” the organisation said. The action reportedly led to the damage of property and was strongly condemned by the SJC, the Treatment Action Campaign, Cosatu and Equal Education. Abahlali was made up of “self-styled revolutionaries” who attacked working people with stones, they said in a joint statement.

Upping the heat, the South African Communist Party later weighed in against Abahlali, calling the road blockades “anarchist and populist”. Abahlali replied: “When the SACP condemns us, it condemns the struggles of the people across the country.”

Back at the Cape Town Civic Centre on Freedom Day the marchers were efficiently marshalled into a snaking queue behind a gleaming porcelain toilet seat propped up on a makeshift stage. To one side was a line of rented toilets in case nature prevailed over symbolism.

After testimonials from Nosakhe Thethafuthi (who endured raw sewage in her yard for two years) and Makhosandile Qezo (who was robbed while relieving himself in the veld), the protestors handed over a memorandum and then watched a rap song about sanitation.

Then a sudden shower of rain sent the crowds scattering away from the courtyard into an adjoining square for shelter. One latecomer, who supported the protest action, commented on the apparent lack of crowd control. If Abahlali baseMjondolo had let a march descend into that kind of disorder, arrests would have been quick to follow, he said.

The standoff between the two organisations is not sitting well with activists. In February, members of both camps attended the Johannesburg conference that formed the Democratic Left Front.

“We mandated people in the Democratic Left Front to get the two organisations together to try to reconcile their differences,” said Martin Legassick, who is on the front’s national steering committee. “Abahlali was willing to do that, but SJC was not,” he said.

Mazibuko Jara, expelled from the SACP, now sits on the same committee as Legassick. The fact that there were differences over the strike did not mean friction between the two groups should be permanent, he said. Efforts to unite the two were continuing and there were some who identified with both formations, Jara said.

“The sharing of perspectives, resources and strategies would be of great benefit to both constituencies and would project a stronger voice to society,” he said.

Legassick added that, although there was a lot of militancy on the ground in the black and coloured townships of the Western Cape, resources were a setback in uniting the various struggles.

M&G: Who was Andries Tatane?

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-04-21-who-was-andries-tatane

Who was Andries Tatane?
KWANELE SOSIBO – Apr 21 2011

Street in Ficksburg’s Market Square where Andries Tatane died after police allegedly beat and shot him during a march to the Setsoto local municipality offices on Wednesday last week.

Phillip Selokoe, his former high school teacher, showed the Mail & Guardian an oval mark not far from the municipal building entrance where Tatane was apparently shot in the chest. Then he pointed out a smaller, spherical one about 10 metres further on where Tatane is said to have collapsed some minutes afterwards.

“I taught him English,” the heavy-set, bespectacled Selokoe said. “He was a very brilliant student, a pioneer by nature. He was very skilled in initiating things that would benefit others.

“He wanted to see all the ­people freed from unemployment and illiteracy.”

The chalk markings, will soon disappear but it seems that Tatane has been marked to become a martyr. In the wake of his death, comrades far and wide have hailed him as a new breed of freedom fighter — one who side-stepped party affiliations, rolled up his sleeves and made a difference to the lives of those around him. He was “a beautiful fighter”, whose “death shall not be in vain”, says a Facebook group set up in his honour, one of several created since his death.

Activist Andile Mngxitama, of the September National Imbizo that started the group, said Tatane was a “symbol of the new resistance”, who died because the government failed to deliver.

“It’s deceitful to blame his death on rogue policing,” Mngxitama said. “The militarisation of the police happens only to crush dissent. The police are carrying out a political mandate, so for us his death was not an accident.” Mngxitama said Tatane was born on February 22 1978 — so he died at the age of 33, just as Jesus did.

According to family members, the month of April always haunted Tatane. Two days before his own death his widow Malehlohonolo recalled, he was reliving the death of his mother about five years ago. He also lost his brother and father in the month of Easter.

But as many in Ficksburg’s Meqheleng township will tell you, it is better to remember Tatane by the way he lived his life rather than how he lost it. At the Tatane household — two modest brick buildings on a medium-size township stand — a scene of mourning of national importance unfolded on Tuesday as the family prepared for Saturday’s funeral.

Visit overshadowed by Cele

Outside the two-room building where Tatane lived with his wife and youngest son, Molefi, Archbishop Thabo Makhoba, accompanied by an entourage of South African Council of Churches clergymen, addressed the few present, expressed his condolences and encouraged the public to vote in the coming municipal elections.

If the men of the cloth were hoping for a press conference their visit was overshadowed by the media circus caused earlier by the arrival of police commissioner Bheki Cele.

Between the homestead’s buildings men minded a fire where two sheep were being cooked. Family members hurried about, serving an ever-present throng of mourners.

Molefi Nonyane, who can be seen holding the collapsed Tatane in some clips of the now infamous April 13 incident, said he met the deceased man in 2008 when he joined the Congress of the People.

“Tatane was already a member. He was very committed and his input in meetings was always vital, but he would never take up a position in the party. He believed in leading from within,” Nonyane said.

Although Nonyane rejoined the ANC some months later the pair remained close because they had much in common. “We were part of the lost generation,” said Nonyane, who was seated on the back of an open bakkie in the yard.

“We slipped through the fingers of academia, dabbled in business and did whatever to survive. As such we were like voices from behind the mountain,” he said. Ficksburg’s Imperani mountain loomed over the gathering.

Tatane’s self-funded community newspaper, Your Voice, was “a hit” in the township because it covered everything from street fashion to service delivery issues, Nonyane said. But the paper collapsed after Tatane ran out of money to sustain it.

“Wherever we were, we made a lot of impact,” Nonyane said. “Nobody really understood the vastness of his potential. He was the type of person that if you lost him in your group the group would crumble.”

Perhaps Nonyane is correct — the burning of two municipal buildings, including the library where Tatane conducted maths and science classes for the community, could signal a dip in the underdeveloped Meqheleng’s morale.

‘Ungovernable town’

On Facebook, a Ficksburg organiser calls for the town to be “rendered ungovernable”, suggesting that more upheavals could follow.

By several accounts the Meqheleng Concerned Citizens (MCC) group, formed after a march to the local municipal headquarters last month, is a volunteer-based group with no party affiliations.

The main gripe in the township is that some parts have been without water for three years. A construction failure in zone eight, a new development, has meant that sewage regularly spills out into the streets.

Nonyane said that at meetings of the MCC the teacher in Tatane would often come to the fore and he would ask the speaker leading questions to make sure no one got lost in a maze of political jargon.

A dropout from both the University of Cape Town, where he pursued media studies, and Wits (psychology), Tatane had no formal training as a teacher. He launched a multifaceted project, the I Can Learn Academy, which showed his jack-of-all-trades flair. Besides extramural classes it offered cleaning services, a car wash and a catering operation. Malehlohonolo Tatane said he was always pursuing community-based business opportunities.

Although many people would remember him as a fighter, she would remember him as a “chocolate and flowers guy” — and a doting dad who loved all the neighbourhood children, especially his own.

He died before his four-year-old son could pronounce “Petros” — his nickname from his courting days. Molefi voiced this as “Os”. As you descend from muddy Meqheleng to Fickburg’s sandstone CBD you can still sense the shock caused by Tatane’s death.

People of all races appear to be united in their dissatisfaction over service delivery. The roads are in a perpetual state of disrepair, they say, and the water supply has been unreliable.

The glass door to the municipal building has been damaged by rocks allegedly thrown during the protests that took Tatane’s life. If nothing else, that damage is a reminder that the MCC’s mandate is now written in blood.

Humble Cele comes cap in hand and apologises

Far from the blustering MC of the Deadly Force roadshow, the police commissioner who visited the late Andries Tatane’s home on Tuesday appeared sunken like a hunchback, with his cap between his knees.

As soon as Bheki Cele walked into the house where Tatane lived journalists jostled for space in the cramped bedroom where Tatane’s mother-in-law, Maria Mohlaping, his sister, Seipati Tatane, his aunt, Motshidisi Baajties, and uncle, Boy Tatane, were seated.

Tatane’s widow, Malehlohonolo, joined them later after returning from Bethlehem, where her husband’s body had been taken for a postmortem. Accompanied by Deputy Police Minister Makhotso Sotyu, who eased the language barrier, Cele admitted to being apprehensive about coming because he didn’t know how the family would receive him.

He apologised for his delay in commenting on Tatane’s death and said that he had been out of the country on the day of the incident. He had returned late last Friday, when he had issued a statement.

Cele offered his condolences and apologised for the Tatane’s death, describing the incident as “ugly, bad and painful”. He said he was pleased the Independent Complaints Directorate investigation had been speedy and was confident that the law would take its course.

He hoped Tatane’s death would be the last at the hands of his force — but to achieve that communities and the police had to build healthy relationships because it was tension that created volatile situations, he said.

The public eating of humble pie seemed to work. Tatane’s cousin said the family “bore no grudges against the police and they should not be afraid to carry out their duties as policemen”. Malehlohonolo Tatane said she felt the apology was “sincere”, although she later admitted that she would never trust a police officer again. Her older sister, Pinkie Mohlaping, a police officer in Ladybrand, said that being in the SAPS at this time was rather embarrassing.

As Cele and his entourage were about to leave, he was cornered by a group of journalists. He denied ever making a “shoot to kill” comment and challenged journalists to produce the clip that recorded him saying that.

Asked to comment on the state of police training in the country he said there were about 192 000 police officers, making it a large family where “some kids are bound to step out of line”. Efforts to improve training were continuing, he said.

M&G: Developer-driven housing leaves city’s poorest in the cold

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-04-11-developerdriven-housing-leaves-citys-poorest-in-the-cold/

Developer-driven housing leaves city’s poorest in the cold
KWANELE SOSIBO – Apr 11 2011 11:27

Perched on the western bleachers of the Orange Cruyff Court at the BG Alexander housing complex it’s hard not to buy into Madulammoho Housing Association’s idyllic vision of Hillbrow.

Just south of the Astro Turf pitch, donated by the Dutch football team, the building’s imposing facebrick Block A obscures the downtown skyline. Across the fence, on the corner of Claim and Smit streets, is Europa House, a converted former den of sin and the company’s flagship project, which comes complete with demure sea-green balconies capped with requisite satellite dishes. A little further up the street is the austere Elkero House, a refurbished former old-age home that lounges languidly in the Friday sun.

BG Alexander is a joint venture between Madulammoho and the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Joshco), two of the major players in the city’s social housing landscape. Madulammoho has seven projects in the city and another two being developed in Fleurhof and Soweto.

Joshco, meanwhile, has a mandate from the City of Johannesburg to eradicate the housing backlog. It attempts to do this by filling the shoes of a developer, securing land and funding (either through grants or low-interest loans) and appointing contractors to build. The company also refurbishes existing properties and manages some of these on behalf of the city.

But BG Alexander is the joint venture’s jewel, a former nursing college which takes up an entire city block and includes functional communal housing units, and one and two-bedroom apartments as well as emergency housing beds.

It is made up of three residential blocks, separated by courtyards. One courtyard doubles as a parking lot, while the other is flanked by a church, recreational facilities and a kitchen. There is also a lecture hall and a crèche.

On this bright, warm afternoon, we idle around the courtyard to the sounds of children playing and workers doing routine maintenance while we wait for our chaperone, a stoic karate sensei, Thembalabo “Kiro” Febana, to appear.

Kiro, lanky with baby finger-length dreadlocks, conducts regular karate classes in one of the halls and manages the property as well. He lives in a penthouse on one of the blocks.

MES

In one hall a portly white man delivers a life skills lecture to a group of about 100 unemployed men and women. Some minutes later, they queue up for chicken stew and pap before filing back out into the streets.

Madulammoho’s approach to community activism is a by-product of the company’s genesis from a church-based, non-profit organisation called the Metropolitan Evangelical Services (MES).

In 1989 MES developed volunteer-driven training and support programmes targeted at homeless youth in the inner city.

By the late Nineties its “prevention, intervention and exit” strategy was assisting the unemployed and destitute with training and finding entry-level jobs. To help its trainees retain their employment, the organisation explored residential care based on a transitional housing model.

Initially MES found it hard to secure government funding, as its model was deemed similar to apartheid-style hostels. MES found the social housing model the government employed — which involved social housing institutions buying and refurbishing buildings using loan finance — to be out of the reach of the poor, necessitating, it believed, one based on affordability as the starting point.

From that premise the group’s housing ladder was conceived; a progressive system that would offer would-be clients a variety of options: shelters, transitional housing, communal housing and social housing. In many of its current projects a number of options are available all in one building, as is the case at BG Alexander and Europa.

Transitional housing involves shared rooms, bathrooms and facilities and a lease agreement in which the individual rents a bed and locker, while communal housing offers a room for a maximum of two adults and two children. Its social housing facilities consist of self-contained units but require private-sector involvement in their management and funding.

The remaining 5% of the company’s housing stock is market-related rental units, which are spread through out its portfolio, alongside the tiered options that aim to encompass every income level.

At the company’s modest offices on Kaptjein Street, Madulammoho chief executive Renier Erasmus explained the association’s economic model.

SHRA

The company, which is registered with the Social Housing Registration Authority (SHRA), a national regulatory body, gets a once-off capital grant for each project, with which it can either purchase a building, build a new building or renovate an existing one. That once-off grant allows Madulammoho to lower the loan finance required; all the operational costs are met through the rentals received.

“Our main aim is to see how far we can lower the rental accommodation in the city,” Erasmus said.

He was at pains to emphasise that it was impossible to stay with Madulammoho if you were not going to pay your rent, but the company does have an “anti-eviction policy” which tries to stave off that eventuality until all other avenues have been exhausted. Residents are encouraged to come forward if they anticipate financial problems that will affect their monthly payments.

And since the company offers a range of options, he said, proactive tenants can always negotiate the option most suitable to their current financial situation.
While the system is not without its casualties, there are those, like Thabang Lesolle, who have used it to maximum benefit.

Hailing from Mafikeng in the North West, Lesolle came to Johannesburg about 11 years ago and began sharing a room with four other men in Mayfair. After finding a job as a cleaner at Montecasino, he would travel by foot from the Bree Street taxi rank to Mayfair. But that routine soon became tiresome.

“In terms of public transport, Hillbrow was a must,” he says. Lesolle relocated there, sharing accommodation with various people until he found himself living in a Hillbrow brothel.

“In 2004 I ended up at Royal Park on the sixth floor, paying R1 400 for my room,” he says. “This time my friends got me evicted by always getting in for free and pretending they were there to see me.”

Over the next five years Lesolle moved several more times before ending up at Cornelius House, the Madulammoho building in Marshaltown, where he was staying in a communal facility and paying R350 a month.

“The room could fit only a bed and a fridge,” he says. “My TV had to sit on top of the fridge.”

Three months later Lesolle, who was by then a cashier at a sports betting facility, moved to Europa House, where he shelled out R950 a month.

“I had a good first impression, so I told myself that was where I would stay for a while.”

After losing his job he consulted Madulammoho and moved yet again, this time to a smaller unit in Europa where he was able to pay a year’s rent in advance, before finally settling in BG Alexander’s Block C when his circumstances improved.

Now, with even more financial freedom as a result of working at a betting facility close by, Lesolle is living in a studio apartment in the complex, happily forking out his R1 600 in rent.

‘Stuck in Hillbrow’

When I ask Lesolle what his current salary is, he offers me a sly smile and changes the subject. I get the sense he is saving huge amounts by choosing to stay in this building.

‘For now, it looks like I am stuck in Hillbrow,” he says contentedly, while a World Cup cricket game plays on his flat screen TV. “Maybe when I buy a car I can move out of here.”

Lesolle said Hillbrow has come a long way since 2004, when muggings were commonplace. As somebody who works at night he feels much safer these days, thanks in large part to visible patrols by the infamous Bad Boys Security company, whose tough guy image sends chills down many a petty thug’s spine.

His aspirations to upward mobility are shared by quite a few of his neighbours, whom Kiro allowed us to meet on another visit.

Mike Nthini (32), an IT consultant, and Ntombi Phiri (27), a presenter for Radio 2000, rent a two-bedroom apartment for R1 700 a month not far from Lesolle’s flat. It is much cheaper than their previous place in Florida, they say, which they leased for R3 800 a month.

Their walls, like all others in the building, are framed with aluminium skirting, but theirs have snatches of modest artwork hanging them. The stove of choice is a portable two-plate that sits above a microwave, giving the flat a distinctly temporary quality, as though they could pack up and go at any minute.

Hillbrow represents a necessary downscaling for the couple while they save to buy a house in the northern suburbs, a dream they have given themselves two years to achieve.

“More than anything, what we had doubts about was the location: Hillbrow, Hillbrow Hillbrow,” shouts Phiri theatrically.

She confesses that she limits her walks around the neighbourhood to a minimum. Her Blackberry was stolen as she made her way from the taxi rank some time ago, but she seems to be over that. She is more taken by Madulammoho’s social engineering.

“They don’t just accommodate you, they assist you,” she says, beaming. Pointing in different directions, she says: “There is a pastor here if you need him for anything. There is the Windybrow Theatre here and all the residents can go in for free. There is a gym that the ladies have formed for R50 a month.”

Many of Madulammoho’s buildings are based on an inclusionary housing model. The company claims it caters for a wide-ranging income bracket — everyone from daily income earners to people earning about R7 500 a month, some of who may have minimal job security.

If a tenant loses a job and doesn’t want to move further down the ladder, he or she can be evicted.

France Kekana, a security guard who has been a resident of BG Alexander since 2008, says he has witnessed a huge spike in evictions in the past two years. About 40 residents were shown the door in 2009 and 2010 because they abused the “anti-eviction policy” by defaulting for consecutive months.

In Kekana’s view an element of entitlement had crept in among certain individuals. “There were people that were saying that this was a ‘government-owned’ building, therefore they should be paying a reduced amount,” he says.

Rent boycott

I managed to slip this question in while Kiro, our omnipresent guide, had dashed down the passage on a quick errand. In his presence all our interviews had been nothing more than stilted pleasantries.

Madulammoho and Joshco confirmed that about 40 residents had been removed from a group of buildings Joshco was developing in Bertrams.

“We agreed [to accommodate them] on the basis that they must pay rent. The tenants were good rent payers for the first year,” said Erasmus. “When they understood the city was not moving them back, they staged a rent boycott. After six months of unsuccessfully trying to secure rent from them, we had no choice but to go to court and get eviction orders.”

A Joshco employee, Nadima Reynolds, claimed the residents were never given the impression that they would be brought back to redeveloped buildings. “These residents weren’t told that they would be moved back, but because that is what they wanted, they went on a rent boycott.”

The standoff throws up the all-important questions of affordability and the options available to people who have to vacate buildings that have been earmarked for development.

Joshco, for example, is in a stalemate with the inhabitants of another such building, Vannin Court in Hillbrow. The company maintains that it offered the tenants alternative housing, but the tenants refused, saying the housing was out of their price range and too far away from where they earn their living. But recent court precedents dictate that alternative accommodation in these circumstances has to at least take into account the tenants’ financial situation, something that could derail Joshco’s development ambitions.

According to Stats SA’s 2005-2006 Income and Expenditure Survey, the social housing target market (which is supposed to cater for people earning between R1 500 and R7 500 a month and for whom some sort of subsidy is provided by the government) makes up a whopping 51% of all rental households in South Africa.

Of those who rent, 55% earn less than R3 500 a month, more than 27% of those households earn less than R1 500 a month and 14% earn less than R850 a month.

While the country’s social housing policy was set up to tackle those earning at least R1 500 a month, it also aims for mixed-income projects and requires participants to demonstrate a regular income that is able to sustain a monthly rental and the payment of a deposit which is equal to three months rental.

Restructuring

With the country’s current unemployment rate, this model can, at best, be seen as a form of restructuring as opposed to a mass delivery tool. The significant spike in demand in the rental market in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane has been strongest in the lower-income segments.

So, when Erasmus asserts that he is often in direct competition with the slumlords, he is not embellishing the facts. As an NGO, Madulammoho’s model is more accommodating of the lower-income bracket but with about 950 rental units its stock is still very limited.

According to the NGO Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa’s A Resource Guide to Housing in South Africa 1994 – 2010, a fundamental constraint to the ability of social housing institutions to assist poor individuals and households in accessing affordable and well-located rental housing is that they have tended to look upmarket, hiking up the eligibility cut-off point to break even or make a profit.

At the same time, very little has been done to increase the range of options available to those in the lower bands of the subsidy range.

“Social housing largely benefits middle-income earners,” said Kate Tissington, a researcher at the organisation. “The rationale behind it is that to prevent ‘downward raiding’ [the flocking of people to units allocated for low-income earners] you have to have higher-income facilities available.

“As a model, it is aware that it is not catering to the poor. The city itself does not want to manage housing. It has left it to the private sector, which provides rental options which often exploit the poor. People are desperate and there are very limited alternatives available to them. RDP housing is not the solution, because it cannot be provided at high or medium density, many poor people do not qualify for it and do not, in any case, want to own a house.

“The only real solution for the poor is a public rental housing programme, owned and managed by the city and funded, if necessary, by national government. It cannot be left to the private sector. There is simply no profit in selling housing to people struggling to feed and clothe themselves.”

With recent judgments against the city forcing it to provide alternative accommodation when it seeks to evict people and the conditions in these temporary facilities starting to deteriorate, whatever solution is conceived will have to be a creative one — and one that is careful not to replicate the apartheid city.