‘Culture of compliance’ needed to stop shack building

http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=12687,1,22
Citizen
24/1/06

‘Culture of compliance’ needed to stop shack building
PARLIAMENT – A “culture of compliance” was needed to stop homeless people erecting shacks, Parliament’s finance select committee heard on Monday.
“What is happening now is that anybody just builds anything, anywhere,” Western Cape housing MEC Richard Dyantyi said. “We need to (instill) a culture of compliance.”
Dyantyi told the committee that urbanisation and the eviction of labourers by struggling farmers was contributing to the province’s shack dwelling problem and adding to the low-cost housing backlog.
The problem of fires and floods in shack areas presented the government with a daunting challenge.
“We have people living in disaster areas waiting to happen,” Dyantyi said.
The province was engaged in efforts to relocate people living in “stressful areas” to vacant land, but this involved thousands of people and was not an easy task, he told the committee.
“One of our challenges is that where we are able to clear a space and relocate people, the next day the same space is reoccupied.”
Limpopo housing MEC Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said a booming mining industry was contributing to a mushrooming of shacks in some areas in her province.
This was aggravated by an agreement between mining houses and the National Union of Mineworkers in terms of which labourers received monthly living-out allowances rather than hostel accommodation.
The province was engaged in a project, in co-operation with mining houses, to build houses funded by pooling labourers’ allowances and the government’s housing grant.
A thousand such units, larger than ordinary RDP houses, should be completed this financial year, Nkoana-Mashabane told the committee.
She said municipalities needed to pass bylaws to make it illegal to put up shacks anywhere.
Sapa
/mlr/clh/

One thought on “‘Culture of compliance’ needed to stop shack building”

  1. abahlali

    This is hilarious, in a kinda sick way. In December last year, the head
    of Human Settlements in the City, Seth Maqetuka, admitted that the City
    was only planning to build 8000 houses per year, whereas his own figure
    (at the time) was that the backlog is growing by 18 000 houses needed
    every year. In a meeting in January this year, Maqetuka’s assistent,
    Michael Paardewachter, quoted a target of 21 000 houses which could be
    built using PHP schemes (i.e. people’s savings, in part) and other
    means. This would still then only be reducing the 260 000 backlog at the
    rate of 3 000 houses per year. I.e. it would take 75 years to eliminate
    the backlog.

    Meanwhile, it is pretty clear that councillors from all parties try to
    ‘manage’ land occupations so as to please their various constituencies.
    If the land occupied is within a township, the politicians try and claim
    the occupiers as their future voters, using all sorts of tricks and
    promises. But if the land occupied is too visible (e.g. last weekend’s
    attempted land occupation opposite Marina da Gama), all hell breaks
    loose as City Police, SAPS and Law Enforcement decend rapidly to smash
    shacks.

    So not even the politicians believe in this “council of compliance”
    shit. Its all a big game of nods and winks.

    Peter

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