Mercury: Shack settlements still serve the poor

The original title for this article was ‘Give Up on Slum Eradication, For Now’.

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5222714

Shack settlements still serve the poor
While slum eradication is the ideal, promoting overzealous eviction programmes puts vulnerable people in a worse position than before

October 29, 2009 Edition 1

Richard Ballard

IN APRIL, 2006, the then KwaZulu-Natal MEC for housing and local government, Michael Mabuyakhulu, tabled the Slums Act. The provincial legislation aimed to eradicate shack settlements in KZN by 2010.

In Section 16, the MEC is empowered to compel landowners to evict unlawful occupiers. This approach was adopted by other provinces.

The Slums Act was challenged by a social movement of shack dwellers, Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Earlier this month, the Constitutional Court agreed with Abahlali that Section 16 was unconstitutional.

Since this finding guts the act, the provincial government now has to go back to the drawing board.

It is a good time to reflect on the very idea of “slum eradication”, or what Housing Minister Tokyo Sexwale calls “slum elimination”.

The advent of democracy promised housing for all. This laudable objective was intended to correct the gross injustices of the past in which most people were excluded from the right to a normal life in South Africa’s cities.

We now have one of the most advanced house building programmes in the world.

A vast bureaucracy and construction sector is minting a great number of low-cost houses. Many lives have been greatly improved as a result of this process and many hopes remain pinned to it.

Policymakers assume that, by building enough houses, the state can work through the backlog of people living in shack settlements.

The goal is to do this by 2014, but what has become apparent is that, no matter how fast we build houses, the backlog is not reducing.

In 2004, 23 percent of households in South Africa’s nine largest municipalities did not have access to formal shelter. The most serious study to date, published this year, estimates that, even if the housing budget is doubled, we would only overcome the backlog by 2030.

Many middle-class people think that shack settlements are some parallel universe, a notion parodied in the film District 9. They are often seen as dirty, revolting and alien to modern urban life.

Planners and policymakers throughout the ages, ranging from 19th-century Britain to post-independence developing countries, have sought to eradicate shacks as if they were wild fires that have to be extinguished or diseases to be cured.

Instead of seeing them as dysfunctional and threatening, we should acknowledge that shacks are the inevitable outcome of poor people’s attempts to survive in a highly unequal and exploitative society.

Shacks are not simply a housing sector problem. They cannot be targeted for eradication until we eradicate their causes: poverty, inequality, unemployment and labour exploitation.

And, while the objective of eradicating shacks is not bad in principle, it can be detrimental if these causes remain firmly in place.

For at least five reasons, the language and policies of slum eradication are potentially harmful. Firstly, many who are moved from shacks to low-cost houses find themselves worse off because their new houses are long distances away from their present livelihood opportunities. People surviving off R1 500 or so a month simply cannot absorb an increase in their transport costs.

Secondly, when evictions take place, many people living in shacks become homeless. Generally, it is only a shack owner who is given a low-cost house when settlements are evicted. Tenants who were living with the shack owner are not accommodated. Shacks might not be adequate, but they are better than sleeping in the bush.

Thirdly, local governments do not always follow the procedure set out in the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act, which requires the provision of a court order in advance of evictions. Without a court order, evicted people are not given proper opportunities to consider their legal options, as provided for under the Act.

Fourthly, as long as shacks are in limbo, awaiting eviction, the government holds back on service provision and residents hold back from investing in their own living environments.

So, while many people may have been living in shacks for a generation or more, they do not have good access to water, sanitation and electricity, and have little infrastructure for managing emergencies such as fire and crime.

Lastly, people evicted from shack settlements are increasingly being moved to transit camps rather than to new low-cost homes.

These tend to be corrugated-metal barrack-like structures now springing up around many cities, hardly an advance on conditions in shack settlements. Those moved to transit camps often have no idea what their final destination is going to be. Neither is there a time limit to their stay, and there is a danger that people will be left to languish in such places for many years.

We can surely all agree that a slum-free society and “housing for all” are great ideals.

However, the language of slum eradication might promote overzealous eviction programmes that leave vulnerable people worse off than they were before.

Shacks are certainly not great environments for our fellow citizens to live in. But while they wait for low-cost housing, there is much that can be done to more positively support the lives of shack dwellers.

We should take more seriously the policies in Latin America that provide comprehensive services to slums, even offering tenure to those who wish to remain and improve their own structures.

It is paramount in a democratic South Africa that people affected by development strategies should themselves have the primary say in their own futures.

The needs of the poor should not come second to the achievement of some abstract notion of what a developed city should look like.

# Richard Ballard is a senior lecturer in the School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal.