Why has government retreated from building more RDP homes?
The destruction of 300 shacks by fire in Cape Town this past weekend, should be a reminder to us about the historical huge housing backlog inherited from apartheid. Nowhere else was this more pronounced than in the Cape metropolitan area.
Many of us remember all too well the brutal vigilante fights of the Reddoeke and Witdoeke at the KTC Squatter Camp in the 80’s in Cape Town. We were too young to understand the real issues then. But it was all over the print and digital media those days. It was clear that it had to do with land and housing, or more precisely, spaces to build shacks.
The violence and bloodletting during those vigilante wars was put squarely on the National Party government’s door. Sometime in the mid 70’s, that apartheid government had taken a decision to stop building houses, hostels or any form of housing for Black people, as a form of influx control.
This was designed to curb migration of Black people to the area. The previous government was obsessed with social engineering along racial lines, and this logic informed their desire to keep the area a predominantly white and “coloured” area.
This policy is today responsible for the sprawling shacks, squalor, poverty and all manner of social strife often associated with areas like Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Nyanga, Langa and other parts of the Cape Flats.
The RDP Housing programme was aimed at reversing these unhabitable human living conditions, not only in the Cape, but at places like Alexandra, Mshenguville in Soweto, Cato Manor in Durban, and throughout many other townships in the country.
A great start was made with building of houses. Although often met with criticism for the quality of structures, corruption in the tender and allocation system. There was no denying that there was great progress registered in some areas, to bring relief in housing pressures.
We saw a decline in backyard dwellers, and today as we speak, the eyesore and crime haven that was Mshenguville is no more. Most of the residents are decently accomodated at places like Lawley, Lehae and Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg. Where once it was an informal settlement, is now a beautiful green park space for recreation by the community in Mofolo.
This is one of the remarkable housing developmnt interventions that the RDP had achieved. It still remains a great example of how change is possible, when a government is steadfast and focussed in resolving a social or community problem.
This experience came to mind, when again, our national television news were replete with the devastation wrought upon the residents of the informal settlement in Cape Town. It reminded us in a rude and painful manner, about the huge backlog that still remains in addressing housing in SA.
This begs the question why government has abandoned the RDP Housing Programme? Government being government, they may not admit that this is so. But is is very clear for all to see that RDP housing construction and delivery has stalled. We now only see token projects, closer to election times, when hand-over ceremonies will hog the news headlines.
To be sure, the RDP was the only programme post-1994 that could potentially, pass as a direct definite democracy dividend for the Black working class and the poor. It is a moot point that the minority Black middle classes were the greatest beneficiaries of BEE, Employment Equity and Cadre Deployment.
Through the RDP Housing Programme, the problem of unregulated settlement and distribution of population densities was being steadily managed. Albeit overwhelming due to the huge historical backlog, remarkable progress was noticeable. We saw it in parts of Cape Town when we drove through the N2. So too on the N1 and N12 in Johannesburg.
Sadly, this empowering and social upliftment programme seems to have stalled. And with it, housing strife and problems such as fires, violent crime and rape seem to be on the uptick.
The ANC government, like the National Party government in the 70’s, through their abandonment of housing for the poor majority, will exarcebate social and human settlement problems.
The floods in KZN this past week, the fires that raised 300 shacks in Cape Town around the same period, should be a grave warning about the ill-advised decision by government to cancel the RDP Housing Programme.
Adv Ngcukaitobi, misses the basic point that Section 25 handicaps the State from achieving the constitutional ends of correcting historical injustice on land by insisting on “just and equitable” compensation.
It is also a falsity in his article to propound the myth that Apartheid only expropriated for public purpose i.e. that it did not expropriate in the interest of third parties as we are seeking the current government to do.
Apartheid did expropriate land from Blacks in the “public interest”, however that public interest was narrowly and nebulously defined to mean “white interest”.
Land was expropriated from Blacks in places like Sophiatown to hand it over to whites. That’s why we had Triomf, in place of Sophiatown. Present day West Gate was where the old native township Wes was before its inhabitants were moved to Dobsonville. Malay Camp in Kimberley was a Black Settlement, and that’s where the City’s Municipal Offices today stand.
There was never any compensation paid to Blacks for these unjust expropriations.
Many of the present farms and mines, owned by big mining and industrial firms like Hullets, Sappi, De Beers, Oppenheimer family farms are lands that belonged to Black communities. Most of these farms were acquired through violence and handover by colonial and apartheid governments.
The democratic state must not be forced to pay huge and unreasonable compensation sums in order to correct the historical injustice, to return these lands and property to their rightful owners. Many of the present owners did not spent money for their acquisition in the first place.
These were just grants from the previous racist administrations . In many instances they cannot even produce title deeds to prove their ownership of these farms.
Ngcukaitobi, is remiss in his constant clamouring that Section 25 as it stands makes provision for the state to acquire land without the built in constraints inherent in the same section.
His training in legal formalism is a great blind spot preventing him to see the imperative of political solutions to the grave historical injustice of land inequity.
‘If you build a shack in your backyard you don’t call it an informal house. Do you? Why do we say people living in shacks live in ‘informal settlements’?
Why don’t we just say ‘people living in shacks’?
It would be a giveaway, wouldn’t it?
How our language betrays our racial prejudices, conditioning and class interests!
‘The poor. Informal settlements. These people’.
Ever heard them refer to themselves like that?
‘These People’ call themselves ‘Abantu’, ‘Batho’, ‘People’! What’s wrong with that? Does it mean you are not? Or they are not? We can all die from a simple virus, where’s the difference? We need to change – and wash our hands also through our language and thinking’!
Calling Shack(s) an informal settlement is a public relation exercise or propaganda to make the shack dwellers look good and not question their miserable state of living in inhuman habitats. Bra B, wrote
Paris Mashile, in a comment to my post in one of our groups where I stated:
‘If you build a shack in your backyard you don’t call it an informal house. Do you? Why do we say people living in shacks live in ‘informal settlements’?
Why don’t we just say ‘people living in shacks’?
It would be a giveaway, wouldn’t it?
How our language betrays our racial prejudices, conditioning and class interests!
‘The poor. Informal settlements. These people’.
Ever heard them refer to themselves like that?
‘These People’ call themselves ‘Abantu’, ‘Batho’, ‘People’! What’s wrong with that? Does it mean you are not? Or they are not? We can all die from a simple virus, where’s the difference? We need to change – and wash our hands also through our language and thinking!