Ms Nicolette Botha-Guthrie, Overstrand Municipality Executive Mayor;
Adv Werner Zybrands, Overstrand Municipality Municipal Manager;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen
It’s my pleasure to be with you this morning in Kleinmond. I’m extremely pleased to be here to share this special day with you. I’d like to congratulate all the new home owners here today. This was a project for the people helped by the best science available in South Africa.
This project has attracted interest from near and far, because these houses are built on a new model, with durable materials and they conserve energy.
All these houses are energy efficient. They have solar-heated water geysers. They have solar heating for lighting. They will still draw on Eskom for energy, but for less energy than their less fortunate neighbours.
I’ve been attending the UN climate change conference (COP17) concluded yesterday in Durban. It wasn’t only a negotiating conference, but also a place where every kind of sustainable technology, product or process was exhibited.
I have to tell you that of all the exhibitions I visited and all the South African inventions and innovations that I saw, I did not come across anything as simple and as useful as these sustainable houses that you have built in Kleinmond.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s (CSIR) principal built-environment researcher, Llewellyn van Wyk, calls these houses the “Citi Golf” of subsidy houses. And he’s right, because Kleinmond has got the basics right.
The CSIR has and will learn from what you have done. They will learn what works best for you in regard to light, heat, water. And then they will help you and your friends and your neighbours build the next-generation model house – the Golf or perhaps the sports Golf.
Cheap does not mean nasty. Cheap does not only mean affordable. It also means using better materials that cost less and are sustainable.
This is the beauty of social innovation. Social innovation focuses on what the majority of our people need – houses, schools and clinics. Houses are for everyone, not just those who can afford them. Schools are for everyone, not just those who can afford school fees. And clinics are for everyone so that we can eradicate communicable and non-communicable diseases.
Despite all the building we have undertaken in the past decade, there is still a housing backlog of more than two million units in South Africa. And you can see that the house building sector with such a backlog has an important role to play in creating employment and manufacturing opportunities as well.
I know that people say green building is for the rich. People say green buildings are for the elite, the corporates and their head offices, and shopping malls in Hermanus. It’s not so, and it cannot be right. For the green building movement to have credibility, it has to be able to build affordable houses for the majority of our citizens.
And this is what the people of Kleinmond have shown through learning from the CSIR. Green building works for all. Kleinmond and its local officials have shown South Africa the way forward. Kleinmond and its local officials have used science to make your lives better.
Kleinmond and its local officials have worked together with the best science available in South Africa to provide you with a place to live and a place to call your own. In providing you with a modern home, this project has shown you, the community of Kleinmond, how technology can transform your lives.
The challenge to you now is to continue the transformation. Ask yourself what you, with the help of the technology in your new house, can do to secure a better environment. Save electricity by using only energy saving bulbs. Turn your taps off and continue to collect rain water.
In conclusion, this joint project – national and local, CSIR and the people of Kleinmond - has proved that technologies developed through the best science and social innovation can change lives.
Thank you.
Remarks by the Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor MP, at the Kleinmond Housing Project hand over
