S Sisulu: Slum Dwellers Conference

19 May 2006

Chairperson
Premier Rassool,
Ministers of Housing from Malawi and Ghana,
Western Cape Housing MEC, Richard Dyanti, our host
Department of Housing, Director-General – the sub host.
President of Slum Dwellers International
President of the Federation of the Urban Poor
Representatives of other different community based organisations present
here
Comrades
Invited guests
Ladies and gentlemen:

I accepted the honour to open this Conference with a great deal of humility.
Humility because, I represents those who are seen to have plenty, have to stand
here in front of you who represents the poorest of the poor and pretend that I
some words of wisdom to impart to you. But I stand here with pride, and I am
proud too, because you have chosen my government as a partner in a cause that
goes right to the heart of what we are and what we fought for all those years.
For me this can only mean an endorsement of your confidence in us, that with
us, through us your ideals can be achieved.
I welcome your confidence in us for we in turn will use it to spur ourselves on
to ensure that our common goals are realised. It is an honour for us to be
counted on as one of the champions of the poorest of the poor.

All the great revolutions of modern times have, apart from the influences of
technological advances and progress, been the result often of the kind of
progressive action that had found its source from the grassroots. Such has been
the influence and the power of the grassroots in the present time that none who
held political power could on their own define and occupy the political space
that is critical to issues of sustainable development. This has been
demonstrated over and over.

We are all one human force, inexorably drawn to the ideal that until all are
free, free from the shackles of poverty, none of us is free, because by some
strange reason we are bound to this universe together, there is some logic in
this contradiction. If we move forward, our progress, our collective pace will
be determined by the slowest. The great irony of our time! The future of our
civilisations rests on how we determine our way forward. We shall not be
identified as the civilisation of great poverty, that cannot defines us, we who
are proud inventors of everything that has culminated into our launching into
space to seek answers about what lies beyond. Perhaps, this is a justifiable
deflection as we remain unable to solve problems that lie at our feet.
Intellectually, one of the best periods of recorded history but morally very
wanting. The consciousness of the rich closed to the poverty that surrounds
them.

In convening this Conference, the Slum Dwellers International and the
Federation of the Urban Poor, give us reason to have greater confidence that
the common struggle we share against homelessness will indeed achieve its
greater results during our own lifetime. No moment in the history of human
society has landed itself to this possibility other than ours.

I have just retuned from a trip to India, a most valuable learning
experience it was. I did not get to see the Taj Mahal but what I experienced
was more valuable than the Taj. I went out to see the pavement dwellers of
Mumbai living in the most shocking conditions on the edge of society, having
lived that way for the better part of their lives. But a people with incredible
spirit full of determination, fortitude and hope. An entrepreneurial people who
taught me the value of saving and the spirit that drives them to persevere. A
people determined that they will do their bit to restore their dignity and one
day save enough to buy a house. An incredible experience, for I found no anger
there and no despair.

I yearn for that spirit here. A spirit that says this is our government how
can we help it in this huge challenge to provide housing? What can I do sitting
in a shack house to help to ensure that I too have a house? We were once a
proud people that moved heaven and earth and did do the impossible. The present
challenge is within our power to resolve. And so, as I stand here, I am full of
hope that out of this conference, we as a people, can learn and strengthen the
hand of our own organization to build this spirit.

We are a people with a proud history, proud of what we can do for ourselves.
This can be seen in organisations such as the Federation of Urban Poor and the
Homeless People’s Federation. But the general picture is one where we
experience this proud heritage dissipating.

Now we have our own government, the government elected by the poor, the
disadvantaged. And we have come to believe that the government will
provide.

I have been attracted by the founding ethos of Shack Dwellers International,
that no matter how disadvantaged, we can still do it ourselves, that in fact it
is nobler if we do it ourselves. Help me plant this into the heart of every
disadvantaged South African. Help me inspire them to stand up, understand that
what drew me to the Homeless Peoples Federation and Shack Dwellers
International is that they spoke my kind of language. If only it would be a
common language for all.

In India, I also had a tour of projects that had been undertaken by slum
dwellers, projects that demonstrated resourcefulness, originality and
innovation. They vindicated the belief I had always had that if government was
to accelerate the delivery of housing then the complete involvement of the
beneficiary communities needed to receive full support.

This is the experience that yet again I was exposed to when I visited
Thailand last year. I was exposed to a unique programme that forms partnerships
between communities, government, and other stakeholders in identifying and
developing suitable land foe housing. This was a partnership to ensure that
communities were located in the most opportune locations where their actual
needs could be addressed in a sustainable manner.

I would therefore like to use this opportunity to announce that the
Department will facilitate the provision of 5 000 housing subsidies to FEDUP
through the following provinces, the Free State, North West, Limpopo and
KwaZulu-Natal. The Western Cape is providing an additional one thousand
subsidies. This translates to a sum of one hundred and eighty five million
rands.

This conference, occurring as it does, a month before the World Urban Forum,
has the possibility to guide the agenda of that conference, and I would like to
think we will take full advantage of that space.

At the Special Ministerial Conference of the African Ministerial Conference
on Housing and Urban Development (AMCHUD), that we held a month ago in Nairobi,
resolutions had been passed to affect these outcomes of the World Summit by
focusing governments on the resourcefulness of the poor.

Having ourselves placed the issue of slum prevention and slum upgrading at
the top of the international agenda, we resolved not only to prevent new slum
formations but to also look into the existing policies, legal, institutional
and regulatory frameworks that hinder our abilities to deal with slum formation
in ways that affirmed and strengthened our relationship with the poor. We
therefore resolved to review the frameworks that exist to enable an environment
where the full capacities of community organisations and non-governmental
organisations were utilised. In practice, amongst other things, this will mean
the promotion of community-led development processes in slum prevention and
slum upgrading and the identification of ways to assist initiatives relating to
savings.

I am gratified that the relation we have cultivated with yourselves has
enabled us to implement some of these resolutions already. The Homeless
People’s Federation that we had interactions with in 2004, enabled us to make
this start.

The Conference cements the relationship by now enabling us to act together
at the international level. It is my hope that such collaboration will help
encourage a fundamental rethinking of issues connected with sustainable
development and the achievement, specifically, of the Millennium Development
Goals. It is a great contradiction of our times, in my view, that whilst on the
one hand we correctly extol the virtues of economic progress and political
stability, on the other hand, we remain unable to expend and invest sufficient
resources to achieve those outcomes.

We are thus committed to learn through practical experience and to enhance
our programmes to ensure that community needs are achieved. And I thus welcome
the proposed structured co-operation arrangement that will be established
during the Conference for the implementation of projects linked to policy and
strategy enhancement.
The Conference is a unique opportunity for all of us to learn how partnerships
with civil society are formed and should operate.

I would like to congratulate all of you for the achievements that both
individually and collectively you have made in advancing the cause of slum
dwellers.

Finally, Jockim, I do not know what to say to you. You remind me so much of
my own father. You are beautiful in every single way!

I thank you most sincerely.

Issued by: Department of Housing
19 May 2006