Housing Development Agency International Convention Centre, Durban
2 March 2009
Master of ceremonies
Members of the Provincial Executive Councils
Chairpersons of Parliamentary Committees
Members of Parliament
Honourable Mayors and Councillors
Esteemed Traditional Leaders
Members of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) National
Executive Committee
Director-General of Housing and other heads of administrations
Municipal Managers and other municipal officials
Members of the Governing Board and the Chief Executive Officer of the Housing
Development Agency
Distinguished partners in housing delivery
Friends, ladies and gentlemen
2009 is a very important year in the history of our people. It is first of
all a year of celebration. The month of April will be the 15th birthday of our
young republic. South Africans of all walks of life will celebrate fifteen
years of freedom, dignity, equality and democracy in their country.
The month of April will also mark a time when we will go to the polls, a
time for the nation to take stock of the progress made over the past five
years, to identify areas where we can improve our performance and for
individual citizens to express their democratic choice (to return us to
power).
This is happening at a time of dramatic change, as we navigate our way in
the midst of a global crisis that presents great challenges to our nation,
perhaps the greatest for our time. The global crisis is comprised of
interlinked economic, environmental and political crisis, which have a direct
impact on South Africa.
Through a combination of fiscal prudence on the part of government and the
relative discipline of our banking sector, we have avoided the worst financial
aspects of the crisis. But we are, however already feeling the economic impact
as the credit crunch spreads through the wider economy and reduces demand for
our exports, especially commodities, and effect the housing market during a
number of our new entrance into the market into complete despair. And we will
continue asking ourselves the nagging questions "are we in recession?" Our
Minister of Finance answers us, we are not, and that not all that quacks is a
duck. While our economy might be quacking they are not ducks yet.
We have a responsibility to confront the realities of our time and help find
solutions to the problems they represent. To do this, we will need to call on
all of our assets and skills human, organisational, financial, technological
and strategic. We believe that all of us working together is by far the best
placed to lead South Africa as we grapple with the problems and uncertainties
posed in this time of change. Our track record as a government together with
yourselves speaks for itself on many levels, but for now let us restrict
ourselves to what is pertinent tonight, access to housing.
It is worth repeating that for us, we boast a record breaking delivery of
2,8 million houses! But the basis of our achievements must be beyond numbers,
as a right enshrined in the Freedom Charter. It is worth repeating that we
boast that, together with the private sector, we have provided access to 3,1
million houses translating into housing more than 15 million people.
For all of us at housing, from members of the executive at both national and
provincial government, the officials and all the role players who stayed the
course with us, the event today is eventually the pinnacle of all we have set
ourselves to do. We will finally be judged on the capacity to sustain our
achievements, by our ability to create a basis for sustained growth and
delivery. Since November 2004, many would recall, we searched for a solution to
the capacity problems we faced in delivering greater numbers of housing units.
Against a background of clear signs of increasing demand our delivery record
was not promising.
Five years after the experience of those frustrations we are able today,
during our tenure of office, to launch the Housing Development Agency. I trust
that you share my exhilaration that we finally arrived at this. It gives me a
great deal of satisfaction to hand over, at this point to the new
administration. We have now overcome all our major obstacles. We have captured
the high point.
When we experienced the first fluttering of this frustration, we resolved to
look outside of ourselves and see how others in similar positions had dealt
with this problem. We visited Malaysia in September 2004 to learn about that
countries experience the efficacy of a well-thought out, resourced and state
driven mechanism for meeting delivery targets was made clear. And this was
being done without replacing or even diminishing the role of the private
sector.
As we learn from other examples, state driven agencies are indeed no
guarantee either of efficiency or fairer and speedier delivery. However, we
know too, that they have a huge impact in arresting the escalation of prices
through regulation but by also making available alternative means for access to
housing land. The escalation in the price of building materials is a matter we
constantly drew attention to as an impediment to our delivery. But of even
greater obstacle has been the issue of access to suitable land.
In the circumstances, the Housing Development Agency will not merely help
address the weaknesses we had identified in our housing delivery chain. More
fundamentally in the present, it will help us protect the gains we made since
2004 of delivering for the first time to the target of 250 000 units per annum;
for the first time, reversing apartheid spatial patterning, creating a very
real basis, leading to real transformation of our societies.
As we speak, the housing and human settlements problems facing South Africa
are very real, very vast, and extremely complex therefore requires bold and
imaginative solutions.
Great strides in housing delivery have been made in the past 15 years to
improve shelter and habitation needs of a third of our people. This standard is
worth celebrating as it is not comparable to any other country! As we celebrate
this achievement, we find ourselves and our delivery systems challenged by an
unprecedented growth of housing needs compounded by rapid urbanisation and
migration to cities.
Our gathering here tonight occurs amidst the reality that over 1,2 million
families remain to be housed in decent homes. Their need for better housing
cannot be ignored nor postponed, for it is very real and therefore requires a
robust response. Their collective housing need is very vast as reflected by the
sheer numbers. The living conditions of families in need of housing is far more
complex than just want of shelter these families require access to schools,
health care, effective transport, social and economic networks including work
opportunities. Although we know that our housing programme is yielding results,
we are mindful of remaining needs.
A recent report by United Nations (UN)-Habitat estimates that three out of
ten urban households in South Africa are slum households despite our resolve to
address this in line with the Millennium Development Goals. (Du Noon)
We remain resolute in our determination to bring an end to homelessness and
under-development. I know I speak for most of us here when I say; actually, our
determination has become an obsession. Because that is what housing does, it
gets under your skin and consumes the conscious mind.
As we continue to assemble better ways and tools to accelerate housing
delivery, we are confronted with new problems, throwing us therefore into a
continuous cycle of difficulties, blockages, bureaucratic inefficiencies, turf
wars, unhappy communities and some dishonest builders that have plagued housing
delivery throughout the past decade.
Our review of the housing delivery value-chain revealed, as was repeatedly
pointed out by some of our partners, that the most debilitating bottleneck in
housing delivery, however has been the land release and development process.
Difficulty in acquiring, preparing and releasing land for housing development
is well documented. In addition the assembly of land, and the associated costs,
has worked to frustrate organs of state, developers and investors as well as
communities. Next to financial engineering, the systematic resolution of the
land inputs to housing is sure to deliver affordability of housing to most
families. Affordability must not be allowed to evade us any more, especially as
our people begin to feel the effects of the financial crunch.
Through the Housing Development Agency we are not only rising to this
challenge, but we are certain to begin a different conversation with many
partners. The conversation that is possible through the Housing Development
Agency requires that all spheres of government and our partners collaborate
more than ever in responding to the many hurdles.
The challenges of aligning financing, infrastructure, settlement planning
and community amenities confronting many localities compel all of us to set
development priorities even in the context of difficult trade-offs. No single
stakeholder must seek to act alone in responding to these difficulties. The
Housing Development Agency is now available to offer a platform for this
conversation, for collective action and as a focal point for collaboration
across diverse role players.
Building on the achievements of the first fifteen years of our democracy,
our comprehensive plan for the creation of sustainable human settlements cannot
fail. In achieving the objectives of this plan, we have already demonstrated
that we can build integrated communities to ensure that the poor do not
continue to be marginalized through failure to plan for integrated
settlements.
The plan consolidates our housing delivery strategies to date to give effect
to the building of communities that reflect our hard won democracy and the
spirit of the Freedom Charter. Furthermore, the plan recognises that
urbanisation is rapidly changing our spatial landscape thus presenting us with
threats, but also opportunities to development. This must create a beneficial
relation between the urban and the rural parts of our country instead of
maintaining a superficial and unsustainable dichotomy of the two. My party has
now prioritised rural development, and therefore this launch could not have
come at a more appropriate time as we attend to a sector that has lagged so far
behind in our development.
Given the scale of work and the bold instruments entailed in the plan, we
have also opted for increased inter-governmental co-operation requiring a
unique commitment of the three spheres of government to work in a collaborative
and co-operative manner to effect immediate, meaningful and sustainable
improvements in the living conditions of our people. An undeniable fact of our
history is that the apartheid mode of development and planning left many
families landless and asset-less and so condemned to a permanent state of
peripheral existence. This is the scandalous legacy that we must now bring to a
decisive end without apology or through half measures.
It is also a sad reality of our present circumstances that the
municipalities that we established in 1996 are caught in a crisis of capacity.
Two thirds of the blocked projects we inherited in 2004 were blocked because of
lack of capacity at municipal level. We, as Minmec had to take a drastic
decision in 2006 that we would intervene decisively where municipalities did
not have the capacity. We now have an instrument that would assist us and that
would be acceptable to themselves. It is intended to support municipalities in
giving them the added capacity they so badly require to ensure that we can
deliver on scale (Mt Frere).
The Housing Development Agency is established to serve as the focal point
and special purpose vehicle for municipalities, provinces and national
government including parastatals to prioritise land assets in favour of
housing. It means that, as a nation, we must be in agreement on prioritizing
prime land for sustainable human settlements this with a view to integrate
communities. We cannot claim easy victories of delivery when we continue to
exclude the poor segments of our society from sharing in and enjoying the basic
privileges of amenities that they are entitled to decent shelter, access to
economic opportunities, schools, good neighbourhoods, etc.
So urgent was the priority to establish the Housing Development Agency that
it took extra-ordinary effort by many who made sure that we could be at this
point today. In particular, I am grateful to my Cabinet Colleagues, Members of
Parliament and Members of Provincial Legislatures that worked tirelessly to
process the legislation that gives effect to the Housing Development Agency. In
contrast to the normal three years it takes to establish a new government
entity, the Housing Development Agency (HAD) was established in a record eleven
months! Such was our resolve to fast-track housing delivery and meet the
housing needs of those families that wait patiently.
The promulgation of the HDA Bill in 2008 heralded a new dawn for housing
delivery. We now have an agency that will identify, acquire, hold and transfer
well located land and landed properties. It will perform these functions in a
manner that compliments the existing capacity across all spheres of government.
Its mandate is to perform the functions in line with the objectives set in the
Breaking New Ground strategy where the key determinant off success is the
location of new housing projects.
To the HDA, I have the singular honour of having leading a group of very
competent, dedicated MECs who have given their lifeâs work to housing. We
entrust you with this very important responsibility.
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight you are witnesses to the following charge to
the Housing Development Agency:
* It must show intolerance to poverty that has invaded some of our
households and demonstrate real-time urgency as well as precision in its work
to advance the fight against poverty and under-development this is what goes
directly to the heart of what we are trying to deliver. I should no longer fear
to campaign for my party because I might encounter unfulfilled promises.
* The HDA must, in the next 12 months, conclude collaborative agreements with
key government departments and secure land assets from government and
state-owned enterprises.
* The HDA must immediately facilitate a government-wide moratorium on the sale
of public and state land until such time that across the three spheres of
government we have clarity on our priorities for alienating land.
* The agency must work with municipalities and provinces to put in place
special measures to ensure that the necessary land development permits can be
fast-tracked.
In other words through the Housing Development Agency, we put in place
practical measures that will remove our worst nightmares in housing delivery.
It is now more possible and opportune to work collectively as government,
private sector and communities to deliver more quality and sustainable
settlements because, you see, we do believe that working together, we can do
more!
The primary commitment of our government remains firm in attacking poverty,
squalor, under-development and spatial segregation! The Housing Development
Agency is an addition to our arsenal in this assault on poverty in all its form
including poverty of assets and property.
Cabinet has approved that Taffy Adler, who is well-known within both the
public and the private sector to head the Housing Development Agency. We ask
him to do for us what he has been able to accomplish for the Johannesburg
Housing Company. He will be assisted by both CEOs of Thubelisha and Servcon,
who, as you know, have been able to turn around the fortunes of both companies.
He will also be assisted by a newly appointed Chief Financial Officer, Rooksana
Moola, who has a wealth of experience in both government and non-governmental
organisations, and has previously been part of the highly innovative and
effective Johannesburg Development Agency.
The board has been meticulously selected from hundreds of nominations. The
Chairman, Nkululeko Sowazi, well known in the housing sector, has a long track
record in development organisations, including Kagiso Trust, the Mortgage
Indemnity Fund and the Homeloan Guarantee Company, and is currently Deputy
Chairman of Tiso Investments. He is backed by a strong board with excellent
experience in planning and development.
To all our housing development partners, I commend the Housing Development
Agency to you to engage as your development partner of choice. This agency is
here to supplement our efforts, to help mature opportunities, harvest land
assets and deliver them for housing and human settlements development.
To the Governing Board of the Housing Development Agency working together
with the Chief Executive Officer, Mr Taffy Adler you has accepted the call to
undertake the mammoth task that lies ahead. With your collective wisdom,
expertise, motivation and skills make us see and believe that we are not far
from the day when it will be possible for every South African to access
adequate housing that is secure and comfortable. Make our revolutionary ideals
real. And make me proud, don't let the sun go down on our dreams.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Housing
2 March 2009
Source: Department of Housing (http://www.housing.gov.za/)
