Honourable Deputy President, Mr Kgalema Motlanthe
Honourable Ministers, Premiers, Deputy Ministers
Honourable MECs, senior officials
Members of the media
Good morning and welcome to this special President’s Coordinating Council (PCC), convened to focus specifically on human settlements. The PCC is an important platform in which the three spheres of government interact to ensure the implementation of key priorities, to help align budgets with priorities and to monitor service delivery.
We welcome the Minister for Human Settlements and all MECs and Heads of Departments responsible for this portfolio in the provinces, who are our special guests today. Following our adoption of the outcomes approach to service delivery, the PCC has become an important forum for discussion improved delivery of services.
We decided to focus on human settlements today because that is a key national priority. This outcome is a critical pillar of our growth and development strategy, and to undo the legacy of apartheid.
Today we should be able to unpack the Human Settlements Delivery Agreement and discuss solutions to the likely obstacles and challenges to effective delivery. Through a progressive human settlements programme, we will be able to reverse the legacy of the Group Areas Act, the Influx Control Act and a host of other apartheid legislation which dehumanised our people.
The apartheid laws rendered black people foreigners in urban areas and they were forced to settle in designated locations as temporary residents and workforce to boost the apartheid economy. For those in rural areas, they were made to belong to various Bantustans with no plans to develop roads, transport, electricity, sanitation, running water or any other infrastructure.
All the programmes we are putting in place must ensure that working with our people we undo this legacy and restore their dignity, self-esteem and pride. The living conditions have to improve. When we reconfigured government last year we stated our vision of human settlements, informed by our painful past.
We said the concept of human settlements is not just about building houses. We have to change apartheid spatial patterns and ensure that low income households in rural or urban areas have easy access to economic centres. They must also have access to social amenities and key services such as water, electricity, recreational facilities, schools, clinics and a host of others.
An investment in human settlements is an investment in our future. Habitable and decent settlements promote human dignity and the stability of our communities. They lead to improved performance of children in schools, increased productivity of workers from those communities and the improvement in the general health of the population.
All three spheres of government are embracing the new mandate and good progress has been made in making the paradigm shift from “housing” to “human settlements”. Over one million people live in informal settlements with insecure tenure and without basic services. Although we have made a lot of progress, the conditions in some of these areas still leave much to be desired.
Yesterday, I conducted an unannounced visit to the Sweetwaters settlement near Orange Farm in Johannesburg. The community has lived there since the early 1980s. The conditions are shocking. There is no decent housing, sanitation, electricity, access road or health facilities. There is only one unreliable communal tap according to residents. I would like to hear what report the councillor gives to the municipality about this area!
Young people there told me that they want to watch the soccer World Cup tournament and to support Bafana Bafana but there is no electricity.
These are some of the issues we have to deal with in this PCC. How does it happen that some of our people still live in such areas, 16 years into our freedom and democracy? One resident, Enock Vilakazi said to me: “I will live here till I die, but please Mr President; my children must not die under these conditions as well.”
We have gone some way towards meeting our goals although clearly there is still a lot to be done in some areas. Our view is that providing people in informal settlements with land tenure and decent services will encourage them to invest in their own housing. We must also assist those people who earn too much to qualify for the housing subsidy, but too little to access the housing bond market.
We have this year invested 15 million rand in housing subsidies to the poor. In the last financial year, we provided 220 000 housing opportunities, which translates to 160 000 homes and 60 000 serviced sites. We have created an enabling environment, through policies and legislation to protect consumers who are building or buying homes at the top end of the market. This ensures greater transparency and fairness in lending practices through the Home Loans and Mortgage Disclosure Act.
We have also established a Guarantee Fund of one billion rand to provide comfort to the banks when lending to people in “the gap market” people who do not qualify for either bank credit or a government subsidy. Our plan is to facilitate the provision of 600 000 accommodation units within this market for people earning between 3 000 and 12 000 rand.
These endeavours, beyond providing shelter, contribute to economic growth and job creation - whilst at the same time restoring human dignity. You will also recall that during the State of the Nation Address I made a commitment that the government will ensure that all households around the country are electrified by 2012.
As of 31 March 2010, the total number of households’ still awaiting electricity, including informal settlements, is estimated at more than three million. More than 150 000 houses are electrified annually.
The national backlog does not seem to decrease due to the increasing number of informal settlements and houses that are built annually.
As said in parliament last week, communities also need to play their part and use the services provided by government responsibly.
We are aware that some people receive their houses, then rent them out and move back to the informal settlements. We therefore end up chasing moving targets. The housing backlog now stands at approximately 2.1 million and the number of informal settlements has ballooned to more than 2 700. We will know we have made progress if we have assisted 400 000 households in informal settlements by 2014, having secured some form of land tenure and access to services such as water, electricity and sanitation.
Colleagues,
You will recall that for a long time government avoided rental accommodation due to the apartheid history of rent boycotts and similar protest action. However, the reality is that some people want rental accommodation as they either have houses already in rural areas or are just not ready to make a commitment to own property.
In this regard, we have set the target of delivering at least 20 000 units of rental accommodation per annum. Habitable human settlements also mean access to clean water. Thirty five regional bulk water schemes are under construction of which 10 will be completed during the current financial year.
Five hundred and eighty eight thousand people will benefit from the ten projects to be completed. We also have various other infrastructure projects around the country. Big projects include the Mokolo-Crocodile Water Augmentation project for the provision of water to the town of Lephalale at a cost of ten billion rand. The construction is scheduled to start during September 2010.
Preparations are also on track for the implementation of the Nwamitwa dam in Limpopo province this year, at a cost of one billion rand. There is clearly a lot of work to be done to achieve our goals nationally and we all equal to the task!
We look forward to fruitful deliberations.
I thank you.
Issued by: The Presidency
18 May 2010
Source: The Presidency (http://www.thepresidency.gov.za)
