Programme Director Thami Nkadimeng
Premier of the Northern Cape, Dr Zamani Saul in absentia Deputy Minister for Human Settlements, Ms. Pam Tshwete MEC for Human Settlements, Mr. Bentley Vass
MEC for Youth, Women, Disability, Communication and E-Government, Hon. Lorato Biennies
MEC for Safety and liaison in the Northern Cape
Chairperson of Human Settlements Portfolio Committee, Hon. Rosina Semenya Members of Parliament present
Executive Mayor of Frances Baard District Municipality, Cllr. Buda Hosting Executive Mayor, Cllr. Kagisho Sonyoni
Members of the Mayoral Committees especially Cllr Nolitye, Cllr Leitch and Cllrs presents
Board Members of Human Settlements Entities and CEO’S Acting Director-General and DDGs
The United Nations Coordinator in Southern Africa, Mr. Nelson Muffuh (in absentia) Public Service Commission Northern Cape Commissioner, Anele Gxoyiya
Leaders of SAWIC, TWWISCA, BBCBE, Women in Plumbing, FEDUP & other NGOs
Built Environment Entities Exhibitors
Media Houses present, distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning Malibongwe!
Greetings in name of the amazing and powerful women in whose shoulders we all stand. I speak here of Mama Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Mama Albertina Sisulu, Mama Shallot Maxeke, Mama Sophie de Bruyn, Mama Gxowa, Mama Gertrude Shope, and many others who have immensely contributed to the liberation of women and humanity as a whole.
I must firstly indicate this has been Deputy Minister Tshwete’s vision and wish for us to host this Indaba. She felt that we need to hear women more and this today, DM, is your legacy. We will institutionalise this work and ensure it is mainstreamed in the Department of Human Settlements and institutions for Sustainability. We will celebrate International Women’s Day on 8th March next year with you before you leave this portfolio, to reflect on what has been achieved after this Indaba because this is certainly not another talk shop.
The struggle for women emancipation, just like all other liberation struggles, will be a long and a demanding road. To anybody who doubts whether this long and hard road is worth taking, they need to ask themselves if for women, there is any other road. In other words, they need to ask themselves as to whether women have any other choice but to work hard to liberate themselves. The beginning of wisdom in any struggle for liberation is the understanding that no one is going to liberate you but yourselves. This should also be accompanied by the understanding that power concedes nothing without demand.
It is therefore befitting that we are gathered here under the banner of the Human Settlements Women Indaba on Women’s Month to make a strong statement that, as women in the human settlements sector, we are here to stay. We are gathered here to discuss ways in which women can, in the foreseeable future, achieve equal participation our sector and more broadly in the economy.
This too is an indication that women have taken it upon themselves to liberate themselves from the shackles of stereotypes, male chauvinism and forces that have made their preoccupation to render women invisible in sectors that have always been regarded as a male terrain. The residential construction sub-sector might be just a section of our economy but the liberation of women in this sub-sector is a significant tributary of the great river of women economic liberation struggle. The struggle for women in this sector is also a microcosm of the broader struggle of the national struggle for women economic emancipation.
It is for this reason that it gives me great pleasure to find myself in a room full of women, whose primary preoccupation is finding ways to empower themselves, each other and in the process build our country. I say this because it has become fashionable to lament and criticise and wallow in gloom and despondency without lifting a finger. Yet it is in times of deep challenges that all of us as concerned citizens, who enjoy a certain level of privilege, must fold our sleeves and work to find solutions to our country’s problems. I say we are privileged because we have tools at our disposal that enable us to attain useful information and we are also equipped with the knowledge of how to effectively utilise that information.
Those who engage in a struggle to liberate any section of society must always understand that every liberator inevitably becomes the victim of their own success. Our early successes in building a democratic polity after the democratic transition was always going to create higher and higher expectations from the people of South Africa. They want us to deliver on our promise to create a better life for all. They want us to create a society in which any individual’s contribution to society is not measured through their race, gender and age, but through their capability. For many, the early optimism has now become the source of their pessimism. Yet history has taught us that countries develop through stops and starts, booms and busts and at times the bad times can seem insurmountable. As South Africans, we know better than to allow ourselves to be consumed by pessimism. This is because we have been through worse, and we overcame.
Central to what brings us together today is the state of our economy and the distribution of economic resources. What has contributed to the pessimism that I have referred is the fact that the distribution of economic resources is still skewed in terms of race, gender and age.
Previously disadvantaged groups, particularly women and youths, are finding themselves in conditions of persistent economic deprivation. To add salt to injury, the South African economy has been on a low growth path for just over a decade. This was further acerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the riots and the floods that destroyed critical economic infrastructure. The recent rise in the cost of living caused by the Ukraine/Russia conflict followed by rising interest rates has also added to the troubles facing the middle class of our country.
Indeed, our lengthy economic underperformance has not spared any of our sectors in the economy and this includes the construction sector. Just to illustrate, between the end of June 2017 and the end of June 2020, the construction sector experienced a loss of 118 000 jobs. This loss was further worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The statistics released two days ago by Stats SA, showed that in the second quarter of 2023, the construction sector created 104 000 job opportunities, which indicates some level of recovery. It is yet to be seen if this recovery will be sustained.
The construction sector is a significant sector in the economy. This sector contributed R134.bn in gross value added to the South African economy in 2020; and it is expected to grow by 5% to reach R 232 billion in 2023. The persistence of the skewed distribution of the value in the construction is our fundamental economic transformation challenge that we need to tackle. Women and youths in the main, get very little share of the income in the construction sector.
The question is: what is it that we need to do to empower women and youths and perhaps black people in general to access opportunities in the construction sector? This sector can be broadly divided into the following subgroups: general residential building construction; industrial construction; commercial building construction; and heavy civil construction. The department that I lead, deals with residential property construction - which is a sub-sector of the construction sector as a whole. To get a better understanding of how we can increase the participation of designated groups, there is a need to drill deeper into the value chain of the sector. We talk about the numbers and representation, but in reality the chunk of the money is not going towards women. That is what we must fix. We no longer are going to only pay attention to 40% procurement allocation in favour of women and women-owned firms but to ensure that it extends to representation in terms of the value.
The construction industry consists of a diverse spectrum of activities ranging from the design of new construction projects to post-construction maintenance and repairs. Developers and contractors in this industry also offer other services such as rehabilitation of structures and houses, renovation of structures and houses, extension of structures, demolition of existing structures, erection and dismantling of prefabricated buildings, and construction of temporary structures. Anyone who wants to participate meaningfully must pick an area and develop themselves so that they can become a leader in that area.
With such a vast sector, I come across women and youth owned business that do everything, and they are masters of none of the things they offer and in the end, it is difficult to assist them.
In terms upstream activities, the sector’s value chain is also extensive. There are steel manufacturers, suppliers of various components, tools, equipment, scaffolding, heavy construction machinery, construction vehicles and building materials. Other players supply building material such as sand, gravel, crushed stone, slag, recycled concrete, cement, reinforcing steel and sections, roofing and vertical cladding, plumping pipes and fittings. The barriers to entry for upstream activities are much higher because they require capital injection and as a result, many women and young people opt for construction activities.
To create a transformed economy, we must assist designated groups to get a stake in the entire value chain. That means we must do everything possible to overcome barriers that still hold back individuals who were previously disadvantaged.
The main barriers to entry in the construction industry include the following, amongst others:
- Registration compliance and regulatory requirements.
- High initial capital requirements.
- Access to finance from financial institutions.
- Operating costs that are substantial given that this industry has low profit margins.
- Requirement to possess industry specific knowledge.
- Need to attract skilled labor.
- The discrimination of women-owned businesses in general, which leads to prejudiced contracts.
These barriers are the reason that we took the lead in introducing quotas for empowering women, youths, military veterans and people living with disabilities.
The Human Settlements’ legislative, policy frameworks and plans provide for the allocation of 40% quota of the different human settlements grants, namely; Human Settlements Development Grant, Urban Settlements Development Grant, Informal Settlements Upgrading Partnership Grant, Consolidated Capital Grant, etc., to women owned business entities. This covers all human settlements institutions, provinces, and metros. The policies are also in line with the sector transformation charters, namely; the Construction and Property Charters and provide space for women to participate in the entire human settlements value chain.
The level of adherence varies from province to province but each day we are moving closer to achieving these quotas. Mpumalanga, Northern Cape and Limpopo Provinces are doing very well in this regard.
The human settlements entities such as NHFC, SHRA, HDA, CSOS, NHBRC and PPRA are also expected to drive women and youth empowerment programmes. Our deliberate decision to place women in positions of leadership positions as chairpersons of Boards and Chief Executive Officers should serve as an example that, empowering women is a good for business and good for our economy. Our broad interventions range from preferential procurement, funding through grants and loans, training to fill the skills gap and business development opportunities.
The National Home Builders Regulatory Authority (NHBRC) is running The Women Empowerment Programme (WEP) – this is a national programme which is aimed at improving entrepreneurial and business operations for participating entrepreneurs and linking them with opportunities in the human settlements value chain and built environment in general. The NHBRC partners with a Higher Education Institutions to deliver Enterprise Development Training and Mentorship Support a total of 100 Women Entrepreneurs, participating in the NHBRC Women Empowerment Programme (WEP) nationwide.
The Social Housing Regulatory Authority (SHRA) and the South African Women in Construction & Built Environment (SAWIC & BE) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the 8th of March, aimed at advancing the participation of women in the social housing sector. The aim of the MoU is to advance the transformation agenda within the social housing sector by empowering women to lead and manage accredited Social Housing Institutions and other delivery agents. This MoU must deliver tangible results and we must see women playing a more significant role in the ownership and management of social housing projects.
Our sector is beginning to embrace new Innovative Building Technologies to respond to the changing weather conditions and the rate of increase of demand for housing. I expect that women and young people will become leaders in the deployment of these technologies and begin to take lead in housing our nation.
These and other empowerment interventions are a demonstration that we have taken a deliberate and conscious decision to empower women and youth to ensure that they meaningfully participate in the construction sector.
Empowering women is not only government’s responsibility, but also the business of all of us. Women who have attained a little bit of success to ask themselves the following questions:
- What have I done to empower other women?
- What have I done to expose other women to economic opportunities?
- What else can I do to change the economic status of women?
- Specifically in the construction sector, what have I done to support other women to acquire plant, material, and equipment?
Your deliberations in these two days must help us to find solutions to the barriers that I have mentioned. They must also help us to unravel the riddle of engineering economic growth that has been elusive for the past decade in our country.
For those of us who are engaged in the struggle for liberation, there is no time for pessimism. All we need to is to take a look at the many things that we have achieved and the enormous amount of work we still have left to do and this should help us to dissipate the thick, dark cloud of pessimism.
I thank you
