Honourable Chair, Madam Salamata Gakou Fofana, Minister of Land and Urban Development of Mali
Fellow Honourable Ministers
Executive Director of UN Habitat
Ambassador of South Africa and the other Ambassadors present
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
All protocol observed
Let me begin by expressing my sincere gratitude for the excellent preparations undertaken by the government of Mali under the leadership of Minister Gakou Salamata Fofana and the support given by United Nations Habitat in this regard. As South Africa we feel strongly about the importance of this gathering and the sustainability of African Minister’s Conference on Housing and Urban Development (AMCHUD) going forward. Much progress has been made since we first assembled in Durban in 2005. My country is proud to be associated with this conference as we hand over our responsibility as secretariat of AMCHUD.
The issue of urban land markets was highlighted as critical in the Durban Declaration and the Enhanced Framework for Implementation for Housing and Urban Development adopted by AMCHUD I in February 2005 and the Abuja Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by AMCHUD II. AMCHUD has confirmed the need to deepen an understanding of urban land markets was confirmed. Land availability is an important component of a sustainable livelihood strategy for the urban poor, especially given the urbanisation and increasing informality which characterises patterns of urbanisation in the developing world.
Growing urbanisation is a reality in South Africa as it is in many cities in Africa and beyond. Rapid urbanisation and the accompanying competition for diminishing land resources as well as the rapid increase in slums are the most pressing challenges for cities. According to United Nations projections, the urban population of sub-Saharan Africa will increase from 387-million in 2010 to 705-million in 2025. The pressure on our African cities to provide for these growing populations in a sustained way is immense.
So what do we as the South African government intend to do about our urban challenge?
Land is an important and sensitive issue to South Africans. It is a finite resource that binds our people together in a common destiny. It binds all people of the world and will continue to be a critical issue for development and poverty alleviation, especially as climate change begins to shrink the amount of arable land and available urban land near the coast.
To provide for the historical injustice of land dispossessions, denial of access to land and forced removals, and the democratic government in 1994 opted for a three-pronged land reform policy– namely land restitution, land redistribution and land tenure reform.
The South African Government’s Land Reform Programme contributes to reconciliation, stability, growth and development in an equitable and sustainable way. In an urban context, it was aimed at ensuring that the poor have access to decent shelter and secure tenure on well-located land, hence the willing seller willing buyer scenario, which did not work. Presently we are working on a comprehensive land policy led by the Department of Land and Rural Development in order to deal with the areas I have already mentioned.
We also have a special purpose vehicle created to acquire land for housing delivery, particularly well-located land. We do not want to continue with urban sprawl, as our goal is to densify our cities; hence we have established the Housing Development Agency, whose sole mandate is to acquire land on behalf of the South African government for settlement. The priority is to acquire state owned land and good property for housing delivery for short and long-term purposes. Effectively this is housing land, banking on behalf of the poor, with a target to acquire 6025 ha by 2014, this is equivalent to 500 000 housing units.
The challenge of housing delivery in South Africa is not due to the scarcity of land only, but also the problem of bulk infrastructure and access to finance.
Access to land is intimately linked to our policy for sustainable human settlements. We have adopted a Comprehensive Plan for the Development of Sustainable Human Settlements, which “promotes the achievement of a non-racial, integrated society through the development of sustainable human settlements and quality housing”. President Zuma gave further meaning to this, in his State of the Nation address last year. He stated,
“As part of social infrastructure development we will provide suitably located and affordable housing and decent human settlements. We will proceed from the understanding that human settlement is not just about building houses. It is about transforming our cities and towns and building cohesive, sustainable and caring communities with closer access to work and social amenities, including sports and recreation facilities.”
And so as a government we have shifted our emphasis from providing houses to creating sustainable human settlements. It is during this State of the Nation Address that President Jacob Zuma declared the Department of Housing would be renamed the Department of Human Settlements in order to emphasise and demonstrate this change in policy and implementation. This was also recognition of the fact that the housing backlog in South Africa cannot be the responsibility of government alone. We need the involvement of the public sector, private sector and civil society.
As a result, we believe in the promotion of a triple partnership, that is a public private partnership. We also recognise that integrated planning and densification needs to be promoted as a way to combat urban sprawl, reduce carbon emissions, support a wider range of services, and create more opportunities in closer proximity to cities. This can be achieved by providing medium density mixed housing for people of all income levels sharing the same structures and space to uplift and contribute to the economic turnaround.
In 2009 we adopted a new outcomes-based approach to delivery. This outcomes-based approach will no longer look at service delivery in terms of numbers, but also in terms of impact and quality. As the Department of Human Settlements, we are addressing four priority areas with our partners:
Accelerated Delivery of Housing Opportunities: upgrading of informal settlements our target is to upgrade 400 000 informal settlements by 2014. The number of informal settlements in South Africa is increasing exponentially as a result of urbanisation. Currently the number is sitting at 1.2 million households in 2629 informal settlements and these settlements are overcrowded with people hoping and praying to make it into better housing in the cities.
The improvement and upgrading of informal settlements has become crucial in our war against poverty. Upgrading must lead to access to running water, electricity sanitation and access to roads. But those who occupy dolomitic land and river banks must be moved to sustainable land. South Africa has a track record of having strong land rights including the constitutional right to access land and housing, and property rights. To match these rights we are exploring more flexible approaches to security of tenure.
We only have to look at the City of Johannesburg’s innovative approach to tenure via a special amendment scheme which allows the land rights of whole informal settlements to be recognised when those settlements have a real prospect of being upgraded. Innovations such as these go a long way to make the poor visible and legal citizens of the city; to enable the settlements where they live to be included in city planning and to develop standards and procedures for securing tenure, building houses and providing services that the poor find accessible and affordable.
Human settlements must fast track the provision of government subsidised homes to those households whose income is below what is the equivalent of 500 US Dollars, these people who are the poorest of poor at the lower end of the housing market. We are placing greater emphasis on government subsidised homes being built on well located land, closer to social amenities and in order to mitigate the issue of land shortage, we do densify where possible to do so.
We are aiming to build homes for the gap market category using the social housing institutions and have to increase the rental stock. An equivalent of 140 million US Dollars capital injection will assist those who earn too much to access housing subsidy, but too poor to qualify for bank credit. We also urge employers to build houses for their employees. We have good examples, such as the mining company Impala Platinum in the North West, who have built houses for their employees
Honourable Ministers, as we are gathered here on this auspicious occasion of the third African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development, I believe we are all aware of how poverty manifests itself most clearly as the deprivation of basic needs and the vulnerability, powerlessness and experience of exclusion which accompanies those who live in poverty.
Access to land for all is one of the means to assist in alleviating poverty and finds expression in the South African human settlements plan through supporting the development of sustainable human settlements and the development of housing assets. At the heart of this initiative is the move beyond the provision of basic shelter towards achieving the broader vision of sustainable human settlements and more efficient cities, towns and regions for all. We must as a matter of urgency put the building blocks in place to deal with sustainable land issues, and over the next five years be committed to delivering on our priorities.
I thank you.
Source: Department of Human Settlements
