Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma,
MECs, Executive Mayors and MMCs,
Delegates and invited guests,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for bearing with us as we restructured our programme. Minister Zuma has outlined how we work. We call it co-shared governance. In all it is meant to:
- Promoting active citizenry to strengthen development, democracy and accountability. We have to make our citizens understand that we, eache one of us, have a responsibility.
- Unite all South Africans around a common programme to achieve prosperity and equity and reverse the effects of the past.
- Bringing about faster economic growth, higher investment and greater labour absorption.
- Focusing on key capabilities of people and the state.
- Building a capable and developmental state.
- Encouraging strong leadership throughout society to work together to solve problems.
- Making sure that we understand the needs of our people and work together with them to overcome the enormous challenges we face.
This is our third Indaba and we would like to pick up from where we left off. We recognise your continued desire to contribute to our national development agenda in human settlements. We hear your frustrations about continued blockages and the slow pace in getting projects ready for development, resulting in huge cumulative costs to the sector associated with the contractors’ waiting/ holding times.
We concur that there is an urgent need for proper regulation of the 30% empowerment stake in developments while protecting concerned preferential groups being women, youth and people living with disabilities, against criminal elements intent on gain without sweat.
One of the key take-away commitments from today’s discussion must be a commitment from government to enhance our relationship and within government structures, arrangements regarding planning and implementation, and for dealing with developers and developments, to allow for easier and efficient achievement on target and on time.
The Department of Human Settlements is in the process of developing the best possible funding and financing model that will enable the achievement of a vision of sustainable human settlements and improved quality of household life. The new funding and finance model will assist in addressing (a) investment in priority development areas; (b) upgrading informal settlements; (c) ensuring access to various forms of housing assistance to qualifying households; and (d) Investment, requisite infrastructure including public spaces.
The Department will during this period review our funding model to better support the establishment and maintenance of a sustainable public and private residential environment that ensure viable communities within various neighbourhoods with access to economic opportunities, health, educational and social amenities.
We remain resolute in enforcing transformation of the construction and property sector for the benefit and participation of prioritised groups and you should all know by now that these are Women, Youth, People Living with Disabilities and Military Veterans. As such, we shall endeavor to forge strong partnerships with Cooperative Movements, Traditional and Local Leadership, Built Environment Councils and Associations representing the socioeconomic interests of the prioritised groups.
At the core of this developmental agenda is assured consensus through social compacting that places emphasis on accelerating delivery of adequate housing; job creation; national youth service; enterprise incubation and mentorship; specified bidding process for prioritised groups in order to transform the procurement regime.
We declare a new covenant on building robust youth owned business entities, women owned business entities, and military veterans business owned entities and also people living with disability owned business entities.
We further commit to ensuring that the set aside targets of 30% for allocation of business projects to these prioritised groups are embedded in the Housing Code which is the blueprint of service delivery in the housing and human settlements sector. We pledge to refocus on the Youth Build, Woman’s Build and 16 Days of Activism towards communities in distress or emergency situations, social and student housing as well as refurbishment of shelters for abused women and children.
We want to encourage more young people to participate in construction of houses as a form of service to the community and their country, and at the same time become empowered by gaining skills, further learning and employment. Learn a trade in construction and you are immediately employable and you have the potential to start your own business.
The 2019-2024 Medium Term Strategic Framework outlines actions to be achieved by the Department of Human Settlements within the context of fulfilling its mandate expressed in Section 26 of the South African Constitution (Act 108, 1996) which states: ‘Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right’.
While the department has delivered more than 4.7 million housing opportunities since 1994, housing in the country still remains a moving target with Statistics South Africa estimating that the country’s housing backlog still stood at 2.3 million.
Looking back, this achievement was supported by many of you with us today – our stakeholders through the 2005 Social Contract for Rapid Housing Delivery, which was conceptualised to support the implementation of the BNG policy. This model of our joint efforts assisted the Department to perform well and in 2014 the department jointly with sector stakeholders committed to work together to deliver:
(a) 1.5 million housing opportunities, including 110 000 affordable housing opportunities for the gap market, 70 000 affordable rental opportunities, undertake 50 catalytic projects and install basic services and infrastructure in 2000 informal settlements, while laying a foundation that will ensure that by 2030 all South Africans live in adequate housing
(b) Eradicate the backlog of title deeds for pre and post 1994 housing stock.
The Department had successfully engaged with various stakeholders in the Human Settlements Sectors to input into the objectives of today’s Indaba in order to accelerate the performance of the 2019/24 priorities for Human Settlements and to identify areas of collaboration for the sector stakeholders that will be anchored in common ground for Medium Term Strategic Framework period. The outcomes of these engagements will inform policy and programme refinements and strengthen partnerships as we move forward.
We acknowledge the sector did not perform well enough during the previous term and that the Government’s new approaches to human settlements development and service delivery requires intensified effort to promote a culture of responsiveness, mutual respect, mutual accountability, trust and collaboration for problem-solving.
According to the feedback we received from the sector, key challenges included:
- High and frustrating levels of instability in development processes
- Payment of invoices within 30 days especially to emergent and empowerment stakeholders
- Stalled projects due to lack of bulk infrastructure services and misaligned bulk services funding
- Frustrations relating to tools for effective program and project management
- Transformation to support small and developing layers
- Regulation regarding 30% empowerment stake in developments for preferential groups
- Cumulative costs to the sector associated with contractors waiting/holding time
The new partnering framework will guide all actors in building stronger relationships, within the department itself, with other National government departments, with provinces and local government, and with the whole of society, to promote a culture of responsiveness, mutual respect, mutual accountability, trust and collaboration for problem-solving.
We are organising for Innovation and Transformative Technology (ITT) to become the catalyst to mainstream the concept of Sustainable Human Settlements. Sustainable settlements that increase water and energy security, settlements that are environmentally friendly and ideal to bring up our children, settlements that experiment with urban agriculture to both increase our food security as well as contributing to the greening of our cities, settlements that decrease their ecological footprints and contribute to a low-carbon economy.
All of this on the back of new Innovation and Technology developed through partnerships with the private sector, the banks, sector departments, professional bodies, and, our own scientific research institutions such as the Water Research Commission and their local and international partners. We will also engage an implementation model that contributes directly to alleviating poverty, inequality and unemployment.
Over the MTSF 2019/24, through partnerships, the human settlements sector in Innovation and Transformative Technologies will achieve the following:
- The human settlements sector will ensure a consistent but progressive approach to Innovation and Transformative Technology through compliance to the Science and Innovation Technologies 10 year road map that has been developed in conjunction with the Department of Science and Innovation.
- The partnership between the National Department of Human Settlements, Department Of Environmental Affairs and the Water Research Commission (WRC) will ensure efficient and sustainable drinking water and waste water management in the houses by using smart and green waste water treatment, supply diversification taps and sanitation solutions. This will be coordinated through a water and waste flagship programme.
- The partnership between the Department of Human Settlements, Gauteng Institute for Architecture, NHBRC, Department of Environmental Affairs, Black Business Council and Water Research Commission will see the establishment of a design build academy serving as a knowledge hub, innovation portal/repository and training centre to prepare beneficiaries for uptake of the innovative and transformative technologies.
- Women will benefit through a partnership between the Department of Human Settlements and the Gauteng institute of architecture through a design inclusionary programme to capacitate black women in modern innovation designs.
- For the youth, the partnership between the Department Of Human Settlements, Water Research Commission, and Department of Environmental Affairs And Black Business Council will see the establishment of a youth capacitation programme training young professionals, students and young contractors in local and relevant international innovation building systems.
- The sector will ensure that there are modern contemporary green, zero energy innovative designs through a partnership between the DHS, SHRA, NHBRC, Black Building Council, Department of Energy; and, the Water Research Commission.
- The sector yield maximum outputs from big data by establishing a dynamic real-time Human Settlements database on ITT through a partnership between DHS, NHBRC, South African National Space Agency and the Water Research Commission.
- The monitoring of human settlements sector projects will shift towards the use of 4IR (Artificial Intelligence and big data), Building Information Modelling, through partnerships with the NHBRC, Water Research Commission, and SANSA.
We recognise that we have a shared commitment to achieving improved human settlements and spatial transformation in South Africa. As government, we know we cannot achieve these objectives on our own. As a Department, we have given consideration to how we can be more deliberate and thoughtful in how we work together within government, as well as with our external partners.
We invite all of you to join us in committing to a partnering approach and a culture of collaboration to achieve our shared goals.
The Department of Human Settlements recognises the need to do things differently. We have identified a number of ‘strategic enablers’ to strengthen the implementation of policies and programmes. These include:
- Promoting a common understanding of human settlements policies and programmes with the three spheres of government and relevant stakeholders.
- Assessing capability and capacity gaps and promoting implementation capacity at all three spheres of government.
- Providing guidance to human settlements entities to achieve specific outcomes.
- Collaboration with government entities on research, GIS, Big Data and remote sensing capabilities.
- Implementing a stakeholder consultative process for policy development and implementation.
- Implementing a framework and platforms for vertical and horizontal collaboration and alignment between national departments, spheres of government and entities.
- Implementing co-planning, co-financing and co-implementation between national departments, spheres of government and entities, with a collaborative approach to unblocking impediments.
- Adopting a collaborative approach to human settlements communication.
- Ensuring regular monitoring and reporting on the implementation of collaboration compacts.
- Developing a common understanding on the role of stakeholders in supporting programme implementation.
The Department of Human Settlements can’t deliver on the human settlements mandate without the commitment of all of you. The considered partnering approach we are entering into with yourselves today will enable us to collaborate effectively with internal teams and our external partners.
We have heard you and the collaborative approach focuses on:
- Developing shared goals and objectives and a common agenda;
- Pooling resources for collective impact;
- Co-creating solutions based on shared understanding of the problem and reinforcing activities by partners;
- Collectively generating and sharing communications;
- Building processes, systems and technologies to leverage resources and develop shared accountability;
- Developing collaborative cultures, attitudes and leadership that is adaptive, innovative and responsive to external input; and
- Developing cross-boundary and cross-sector structures to enable shared accountability, risks and rewards.
We acknowledge the work that our external partners have already contributed to this process. We appreciate your input into the Round Tables, the Position Papers and this ongoing dialogue. We invite you to continue this collaboration by committing to doing things differently, so that we get different, improved results. We commit to learning from you and sharing our experiences so that we go into the next four years with a view to achieving a better future based on learning from our successes and failures.
I want to conclude with a statement from Henry Ford, who said: “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”
I thank you.
