Remarks by the Minister of Human Settlements, Mmamoloko Kubayi, SALGA NEC Lekgotla, 12 April 2022
Programme director;
President of SALGA;
SALGA NEC members present;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and gentlemen
Good morning
Thank you for inviting me to join you for this important discussion that you have held since yesterday. In the final analysis, the development of human settlements happens in localities managed at the local government level. This makes local government a very critical element in the delivery of human settlements to the people. How well people live, what services they receive and what opportunities they can access, forms part of the measure of the quality of human settlements that we deliver to our people. In the main, these elements reflect the performance of the local government sphere in delivering its mandate.
The introduction of the breaking new ground policy in 2004, was a recognition that our policy needed adjustment so that it could be more responsive to the evolving housing needs. At the time it was introduced, there was a slowdown in RDP house-building, inadequate quality and location of the housing and limited impact of housing on poverty and inequality. In addition, the nature of the demand for housing and the partnership with the financial sector in dealing with the housing challenges was non-existent.
Whereas previously houses would be built without consideration for other social amenities, the BNG policy introduced an integrated way of dealing with housing. The integrated approach requires that a settlement must be sustainable in a multi-faceted way including spatially, institutionally, socially and economically.
Accordingly, this change meant that the municipalities and their planning divisions had to assume more responsibilities with regard to the creation of new integrated and sustainable human settlements. These responsibilities include institutional coordination and alignment, spatial restructuring, and social and economic inclusion. The current human settlements grant structure and the terms and conditions make it mandatory that the Integrated Development Plans, form the basis of the National Plan we approve for the allocation of funds for housing and human settlements.
During my visits to provinces in which I visited projects and interacted with provincial and municipal leaders, including beneficiaries, a number of issues have arisen that require urgent attention and I think that working together with SALGA, we can be able to resolve. Primary amongst these issues, was intergovernmental relations break down between the provincial government and local government.
To achieve these things, I have mentioned in relation to the BNG policy that intergovernmental relations are an absolute necessity. The provincial government and the municipality need to have a functioning system for budget coordination and prioritization, especially in the development of human settlements projects. More broadly, to have a multifaceted sustainable human settlement, the coordination with the relevant departments that provide social amenities and economic infrastructure, is also of critical necessity. I am simply saying, the huge responsibilities that have been imposed on municipalities with regards to human settlements require a dynamic local government leadership that is ready to tackle this challenge.
The second issue that has arisen very sharply is related to the challenges around the beneficiary list. On a daily basis, we are getting reports from beneficiaries and other stakeholders that there are reasons to believe the beneficiary list is manipulated at local government level. Our policies are clear that a municipality ensures and manages the prioritisation, sign-up and allocation of households. What is also concerning is that these reports increase when there is a change of leadership at a local level. There are beneficiaries that have been on the list since the mid-90s and up until today they have not received houses. The result is that in many instances, provinces have now taken over that responsibility.
The third issue which is a key weakness that we must confront is the alignment of planning, funding and development of housing. At the National sphere, what we are continually confronted with is the lack of planning and funding alignment. All across our country, we find blocked projects, houses constructed with no access to water and sanitation or the inability of households to access title deeds. These challenges arise as a result of the failures in the alignment, primarily between the provincial and municipal spheres.
In light of the issues I have just mentioned, the Department of Human Settlements with the endorsement of MINMEC, has decided to prioritise the following areas in coming financial year:
• Unblocking of blocked projects.
• Eliminating asbestos roofs across provinces, which is a critical health issue.
• Increasing the pace of provision of title deeds to rightful property owners, prioritizing the pre-1994 stock.
• Eliminating (dilapidated) mud houses, especially in the rural areas (prioritizing the elderly and child-headed households)
• Digitization of the beneficiary list to make it more reliable, transparent, easily accessible and avoid fraud and corruption
In the financial year 2022/23, we will introduce new interventions to address policy implementation challenges and these includes the following:
• The structure of the HSDG has been reconfigured to allow for delivery of Bulk infrastructure for up to 30% of the grant especially in rural provinces.
• In financial year 2022/23, we will start implementing front-loading in two provinces, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape, which will allow us to significantly increase the scale of housing delivery in a short space of time.
• The FLISP programme has been expanded to include the rural areas permission to occupy (PTO) Government Employee Housing Scheme, housing loans supported by the Employer-Assisted Housing Scheme and Cooperatives or Community-based Schemes, such as Stokvels. The programme has been
• revised to target households whose total monthly income is from R3 501 up to R22 000.
• Intervention in disaster areas has been reconfigured to include fast-tracking of repairs through a voucher system and also allow provinces and metros to utilize available funds from HSDG and ISUP to intervene in dealing with the damages.
• Social housing policy has been revised to enable the expansion of the target market for households earning from R1850 to R22 000 gross monthly income, as opposed to the previous qualification criteria for household income from R1500 to R15 000.
We also recognise that the enormity of the task ahead, requires us to strengthen our capacity to implement and monitor human settlements activities across the country. Thus, we have established a national human settlements War-Room which will be headed by Mr Dan Gorbachev Mashitisho, the former Director-General of the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
In urban municipalities, there is growing recognition of the importance of the social housing sector to South Africa’s ability to deal with fast-paced urbanization, rising inequality, urban poverty, and spatial fragmentation. Social housing is the only state-subsidized form of housing that can achieve the desired densities to support spatial transformation, public transport efficiency and urban inclusivity. South Africa is facing an unprecedented rate of urbanization, especially in four city regions – Gauteng, Cape Town, eThekwini and Nelson Mandela Bay. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and Statistics South Africa estimate that by 2030, 71.3% of the South African population will live in urban areas, reaching nearly 80% by 2050. This means that planning for human settlements needs to take these developments in consideration when planning for future developments.
In the social housing sector there is great opportunity of crowding-in private sector investments. By providing land and incentives such as the elimination of the excessive red tape, municipalities can drive the increase of public/private initiatives in the development of social housing.
In municipalities that rely mainly on grants, human settlements development is an important element of creating economic activities that can stimulate job creation and
other value chain economic benefits. Managed well, human settlements development in these municipalities can facilitate entrepreneurship and skills development that could become an anchor for economic development in economically depressed areas. This means that in terms of human settlements, there is a need for a mind shift from looking at these developments only from a perspective of social development to embracing them as major facilitators for infrastructure investment and economic development.
In this regard, the National Department of Human Settlements comprises a number of entities with a mandate for skills development. The Housing Development Agency, National Home Builders Registration Council and Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority, have a multiplicity of training programmes that municipalities develop skills for young people and women in their localities.
For the collaborative relationship between the National Department of Human Settlements and the local government to yield the desired results, there needs to be non-negotiables without which we will continue to underperform. These includes the following:
• Change of political leadership in a municipality should not be accompanied by change in housing beneficiary list.
• Change in leadership should not mean a change in housing project priorities.
• Planning in municipalities should improve so that issues such as zoning does not become a source of delay for provision of houses.
• There should not be unnecessary delays in township establishment approvals, for subsidised housing projects
• Municipal response time to disaster areas needs to improve.
It is important that as South Africans we note that the Freedom Charter adopted in 1955, was visionary and laid the basis of the concept of the development of integrated and sustainable human settlements. Amongst other things, the Freedom Charter said: “There shall be houses, security and comfort – All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security.”
Working together we can make this vision a reality.
I thank you
Source: Government of South Africa