EDITORIAL | Our challenge to government: get your housing in order

The Western Cape government last week promoted an initiative called the “Better Living Challenge” to address a growing housing backlog. In essence, the provincial government is acknowledging it would be near impossible to continue building and supplying RDP houses to catch up with a 400,000 backlog in Cape Town. In return, however, the government undertakes to provide residents in informal settlements with “serviced sites”, which in any functioning democracy should be a given.

“The growing housing backlog ... due to significant population growth has resulted in a shift in national government policy from the provision of RDP houses as the principle solution, to an incremental approach that supports the provision of serviced sites,” it explained in a carefully worded statement. “Practically ... the majority of people on the housing list will have to wait a very long time for a top structure.”

While it is laudable that the provincial government is frank enough to admit its housing failures, its solution illustrates just how far the provincial and national governments have fallen behind on housing targets and how desperate the situation has become. 

No matter how politicians spin it, proper housing for all South Africans remains one of our country’s biggest headaches and there is no easy solution. Malema is zooming in on one of the government’s greatest failures, while the Western Cape government is desperately clutching at straws to try to come up with a presentable plan. 

The really contentious part of the Western Cape project is its announcement that it “aims to assist residents with self-build skills and knowledge. This knowledge can then be used to build improved structures within informal settlements.” The provincial government will help shack dwellers to build better shacks, complete with a 13-part video series. Perhaps well intended, but this must be one of the lowest points in SA’s human settlements history: a government proudly presenting a plan to “empower” its people to continue living in poverty, only in better shacks, built by themselves.  

At the other end of the scale is EFF leader Julius Malema, ever the political opportunist, who on Women’s Day announced his party, if elected as government, would provide “quality, spacious houses to all people”, an impossibility of preposterous proportions.

No matter how politicians spin it, proper housing for all South Africans remains one of our country’s biggest headaches and there is no easy solution. Malema is zooming in on one of the government’s greatest failures, while the Western Cape government is desperately clutching at straws to try to come up with a presentable plan. 

Former human settlements minister Lindiwe Sisulu did not survive the last cabinet reshuffle; her portfolio was given to Mmamoloko Kubayi, the former tourism minister who admirably stood in as health minister while corruption allegations swirled around Zweli Mkhize’s head. The DA’s Emma Powell wrote on Politicsweb that this department had been used for too long as a “tool to build and reward political patronage networks, with little genuine regard for the needs of the country’s poorest”.

That’s a true story, but so is the DA-run Western Cape government’s condescending “Better Living Challenge”. It is time our leaders go back to basics and focus on serving the country’s people. Adequate housing is a basic human right enshrined in our constitution. That means our government must not only create safe living spaces that provide shelter from the elements, but ones that also offer residents access to water and sanitation. Let’s hope Kubayi is the right person to get us back on track.