MEDIA STATEMENT

 HOUSING MINISTER HOSTS THE ANNUAL GOVAN MBEKI HOUSING AWARDS TO CELEBRATE ACHIEVEMENTS AND EXCELLENCE

IN THE HOUSING SECTOR, 10 OCTOBER 2008, DURBAN, ICC

 

  

South Africa, Pretoria. To celebrate excellence in housing delivery, The National Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu will host the annual Govan Mbeki Housing Awards at the Durban, ICC on 10 October 2008.

The awards were established to honour and give recognition to all key role players in the housing sector, whom their work has contributed in the department’s efforts to house the more than 9 million poor South Africans in affordable human settlements.

 These awards are aimed at celebrating those in the sector who work tirelessly to house the unfortunate and to motivate others to strive to build quality sustainable communities and also partner with Government in the implementation of Breaking New Ground Plan and the fast tracking of housing delivery to the poor.

 Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said “worldwide and in all spheres of society, public reward is given for outstanding performance. Society uses the reward system to propel itself to higher levels”.

Thus through the Govan Mbeki Housing Awards, recognition is also given to the late Govan Mbeki as an empathiser with the people whose cause he fought for. 

After joining the editorial board of New Age in 1954, Govan Mbeki lambasted the moral depravity of apartheid, particularly the Bantu Authorities Act, by focussing on the conditions in which black people lived.

 In 1956, as an activist, Govan Mbeki had steeped in theory that, the basis of the South African economy then, was the exploitation of an unsettled labour, with no home, a labour that can be directed along certain channels as water is diverted to run along certain furrows, a labour that had no secure tenure and was always on the move.

 Therefore, through the departments annual Govan Mbeki Housing Awards, recognition and honour is bestowed to all the role players in the housing value chain who through their work, seek to change this phenomenon created by the Apartheid spatial planning by providing a decent home for South Africans.

 In the first phase of the awards, all provincial housing departments held their respective Govan Mbeki Housing Awards to honour and award excellence in housing delivery. All the winners of the provincial Govan Mbeki Housing Awards automatically qualified for the National Award ceremony which consists of 10 categories, namely

  1. Provincial Department of the year
  2. Municipality of the year
  3. Metropolitan of the year
  4. Contractor in a Difficult Terrain
  5. Social Housing Institution of the Year
  6. Woman Builder of the Year
  7. Non-Subsidy Builder of the Year
  8. Subsidy Builder of the Year
  9. Historically disadvantaged builder of the year and the
  10. Ministerial Merit Award

These awards provide an opportunity for sharing information, lessons learnt, the strengthening of existing and the development of new partnerships and the replication of successful initiatives. 

Issued by the Department of Housing on 06 October 2008

For more information contact Ndivhuwo Mabaya on 083 645 7838

ENDS