Nothima Kala’s house stands proud, and serves as a symbol of a new beginning for the Joe Slovo Informal Settlement near Port Elizabeth’s KwaDwesi Township. After all the 75-year-old pensioner built her first home assisted by her neighbours.  The house stands tall as one of the many houses built under Federation of the Urban (and Rural) Poor (FEDUP) programme aimed to facilitating the building of houses by communities.

FEDUP is supported by the Government PHP programme which provides funds to communities through a registered association for training, project management and the overall building of houses.

The programme also encourages communities to save and build their houses together. By working together the communities gain skills as most of the construction work is done by the members themselves. The interaction of the community while building their houses has a positive ripple effect of bringing them closer to each other and thus reducing crime and other social ills.

FEDUP is represented in all nine provinces and has helped communities build 20 000 houses in South Africa since 1996.

FEDUP administers the daily and monthly savings of members, and to date have R10 million from its 80 000 members, which has an estimated impact to over 500 000 beneficiaries.

They are hoping to repeat their successes at the Joe Slovo Informal Settlement through their streamlining of a savings facility that will see 1 600 residents of the Joe Slovo Informal Settlement, owning their own houses by the end of 2007.

FEDUP helps the beneficiaries choose house plans they can afford and invite the local authorities for quality inspections. The NGO is also responsible for communicating the various phases of projects to relevant authorities.

Joe Slovo community members are determined to have 300 houses complete by May 2007. The initiative is in fact a second phase into what began more than eight years ago, with some bureaucratic delays preventing further development.

The community has 320 land owners; other residents were given land by the Communal Property Association.

The community managed to build 120 houses in 1998 with FEDUP’s help, but there were delays as a division among them themselves occurred on whether they needed to hand over their land ownership to the local Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. The municipality could not provide basic services to private land owners.

This meant 359 sites were left incomplete, at either a foundation or structure level, and some original members fell away as they died or were unemployed.

They eventually agreed to retain ownership and hired a private engineer to provide water and sewerage infrastructure and asked for a proposal to be done for housing development.

FEDUP revived the project of completing the homes and created a new fund for savings named the Urban Poor Fund (UPF), which broke away from the original Utshani Fund, which is also administered by the NGO.

The Joe Slovo Informal Settlement model of saving towards their average 56 square meter houses -which have two bedrooms, lounge and bathroom, and costs an average  R30 000 to build the houses-are daily savings with no minimum or maximum setting to the UPF. The average daily saving is estimated by FEDUP to be R30, but people have been known to save as little as R1.

In addition to this all members are required to pay a compulsory once-off payment of R750, and an additional R5 monthly contribution to the UPF. Additional needs such as electricity are out sourced by the owner and not covered by the fund. The house is built on the original informal house site.

The rotating fund has a constant flow of capital, and thus ensures that everyone who has contributed will have their house. There are three signatories for each community to keep track of the savings by community members.  

The R750 enables the people to be bridged by the UPF to begin building their homes while they wait for their subsidy to be approved. The community saves on material costs by establishing long term agreements with suppliers in their bulk buying.

The houses need 20 community members to be built, and the group consists mainly of women. The builders are trained through Fedup’s Utshani Fund exchange programme.

Their biggest project has been the KwaZulu-Natal province Piesang River programme that had 1 000 double and triple story homes built on a previous informal settlement community. The houses range from 69-90 m2, depending on the affordability of the home owner.

 FEDUP South Africa Coordinator, Rose Molokoane said their biggest hurdle in achieving more of their goals has been delays in the releasing government subsidies by provincial and municipal departments of housing.

She sighted Joe Slovo as an example of how 960 subsidies (worth R37 000 each), had been approved last year but funds had not been provided.

“We would like the Department of Housing to release the subsidies quicker. It would enable us to cover the costs of building the houses and make the process quicker to finish.

“We find it difficult at the moment to complete homes as everything must be done according to the availability of our funds.

“What could be done perhaps is to fund a house as it is being built. Fedup could pay for the foundation and the top structure, could be funded by the department or if the house needs a roof that could be what the subsidy is released for.”

Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu recently acknowledged FEDUP’s work being part of the effective ways of ensuring housing delivery for South Africa’s poor communities.

Fedup’s Utshani Fund was awarded the Best Savings Group by the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) along with the Department of Housing.

Other NGO’s have also achieved ground breaking successes. Habitat for Humanity-South Africa (HFHSA), have built more than 1 700 houses in 18 communities in the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal; Gauteng and the North West Province. The effort has seen 10 000 people owning their own houses. The beneficiaries are required to pay back their no interest charged Habitat Loan, and help build their houses along with volunteers. The money paid by beneficiaries goes to the Fund for Humanity to help others.

Irish Philanthropist Niall Mellon through the Niall Mellon Township Initiative (NMTI) has also contributed to sustainable housing in South Africa. The NMTI encourages international and local volunteers to contribute and help build houses in informal settlements.

The Department of Human Settlements has managed to build more than two million houses in 12 years, with an annual churn out of 250 000 houses. With the backlog estimated at 2, 4 million the government has realised that public and private partnerships are crucial in meeting their objective of having a “nation free of slums by 2014.”

Author: Xolile Bhengu

Edited by: Ndivhuwo Mabaya

For more information contact: Monwabisi Maclean on 082 88 22 962

                                                      Chief Director Communications

                                                      National Department of Human Settlements