Chairperson,
Respected delegates from the various components of the Black Management Forum
Invited guests
Comrades, friends
Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have been here before, only that was to a smaller grouping. I sought then to exchange views with the Black Management Forum on how we could jointly seek a solution to the common problems we as government have in housing. I asked the Black Management Forum to help devise strategies to tackle this. After a few polite noises, I was packed off with a great deal of promise that indeed the combined black middle class think tank would forthwith be seized with these weighty issues that give me sleepless nights. My sleepless nights have only been exacerbated by the anticipation that any day I would be offered a solution so profound and yet so simple that I would wonder why I did not think of it myself. The bated breath has kept me awake and, alas, my misery continues, and I wait.  

But being an eternal optimist, I have had to convince myself that there is always a second time. So, I try again.

My request, very simply, we have a problem, one that must have a solution and the solution lies with us. I would like you to join me find it, and I am emboldened to go further this time, after we have found it, I ask you to come along with me and make it possible. And so to completely misquote the poet WB Yeats, here is my second coming, with passionate intensity.  

In the eleventh year of our democracy the pelting of the stones and the menacing fire of the burning tyre whose dark and filthy smoke make purpose for the indignant to strike, have returned a spectre displeasure towards a democracy that had been born.  

The repulsive conditions of squalor, of the concentrations of filth and refuse where the weakest and the poor conduct their daily struggles of survival in marked contrast to the soothing and laconic attitude of the hilly and the majestic urban quarters of the rich has come to drown our innocence. From the teeming backyards of Nyanga and the misery of farm labourers who suffer intermittent evictions from their places of labour the pitiless gaze of despair and abject poverty warns us about an impending doom. And yet, one that can be easily averted. 

What naturally troubles our sight is the acceptance that our nation has truly conferred full political and constitutional rights to all, but for a better life for a few. Thus, we come to the realisation that ten years of democracy now fall foul of becoming ‘vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle’.  

A few months ago, we all witnessed the tragic events that took place in Zimbabwe over the evictions of slum dwellers in the cities. The following is the conclusion that the United Nations special envoy, Dr. Anna Tibaijuka, arrived at over the events:

“Africa has the dubious distinction of being the fastest urbanizing continent in the world as it experiences the greatest influx of rural dwellers into urban areas the continent has ever known.  The annual average urban growth rate is 4%, twice as high as Latin America and Asia…..

In a process known as the urbanisation of poverty, more and more people are seeking a better life in towns and cities in Africa…..

Indeed, this shift toward increasing urbanization is a normal and irreversible progression of human development. Migration to the cities is an economic process that is not reversible in a democracy….

The underlining principle in dealing with the challenge is that emphasis should be given to a pre-emptive approach that is directed to guiding and facilitating orderly urban and housing development….”  

In our case, a total of approximately 2,4 million households lives in informal housing structures. From census data we know that of these households about 400,000 are living in some form of structure in the backyard of a property owned by someone else. About another 1 million live in a shack or informal structure on their ‘own’ stand – rented. About 740,000 of these 1, 4 million households are renting their dwelling – suggesting that of the 1 million or so living on their ‘own’ stand in informal settlements, about one third are renting the land and/or the dwelling. Of the 2, 4 million informally housed households; about 800,000 are on the approved housing subsidy list and still waiting for their homes. This suggests that there is about 1, 6 million households who are in some way not formally part of the programmes to access subsidies to obtain formal housing.  

The level of demand is growing constantly, raising the question as to how government should be acting in a context where there is both a backlog and a growing level of demand for formal housing through urbanization and new household formation. The nature and challenges of serving this demand are different for households in different circumstances – be it urban or rural, the employed or unemployed, the formally or informally employed, and at different levels of income.  

The supply side story is in some ways a complex one. It is clear that Government has facilitated, through its subsidy programme, the delivery of 1, 7 million houses since 1994. Yet, there have in the process of this delivery experience, been a wide set of issues that have been surfaced. Critical issues that are raised in this regard concern the lack of availability of cheap and appropriately located land, lack of capacity in government and the private sector, withdrawal of large construction companies from the affordable and low cost housing market, and the quality of housing supplied.  

It becomes very clear therefore that we are going nowhere very fast. Hence the need for innovative solutions, solutions that not only break the backlog but also are able to take us forward.  

On that account I would like you be part of the efforts of achieving the kind of development for all that will accelerate the growth potential of our economy to 6 percent within the next few years.  

Our struggle created such an awareness in us of our collective plight, so much so that  we had borne of struggle a layer of housing activism, concentrating their efforts on how housing or lack of it, to be more precise, continuously traps our people into an endless web of poverty. Our struggle has merely shifted focus from the achievement of the political and now we take up our cudgels against poverty – our new enemy.

If you consider through a house an asset is created, then we will all realize that we are missing out on a real possibility that this is an area of real grassroots empowerment. Through a house the poor have an opportunity to propel themselves out of poverty. There is now a truism that if you feed a man or woman, you stay his or her hunger for the day, but if you educate him or her you create an ability to stay his or her hunger for life. I would like to add that if you help give him or her a fundamental asset like a house not only do you empower him or her but you give him or her the kind of dignity whose value is incalculable.  

If I can create out of you a segment of housing activists then I will in some way have laid a solid foundation for our economy and its ability to create truly create a better life for all.  

I therefore invite you to become part of the social contract where your ideas could propel us into the future.  

You are an important part of our social partners. You come from the same conditions that our people find themselves in and therefore you would understand their plight better. No one else can hold up better hope and no one is better poised economically to make a difference.  

As I have always said my government and I belong to an organization which nearly 50 years ago conceptualized what now must happen in housing in South Africa. In you, we know we have a partner that will help us achieve the goals we set ourselves in the Freedom Charter when we vowed that in a free and democratic South Africa:  

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;

Unused housing space to be made available for the people;

Rent and prices shall be lowered.

Slums shall be demolished,

and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, creches and social centers;

Fenced Locations and ghettos shall be abolished.’

          I thank you.