KEY NOTE ADRESS BY LN SISULU MINISTER OF HOUSING AT THE CEREMONY TO LAUNCH THE SOLOMON MAHLANGU HOUSING PROJECT

Master of Ceremonies
MEC for Local Government, Housing and Traditional Affairs, Sam Kwelita
The Executive Mayor, Nceba Faku
The Deputy Executive Mayor, Bicks Ndoni
Members of the Mayoral Committee
Honorable Councillors
The people of Uitenhage, and
Distinguished guests:

At the age of 19 Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu, was hanged by the apartheid regime after he had joined the rest of the people to defy apartheid legislations and policies and took up arms to fight for his dignity. For his entire life, he had not known peace. His conditions of living in Mamelodi, at the time, had precipitated the unavoidable. This is that from his youthful years Solomon Mahlangu was to continue to be an active participant in the struggle for a better life of his people. He was thus to know how to mobiliser. He distinguished clearly what it is that needed to be mobilized against, which was the discriminatory and racist policies of the apartheid regime.

I am informed that in 1994, obviously inspired by this courage and determination, as this community you decided put up a settlement and named it after this gallant youthful fighter of our liberation struggle. I am informed that in the true image of Solomon Mahlangu you organized yourselves and led a delegation to the then Uitenhage Transitional Local Council to declare this area a residential area. Having been convinced by yourselves the Council agreed and so as of 1995 plans were made to establish a township in the area, an area I am told was initial meant for business purposes. In consequence to your actions the area was electrified and water installed. Some of you went further to build their own houses (a total of 74). In the area already 229 houses have been completed and a further 33 are still under construction. I am told that by the end of April all the houses will be complete.

I am told that houses, for 48 women have been built, 59 for the youth and a single house for a disabled member of the community.

All the initiatives, therefore, have their origins in this community. The community mobilized. It negotiated. And it delivered. For me the actions are an apt, the most relevant and in fact most needed adaptation of the very old youth slogan of Learn, Fight and Produce. So in today’s circumstances we adapt the slogan to now read: Mobilise, Negotiate and Deliver!

It is useful to remember that the reasons that the youth such as Solomon Mahlangu, in whose image we now have fashioned our actions as a community, fought was to establish that which they did not have. They were combatants of peace and stability. They were driven by the conviction that the foundation to peace and stability lay in the complete removal of apartheid. Hence, against the background of CODESA in 1990 the youth committed itself to build peace by actively participating in the process of negotiations for the building of a united, non-racial and democratic South Africa.

What occasion the need for this spirit to continue, particularly with regard to the Nelson Mandela Metro, is the fact of the perseverance of poverty within the Metro that is associated with principally the lack of housing. The Metro, unlike any other Metros such as the Johannesburg and Tshwane experiences only mild population growth rates (of 0,7 percent per annum). It is this recognized as having made some headway, compared to other Metros, in providing low-cost housing to its population. The number of people resident in informal settlements rose by only 2,72 percent between 1996 and 2001. As it stands today, the Metros housing backlog is only over 70 000 units.

But tensions about housing delivery within the Metro still arise. To me, this could be directly attributable to the particular problem of backyard accommodation and the continued presence of shacks.

Through Project Consolidate, we have vowed as national government to help the Metro deal with this challenge. For indeed, there can be no dignity in staying in someone else’s backyard. There can be no full enjoyment of life and the niceties associated with democracy. Likewise, we can identify with the indignation that accompanies staying in a shack. We can identify with these challenges and problems because Solomon Mahlangu was himself mobilized by the African National Congress to fight against them. He was mobilized to fight and negotiate for peace within community for we knew that without peace and stability no development could be achieved.

The achievements that the Metro has made to date with regard to housing are the outcomes of the peace that was restored to this community after years of being in conflict with apartheid municipalities. The unique circumstance in which we found ourselves in today is that there is no real conflict with the institutional structures in place for as I have indicated all of us identify with the problems that are present here.

We identify with the squalor. We identify with the emotions that at times refuse to be patient a day longer when the promise of a better future makes its advances.

Thus, as happy as I am about the progress being made by the Metro in completing the development of Solomon Mahlangu I would like to re-emphasis the point that because of apartheid, ours is still a very long walk. This is what we all need to understand. This is what we all need to teach each other.

As the late Oliver Tambo was to say in 1984 in commemorating Solomon Mahlangu, the African National Congress achieved the status of being a force in the liberation struggle because on account of it being honest. He spoke eloquently about the realization that our people had that their own liberation lay in their own hands. And of this he said:

‘. . . the people inside South Africa have recognised that victory will come as a result of their struggle, their own efforts; as a result of their reliance on themselves. What they see across their borders tells them that this victory, of course is inescapable; that it is not going to be done by Mozambicans . . .’

This is the realisation that has come home to the minds of our people. And I think it is a very, very positive development, because we can do it.

When as government we promise today to strengthen local government we do so on account of what we realistically and honestly can achieve. When we call on communities to lend a hand and mobilize to do so we do so knowing that from our own collective experiences that is a real possibility. When communities name their settlements after the heroes and the heroines of our struggle, we know that they speak to what they honestly would like to achieve, collectively.

The possibilities for the Metro to advance further in its progress on housing will be created when as national government we had completed the review of all legislation that impact on the accelerated delivery of housing. For it is in such a review that collectively we will be able to adequately address issues concerning the rezoning and allocation of land and sufficiently clarify the responsibilities of municipalities. We will be able to deal with issues of accelerated housing delivery focusing on the concrete conditions of our people as each municipality experiences them.

Further possibilities will be occasioned by our growing expenditure on service delivery that the Minister of Finance indicated in the 2006 Budget. This, will, in addition, be accompanied by a substantial increase in capital investment that will be focused largely on infrastructure such as transport, telecommunications, hospitals and electricity. For housing, these are most relevant and critical indications pointing to that there indeed is hope. The investments tie in very neatly with the focus of our new strategy, the Comprehensive Plan on Sustainable Human Settlements that seeks to achieve fully integrated and economically active communities.

To these developments, I trust that as the community belonging to the Metro, we will all lend a hand. We will encourage and teach each other to take particular responsibilities with regard to looking after our homes. We will mobilize to identify applicable and realistic solutions within the community. In addition, we will help build houses.

Let me then congratulate the beneficiaries of this important project. To the eight beneficiaries whose subsidies I am told have just been approved by the Province, I would like to say, keep hope alive for only some few more days. Even though we may be delivering perhaps slowly, but all the little steps we take moving forward, will eventually overcome the obstacles and the challenges we are facing.

To the rest of you, I would like to add to this by saying there is no leadership that is as committed as the leadership in government to deliver to your needs. As government, in turn, we trust on yourselves to help us achieve the goal we have set ourselves of bringing a better life to all, and specifically, of eradicating all informal settlements by 2014.