CLOSING REMARKS ON BEHALF OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN MINISTER OF HOUSING, DR LINDIWE SISULU, DELIVERED BY KWAZULU-NATAL MEC FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT, HOUSING AND TRADITIONAL AFFAIRS, MR MICHAEL MABUYAKHULU, ON THE OCCASION OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ORGANISED BY SDI AND HOSTED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING
11-12 OCTOBER 2008
Programme Director
The President of Shack/Slum Dwellers International, Mr Jockin Arputham;
Esteemed delegates from various countries and organizations;
Senior government officials;
Ladies and Gentlemen
On behalf of the government of South Africa and the Department of Housing, it gives us enormous pleasure to have played a role in this watershed workshop whose aim is, through housing, to create a better world. Our gratitude goes out to Slum Dwellers International (SDI) who approached us to host this international workshop. This gesture, proves beyond doubt that partnerships already exist between the government and slum dwellers. This, we believe, is a partnership that is a necessary prerequisite for future collaborative endeavours between ourselves.
Over the past two days, we have risen above our narrow interests and, understanding the need to create a better world, sought to work together for the common good of all of our people particularly slum dwellers. This, on its own, is an extraordinary feat, a feat which will be recorded as a gigantic leap forward in the struggle to create a better world.
Programme Director, allow us, at this stage, to cast our eyes back and reflect on the path travelled.
We are on record as saying that we want to eradicate all our slums by 2014 and yes, we are aware that this is a very big task. This is the reason that when the Department informed us that the Slum Dwellers International had requested our national Department of Housing to host this workshop, we enthusiastically supported the request. As we have said on many public platforms, the provision of good quality shelter to replace slums, to give our people back their dignity, is a collective responsibility. And yes, that includes the slum and shack dwellers themselves.
The second reason that we welcomed this workshop is that it will afford all of us present here (governments and slum dwellers) an opportunity to influence the agenda for the eradication of slums at the World Urban Forum, later this year. The workshop has chosen to focus on important topics for the breakaway sessions and to document best practices. Today, we have a tangible plan that will help us in South Africa and others, who have joined the fight to give the poor and the homeless their dignity back.
This workshop is taking place in a rapidly urbanizing world, where inaction on slums could mean that the number of slum dwellers will grow to 1.5 billion by 2020 (according to UN-Habitat estimates). But trend is not destiny. This will only happen if there is no significant intervention to improve low-income households’ access to adequate housing with secure tenure and good provision for water and sanitation. But this significant intervention must also go far beyond the current international goal. The Millennium Development Goal 7, target 11 seeks “to achieve by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers.” But this meets only 11% of existing needs and only 7% of future estimated needs by 2020. In other words by 2020, 1.4 billion will still be living in slums.
It is for this reason that this workshop, among many discussion topics, seriously considered what all of us can do at the World Urban Forum in November to draw attention to this fact. More importantly, we sought to ask what are governments doing to translate the MDG targets into implementable policy that really does ‘significantly improve’ the lives of slum dwellers. In this context, we also raised the dual challenge of:
a) Improving living conditions of the poorest of the poor and
b) Improving lower-income groups’ access to appropriate housing and so prevent the growth of future slums and unauthorised settlements.
The task to provide those living in slums and shacks with adequate housing is challenging enough. But just this is not enough. We also need to provide alternatives to the mushrooming of future slums. To provide low-income households with a safe, legal alternative to building their shacks in a settlement that is illegal. This dual approach is non-negotiable, if all of us are going to make a significant and lasting difference.
Key to all of this is to recognise the role of the poor and slum dwellers themselves. Too often, we identify stakeholders as civil society groups, the private sector and government, without ensuring the voice of the poor is heard and given full participation rights. We also forget the knowledge and collective capacities that the poor can bring. Hence, this workshop organised by the Slum Dwellers International bringing together the poor, civil society and government is significant and sets the ‘bar’ for how governments and international agencies develop and implement policies to achieve the MDG. We need to carry this principle to the World Urban Forum and beyond.
The second principle that we need to highlight is that the provision of adequate housing and sustainable human settlements is a collective responsibility of the rich north and the poor south, including not only governments but also private sector and civil society groups. Without acceptance of this principle, many poor countries of the south will never, ever get out the ‘slum and poverty trap.’
All of you will be aware of the strategies to improve the lives of the poor and provide access to adequate shelter in your respective countries. These strategies range from those promoted by the World Bank (slum and squatter upgrading and site and services) to providing title deeds to new housing developments. We also know that these need to work with inclusive citywide development or, as we in South Africa call it, “Integrated Human Settlements.” This means combining in situ upgrading and new settlement development. Each strategy will have success stories; but most will also have hurdles and challenges. We can learn from successful strategies – but must also remember that success in any nation or city depends on adapting this to local conditions and possibilities. Success also depends on real dialogue and partnerships with those living in slums. Of course, this must include strategies to allow slum dwellers options to move out of existing conditions into new settlements.
A key challenge is how do we address the fact that in most cities, a high proportion of all slum dwellers are on the urban periphery. This can mean high costs for upgrading – as these settlements are far from existing trunk infrastructure – and of course high transport costs for their inhabitants.
In South Africa, soil conditions and densities determine our response to re-settlement versus in-situ upgrading. Our history of resettlement is full of poor people being shunted to city peripheries. We inherited apartheid spatial planning and we must also acknowledge that for some time into our democracy, we continued to focus on building houses on land previously designated as ‘black’ and continued in-situ upgrading of slums inherited from apartheid. South Africa’s ten-year review of practice and policy led my government to move from delivering houses to human settlements including a prescription of the housing standard. Perhaps our greatest challenge continues to be how to provide land in locations that serve low-income groups – close to work and services - at an affordable price. And, we are aware that this is a challenge for most if not all of you present here today.
Before we move off the topic of in-situ upgrading, we want to acknowledge that this strategy creates the least disruption to social networks and job opportunities. However, the real cost with respect to soil re-habitation and ‘retro-fitting’ slums with services can be very high. This may be a challenge for countries in the south. In addition, there is the matter of social stigma, an unfortunate reality in the world that we live in. Our Brazilian colleagues will be able to share their experiences on this matter with us as they have undertaken large studies that show that living in a slum even after it has improved has adverse implications for certain type of jobs. Employers associate slums with crime and violence. Hence the hesitancy to recruit from these areas. Policy makers need to be aware that direct interventions will continue to be needed that emphaise the new neighbourhood attributes. Perhaps the use of the strategy popularised by de Soto, which encourages formal institutions to accept as collateral, dwelling units from these areas. This will greatly assist in a natural conversion or transition from a slum to a formal residential area.
A key role for all governments is to stimulate the supply of low cost, well-located land for housing. This has been the approach of the Tunisian government over the last 30 years and helps explain why such a small proportion of Tunisia’s population live in slums. In South Africa, we have chosen the route of establishing the Housing Development Agency (HDA) and have developed an ‘Inclusionary Housing Policy’ to do just that. Increasingly, others have argued for measures to prevent the expulsion of low-income earners from high-income residential areas. This can be done by requiring private developers to provide a fixed number of affordable units as a condition for being granted commercial land sub-division rights. This is the approach adopted by the Mumbai authorities. It is also used in the UK. Another way to address this issue is to require new housing developments to provide a portion of the land for building affordable units, in return for the provision of municipal services. I must say that I like this approach as it reinforces the point that the provision of housing for the poor and infirm is a collective responsibility.
Before we touch on the declaration, we want to say a few words about the culture of savings and of finance in general. We know we are speaking to the converted in this audience, as savings are a key SDI ritual. Savings underpin all the national slum dweller federations that make up SDI. UN Habitat tells us that almost 70 – 95% of all new housing developments in the south have been in informal settlements. We think this may be different in South Africa, but the point is that this is not so in the north. One key reason is the inability to access credit. The SDI ritual of savings has allowed it to ‘specialise’ in community-managed micro-credit. The approach is incremental and uses revolving loans with low monthly payments. The only guarantee is a mutual guarantee from all participants within that particular savings scheme. In addition, this SDI ritual:
- Encourages a culture of regular savings;
- The borrower is very close to the loan collection and approval ‘institution’;
- Borrowings and repayments are adjusted to suit the type of income of the earner; and
The support of an environment that is socially, culturally and politically favourable to the borrower.
In addition, as the savings groups learn to save together, they learn to manage finance together. Which so often leads to a capacity to plan upgrading or new house development together.
All of us here have a responsibility to encourage savings because:
a) It encourages the individual to take individual responsibility for the provision of own housing, thereby contributing to collective responsibility;
b) It will encourage the formal financial institution to accept “social guarantee” for start up loans and eventually the use of the home as collateral for bigger loans.
It is well nigh impossible for government to meet the demands of all those who need housing. But with active government strategies, individual and collective savings can help to meet the shelter needs of the poor and homeless.
What is this workshop going to take to the next World Urban Forum to draw attention to the rapid growth of slum populations? Or, more importantly, what governments and other stakeholders must do to translate the MDG targets into implementable policy that means a rapid decrease in the number of slum dwellers, not a rapid increase.
Allow me, Programme Director, to respond to these questions by quoting extracts from the Durban Declaration, a copy of which I think all of us have got, stemming from this workshop. Among other key issues adopted by this workshop, this workshop has unanimously agreed that we need to recognise that all stakeholders be accountable to each other. Understanding the reality that all the stakeholders are gunning for the same goal, this means that aid agencies our development finance institutions, our governments and non governmental organizations must work in unison to achieve this goal of creating a better world for our people who are living in slum conditions around the world.
This workshop has also agreed that we need to foster development with, and not for the urban poor. This means that whatever well meaning our intentions are of improving the lot of slum dwellers, if we don’t work hand in hand with them they will not be successful. This also means that the manner of engagement should be conducive to finding solutions rather than apportioning blame. All of us must be honest in our dealings.
This workshop has taken a firm resolve to minimise the conditions that lead to land invasions and evictions. This means that all of us have a duty act responsibly and within the law. If we fail to do this, the practice of shack farming will continue unabated and will undermine our collective effort to address the challenge of slums.
While we welcome the slum dwellers organising themselves into formations in order to advance their cause, this does not mean that those slum dwellers who, for whatever reasons, are not part of such formations should be denied access to financial institutions, government departments and other bodies that can help alleviate their plight. Out of the misery of the slum dwellers should not emerge organisations that act as gatekeepers and are a power unto themselves. We cannot hog misery for personal gain.
This workshop also resolved that particularly financial institutions should come to the party in a significant in order to help address the issue of slums. We all, including lending institutions, have a moral responsibility to do our fair share in addressing the situation. We do need a drastic change of mindsets in this regard.
We have also resolved that incremental housing, taking into account such aspects as pro-poor legal, policy and procedural reforms, should be one of our focal points.
Programme Director, as we had said earlier on, we did not aim to repeat each and every point contained in the Durban Declaration but highlight those points which we think are salient.
We emerge from this Workshop better than when we started yesterday. We have been able, through honest dialogue, to find one another. In the process, we have also discovered that we have more commonalities than differences. We would not have discovered this, if had not taken time to sit down and talk.
We go to China with a new-found belief that the challenges before us are not insurmountable. We go to China understanding that the plight of slum dwellers is more pressing and more critical than semantics and personal egos. May this spirit of unity in action and intellectual maturity permeate all our acts and utterances as we engage in the critical task of building a just world.
Finally, we want to pay special tribute to the Office of the Minister, the Department and the International Secretariat for organising this workshop. We also wish to thank all the delegates coming from all the corners of the world who took part in the historic workshop. As we draw down the curtain to this workshop we do so with more than a sense of satisfaction, for we know that the millions of our people around the world who are living in slums have a reason to have hope that the dawn of a better world is in the offing.