CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
ADDRESS BY L N SISULU, MINISTER OF HOUSING AT THE OCCASION OF THE HANDOVER OF HOUSES AT ZANEMVULA
15 August 2008
Port Elizabeth
Mr M Sogoni, Premier of the Eastern Cape
Mr T Mhlahlo, MEC for Housing and Safety & Liaison
Ms N Maphazi, Executive Mayor of Nelson Mandela Metro
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Today is a very special occasion to welcome our new MEC into the housing family. We face enormous challenges in the Eastern Cape and the time frames of our delivery schedule are so incredibly tight that it is good to see that an experienced MEC has been given to us to tackle this very challenging portfolio. I would also like the Premier to convey our sincerest gratitude to MEC Xasa, with whom we have been involved in this pilot project.
I am glad that we are finally making headway in the Zanemvula Housing Project and I am glad that the people who will be housed in Zanemvula are finally benefiting after such a long wait. It is worth mentioning, especially for the benefit of the new MEC, that the people of this area have been the most cooperative and supportive of government initiatives I have come across. They have embraced the Zanemvula Housing Project and made it their own.
The Zanemvula project is one of four national projects intended to test, in context, the applicability of the policies we adopted in 2004. On 16 July 2007, I, together with the then MEC for Housing, Local Government and Traditional Affairs MEC, Ms Thoko Xasa and the Executive Mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, Ms Nondumiso Maphazi signed an agreement to fast track the implementation of the Zanemvula human settlement project.
We further agreed to appoint Thubelisha Homes as a specialist project management company and also to deploy officials from the National Department of Housing to strengthen and support the implementation of the Municipality’s Human Settlement Strategy, to deal with Zanemvula project. The appointment of Thubelisha was done after little progress was achieved since the project’s inception at the beginning of 2006.
The agreement is guided by the Cabinet decision that provides for mega projects to be managed by Special Purpose Vehicles, and lessons learnt on the implementation of the National Human Settlement pilot project (N2 Gateway Project in the City of Cape Town) on coordination of intergovernmental projects and fast tracking decision-making processes.
The Zanemvula Human Settlement Project is the biggest human settlement project in the Eastern Cape and one of the biggest in the country. The project will deliver approximately 15 000 units with basic social and economic amenities providing decent shelter to more than 90 000 people at a cost of more than R1 Billion spread over three years.
The three spheres of Government also agreed that a joint team led by a senior official from the National Department of Housing will be deployed in Nelson Mandela Bay to assist with building capacity, strengthening the human settlement delivery systems and providing technical and project management support to deal with the Zanemvula project.
The Zanemvula project involves the relocation of families living in shacks below the Chatty River floodplain at Soweto-on-Sea and Veeplaas 12 kilometres away to shacks at a serviced site at Chatty above the floodplain, where fully subsidised houses are being built for them. Disaster struck the shackdwellers during 2006, when the shacks of the area were flooded up to their roofs.
Since August 2007, Thubelisha has relocated a total of 3 100 beneficiaries who lived below the floodplain. Most shacks have been demolished. The largest part of the area lies bare, but sportsfields and playgrounds have been erected in some areas where the shacks once stood in an attempt to prevent people from re-erecting shacks there. However, 500-800 people still need to be relocated.
Those who have already relocated are now involved in an in-situ development at Chatty 3 and 4. They’re in the process of moving from the new shacks into new BNG homes. Close to 100 people have already moved in. About 300 hundred of the 1 687 houses being built there are completed and the target is to have 400 completed homes by August 15.
At another site, Bethelsdorp Phase 2, 1211 homes are under construction. They are meant for backyarders and shackdwellers still remaining behind in Soweto-on-Sea and Veeplaas, but who have been living above the floodline. They will not be relocated from old to new shacks, but will be moved directly from their old shacks into permanent houses.
As part of today’s launch, we’ll be handing over 1 000 new homes to beneficiaries - 500 in Chatty 3 and 4 and 500 in Bethelsdorp Phase 2. The developers aim to deliver the second batch of 1 000 homes before December and the third by January. The project also involves the de-densification and upgrading of other areas, including parts of Veeplaas and Soweto-on-Sea that are above the floodline, but this is yet to start. The target is to complete rectification by November 2008.
The homes in these areas were built by PHP in 2001 and the sites are too small. Thubelisha is in the process of appointing a contractor to create reasonable space between the houses. Each site should be between 100 and 200 square meters big. A 150 square meter site is considered a reasonable space to build a 40 sq meter house in.
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The rectification of 600 homes at the site called Chatty 600 continues. They were meant for beneficiaries, but have to be rebuilt, some in their entirety, as a result of structural defects and bad workmanship that made the foundations crack and the walls crack and cave in. The rectification is happening slowly. Constant inspections are being held and extra caution is being exercised to ensure there are no defects this time around.
The imminent hand-over of 1 000 properly-built homes is causing great excitement in the Eastern Cape. Considering that Thubelisha has taken over for only a year, there’s reason for optimism. I am informed that even city councilors, who have opposed the project in the past, now stand behind it.
We have learned a great deal from this project, especially about the capacity of our ability to deliver and about the capacity of our partner, the developers, to deliver on the scale that is required. We also had the chance to test the community’s response to our work and our relationship with the community.
We have significantly learned that the relationship with the community is absolutely essential, because this project is a joint responsibility of both sides, ie ourselves and the community. While we prioritise them and they are therefore the first to benefit, they in turn are required to exercise a great deal of patience and understandably, because this being a testing ground, it does throw up a great deal of inconvenience to the community.
But it is not only about government’s responsibility. The community also has a responsibility.
Today we are handing houses over to Nomathemba Ngqmba, Buyiswa Sylvia Saki, Gladys Nondala, Lunga Xakayi, Nopasile Gloria Mgibe, Bulelwa Mavis Nhleka and Belinda Jacobs. These houses symbolises the great strides we have made in providing housing opportunities to our people.
I thank you
[Editors Note: Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu also said that no government elsewhere in the world gave out free houses. The Minister asked the beneficiaries to take care of their homes and not to sell or rent them. The law prohibits any recipient of government subsidsed homes to sell for a period of 8 years.
Those involved in the Zanemvula Human Settlement Project include the following contractors: DF Construction, Mbumba Construction and Abafazi Construction and the service providers are Zikhona Bricks, Concrete For You, Uphala Roofing and VW.
The beneficiaries are:
Nomathemba Ngqma, Buyiswa Sylvia Saki, Gladys Nondala, Lunga Xakayi, Nopasile Vivian Bule, Nontsikeleleo Gloria Mgibe, Bulelwa Mavis Mhlekwa,
Belinda Jacobs, Veronique Claassen, Errol Fortuin, Lean Mienie, Alethea Bernadette Flanagan and Diane Magdalene Campbell]
For further information, please call Marianne Merten, MLO, 078 801 9069