Tough-talking Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has committed government to building 1.5-million low-cost houses over the next five years, telling the Human Settlements Indaba in Johannesburg on Wednesday that the State would achieve this target through the implementation of 50 catalytic megaprojects  that would each construct a minimum of 10 000 dwellings.

This would include the construction of 200 000 housing units in mining towns over the next three years.

“If we build these developments at scale, we’ll generate jobs and build sustainable supportive industries. These megaprojects will allow the three spheres of government to work together and hopefully the foot-dragging of municipal processes can be brought under the control of these three spheres working together,” she outlined.

Elaborating on the department’s ambitious 2019 objective, Human Settlements director-general Thabane Zulu told a lunchtime media briefing that the department had already begun work to identify the criteria of these large-scale projects and had accepted project proposals from the private sector in this regard.

“We currently have 80 [project] proposals that we are reviewing and, once we have narrowed these projects down, we can be more specific about their size and nature, as well as where they will be located.

“They will, however, be integrated with the department’s Breaking New Ground strategy,” he commented.

OVERACHIEVER
According to Sisulu, government had overshot its previous five-year housing target of one-million houses, delivering 1.2-million dwellings between 2009 and 2014.

This translated into 240 000 units a year, 20 000 units a month and 660 units a day. These units were delivered despite several impediments “of our own making”, which included an unresponsive, slow bureaucracy and an increasing backlog.

Sisulu attributed this success largely to the assistance government received from the banking sector, which, through the Banking Association of South Africa, had committed over R42-billion to the development of low-cost housing.

“For every major project, there was a bank ready to provide support, not only in the financial sense, but the banks, in fact, geared themselves towards establishing the necessary structures to have joint implementation capacity,” she enthused.

ADDITIONAL INTERVENTIONS
Sisulu, meanwhile, made several further commitments on behalf of government, informing delegates that it was in the process of creating a central national database of housing beneficiaries, based on records from the Department of Home Affairs and municipalities.

This database would replace municipal housing lists, which she believed were badly managed and susceptible to interference.

Government also committed to assisting the “struggling contractor” to access finance, stating that it would restructure the development finance institutions to make them more responsive to emerging entrepreneurs.

The State would further look to access land for low-income housing and ensure that housing applicants and developers were “helped through the bureaucratic maze” by the Housing Development Agency.

“We will further establish a dedicated unit in the department, headed by a deputy director-general, to ensure [that contractors] are paid on time. We have seen many frustrated contractors going under because of delays in payment. This should be behind you now and, [for this], we apologise.

“Should any contractor not be paid on time and the deputy director-general responsible not deal with it properly, his job will be given to someone else,” Sisulu cautioned, adding that an ombudsman’s office would be established to deal with issues of contention.

The department would also establish a number of forums overseen by members of the executive council through which contractors and the private sector could engage with stakeholders such as the Department of Water and Sanitation, State-owned energy utility Eskom, roads agencies and affected communities.

“This is to prevent a situation in which [the contractor] is faced with financial risks prior to the project being allocated electricity or water,” Sisulu noted.

Meanwhile, the department would be led by an integrated Master Spatial Plan that ensured that, by the time the various projects had been approved, the necessary bulk infrastructure was already in place.

Moreover, to leverage the employment creation potential of the envisaged megaprojects, Sisulu added that the department would harness the capacity of South Africa’s unemployed youth by testing the Cuban model of a ‘youth brigade’ at each site.

YOUTH EXCLUSIONS
While Sisulu outlined the efforts of government to narrow the housing gap, she cautioned against the adoption of a sense of entitlement when it came to the provision of free housing.

She resisted the creation of a culture of dependency, saying the policy adopted by the department would see the prioritisation of the elderly, child-headed households, military veterans and the indigent.

“We’re not prioritising young people at all. Anyone under the age of 40 will not be on our list,” Sisulu advised.

Wednesday’s event saw members of the private sector, government, civil society and advocacy groups signing the Second Social Contract for Rapid Housing Delivery, succeeding the initial compact signed by the parties in 2009.