[Reader-list] Shack settlements in Durban & 2010

[Priya Sen]

Relocation Elsewhere.

Also 2010 is when Durban will host the  FIFA Soccer World Cup.

Best,
Priya



Dear All


The article in this morning's *Mercury* (most of which is typed in below) is
quite significant. For years Abahlali have been told by Mlaba, Sutcliffe etc
that they have no right to protest because houses are being built and the
'slums will be cleared by 2010'. Sutcliffe has often gone on to state that
'nowhere else in the world are governments building houses for their people'
ignoring the fact that his housing policy is strikingly similar to that of
the apartheid government which also moved people out of shacks in and near
the cities and dumped them in formal townships outside the cities….



Abahlali has always said that basic maths shows the city's claim that it
will eradicate shacks by 2010 to be wildly impossible. For pointing out that
the Emperor is naked they have been called liars and subject to all kinds of
threats. In one instance the top officials in the Dept of MEC for Housing
interrupted a meeting to allege that someone who had pointed out in a
newspaper article that the city could not 'clear the slums by 2010' was
therefore a 'spy' working for a 'foreign government bent on destabilizing
the ANC'. That kind of language, along with all the paranoid and often
racist third force language, has justified the (illegal) banning of Abahlali
marches, arrests, beatings and even, twice, having the police physically
prevent them from appearing in the media. Not to mention the police murder
in Siyanda late last year.

Now the state has admitted that it cannot, at the rate at which it is
building houses, 'clear the slums' by either the national target of 2014 or
the eThekwini target of 2010. The Municipality are now finally admitting
what Abahlali have always said – which is something which any primary school
child with a knowledge of basic arithmetic or a calculator could have worked
out in a minute - is in fact the truth. The city's admission is hardly news
in the sense that everybody except them who cared to think about this matter
knew it already. But this public break with their previously fanatical
denialism and hubris with regard to their housing policy is important in one
crucial respect. That is that since Abahlali began its struggle in March
2005 they have been told that there can be no investment in any of the
settlements in Durban because it will be a waste as they will 'all be
cleared by 2010'. This hasn't been much comfort to people who, like
Nonhlanhla Mzobe from Kennedy Road, have lived their whole lives (in her
case more than 30 years) in 'temporary' settlements. Just two weeks ago the
notorious Councillor Yakoob Baig was using this very line to try and stop a
tiny step forward in Kennedy Road.

Claiming that there can be no development in temporary settlements to excuse
the abandonment of the poor by the left arm of the municipality (the right
arm, in the form of the police, is of course there to enforces Sutcliffe's
illegal  march bans etc) has enabled the city authorities to cease the
provision of electricity altogether (in 2002), to radically reduce access to
water and sanitation, to withhold refuse removal and to refrain from other
kinds of investments - roads, paths, halls, fields, creches, clinics,
gardens, telephone lines, drains etc. This absolute and brutal refusal to
invest in shack settlements while simultaneously investing in all kinds of
ridiculous projects like the themepark, casinos, the stadium etc has led to
enormous suffering and, very often, avoidable deaths with regular shack
fires being the most dramatic instance of the human costs of this
abandonment of the actually existing poor in the name of future development.
The city can no longer use the excuse that 'the slums will be cleared by
2010' to justify their more or less complete exclusion of shack dwellers
from access to the most basic services that the state provides to make city
life viable for the rest of us. Now that they have admitted that their
policy will not deliver the poor out of shack settlements and into formal
townships by 2010 or even 2014 they have no excuse for refusing to develop
new services in shack settlements and for scaling back existing services.
They need to account for situations where a thousand people share one tap or
one toilet etc, etc, etc. They can no longer dismiss this as 'temporary' and
claim that the poor will inherit in the earth, or at least a leaking
cracking matchbox house in a new township, in 2010.

Of course there are other obvious problems with the city's statements as
recorded here. Firstly, as the journalist notes, the issue is not only
whether or not houses are being built but also, crucially, where those
houses are being built. The city are, as they note here, now sometimes
upgrading instead of always relocating, but upgrades happen in Umlazi. They
don't happen in Pinetown or Reservoir Hills or Clare Estate. If your shack
is in a former township it may be upgraded. If it is in a former white or
Indian suburb you still face relocation. There is very little willingness to
oppose the racial and class prejudices of the rich and zero willingness to
oppose the interests of big landowners like Moreland. Secondly there is the
issue of the quality of the houses which is often so abysmal that people
call them formal jondolos. Thirdly there is the fact that the city's housing
list is developed on the basis of 'one house for one shack' ignoring the
fact that in many instances people from 2, 3 or 4 families occupy one shack.
Currently when they relocate the people on the list are moved out and the
rest, in casual violation of South African law, are just left homeless on
the side of the road. The number of people needing housing is actually far,
far larger than the number that they estimate with their 'one shack – one
house' policy and it is growing all the time. Fourthly there is the fact
that they are still building townships – apartheid housing policy is hardly
the model to be emulated. And there is the rampant corruption in the
allocation of housing and in the building…. But all this has been noted
before. Read the article. It is a step forward. Sutcliffe, Mlaba, Naidoo,
Gumede etc have had to let the cloak of their denialism drop a little. It's
not the prettiest sight but at least they'll now have to engage with reality
a little more.

*
Mercury, page 5, March 6, 2006

'Building 2.4m Units By 2014 Will Need a Miracle'*

*HOUSING TARGET IS UNREALISTIC, SAY OFFICIALS*

Carvin Goldstone

South Africa would have to build 2.4 million houses - or about 30 000
started homes a month - if it wanted to complete its low-cost housing
programme by the target date of 2014. However government officials are now
admitting that this target is unrealistic.

S'bu Gumede, Chariman of the eThekwini Municipality's housing subcommittee,
said yesterday that South Africa was not doing enough to meet its goal of
housing the country's poorer communities by 2014.

He told politicians and officials at a housing subcommittee meeting that the
city Housing Department might need to build twice as many houses every year
if it planned to meet its goal in the next seven years.

He said that, nationally, 2.2 million houses had been built over the last 14
years at 200 000 a year but that there was still a backlog of 2.4 million.

"If we have built 2.2 million in 14 years, then we will need another 14
years to build the next 2.4 million houses. But out target is only seven
years away, so we will need nationally to double our performance to about
400 000 or 500 000 houses a year," he said. The council is building 16 000
homes a year but may now be required to build 32 000 a year.

eThekweni had set its own housing goal at 2010 but, Gumede said, this also
seemed "far-fetched" and it would "require a miracle" to fulfil this target.

Department head Cogie Pather said...the department would also be under
pressure to build bigger houses for the poor. Presently, the municipality
builds 30 square meter houses but might have to increase this to between 32
and 40 square meter houses.

.........

Councillors inspected some of 1 330 new houses that had been built in Umlazi
among the shacks. The campaign, which began in 2005, aims to replace
informal housing with basic starter homes without unduly displacing
communities and families. In previous years, shack dwellers have complained
that although they received new homes they were often so far away from their
work and schools that they were forced to almost start their lives over
again.

The shack dwellers movement now has a website: http://abahlali.org/
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