Zuma contradicts housing minister

2010-05-17 22:38

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Cape Town – The Democratic Alliance's housing spokesperson, Butch Steyn, asked on Monday whether President Jacob Zuma is out of touch with what his own Cabinet is saying about the housing backlog.

Zuma said in his budget vote speech last week that the government has met the housing backlog in most provinces.

"In response to the president, we have one simple question," Steyn said.

"How does the president reconcile this claim with the statement by his own minister of human settlements, during his budget vote debate, that '…the housing backlog has grown in leaps and bounds from 1.5 million in 1994 and now stands at approximately 2.1 million.

"This means that 12 million South Africans are still in need of shelter. We have, therefore, hardly moved in just breaking the backlog.

"It is unclear why the President would report to Parliament that the ANC government is meeting the housing backlog, when his own minister made it quite clear that the number of South Africans without housing has in fact increased since 1994, and that the housing backlog is far away from being resolved."

Spiralling backlogs

Steyn added that the ANC government has continually used the promise of the provision of housing for all South Africans as an electioneering tool.

"This promise has not been backed up with actual delivery, as evidenced by the spiralling backlogs," he said.

"Now the president is making similarly lofty statements in prominent public addresses that are entirely devoid of fact."

He said that the failure to adequately tackle the housing delivery backlog is as a result of two significant problems: the widespread corruption across the country in the delivering housing, and the use by the ANC government of a housing model that is neither sustainable nor affordable.

"The focus needs to shift to the provision of site-and-service instead of top-structures," he said.

- I-Net Bridge (News24)

Zuma nearly reduced to tears

2010-05-18 18:02

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Johannesburg - President Jacob Zuma was nearly reduced to tears when he saw a family's living conditions in a shack he visited in Orange Farm, Johannesburg, he said on Tuesday.

"It is not almost every time I feel like crying during my visits... You could swear no-one lived in that shack," Zuma told premiers, ministers and MECs at the President's Co-ordinating Council in Pretoria.

The family living there had been totally destroyed, he said, explaining that the owner's daughter left home to become a prostitute, and had returned when she fell pregnant.

Zuma made an unannounced visit to the Sweetwaters informal settlement, in Johannesburg, on Monday.

Apartheid legacy

He has also visited, among others, the Madelakufa settlement in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg, where he found the conditions "very bad" and warned councillors to fix the problems.

There is currently a 2.1 million housing backlog and more than 2 700 informal settlements.

Zuma told the President's Co-ordinating Council that an investment in human settlements would be an investment in the future.

Habitable and decent homes would promote human dignity and stability in communities, he said.

He said apartheid laws had made black people foreigners in urban areas, and had forced them to settle in designated locations and temporary residences.

"For those in rural areas, they were made to belong to various Bantustans with no plan to develop roads, transport, electricity, sanitation, running water or any other infrastructure," he said.

The government's focus on human settlements as a key national priority, would attempt to undo this legacy.

Zuma said Sweetwaters resident Enock Vilakazi had appealed to him to improve conditions for the sake of his children. For his part, he had resigned himself to dying there.

"You could hardly think that human beings are sleeping there," Zuma said of Vilakazi's shack.

"We have gone some way towards improving our goals, although clearly there is still a lot to be done in some areas," he said.

Living 'like pigs'

Any attempt to explain why people were still living "like pigs" when the country was nearly celebrating 20 years' of freedom would be meaningless, said Zuma.

The President's Co-ordinating Council was to examine the human settlements delivery agreement and discuss solutions to problems affecting delivery during its meeting.

Zuma said all programmes had to ensure people's dignity, self-esteem and pride was restored. "The living conditions have to improve," he said.

Good progress had been made in changing mindsets from the provision of "housing" to "human settlements".

Human settlements were not just about building houses, but also about access to social amenities like clinics, schools, water, electricity and recreational facilities.

In the last financial year, the government invested R15m in housing subsidies for the poor and 160 000 homes.

However, about three million households - including informal settlements like Sweetwaters - were still waiting for electricity.

Zuma said the government was aware that some people receive houses, but then rented them out and moved back to informal settlements, raising questions about the effectiveness of the system.

Foreigners also appeared to be benefiting when they should not, he pointed out.

"We are working on addressing this... having been government for 16 years, we must know what's working and what is not. We need to change the manner in which we do things and move quicker."

- SAPA

News24.Com

Comments by Sonny

The man knows how to roll those Chameleon tears!

The country in on the brink of another Xenophobic attack!