Hon Chair, hon Minister, hon Deputy Minister, hon members and fellow South Africans. South African Constitution Section 26 explicitly states that everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing." It then goes on to say that, the state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right."
For 25 years the ANC government has violated the constitutional rights of millions of South Africans. We currently have a housing waiting list of just fewer than 4 million people and every day this list is growing. You come here to brag about all the RDP houses you have built, but what is the quality of those RDP houses. The Constitution says that everybody has the right to adequate housing. L m placing emphasis on the adequate part, because many of the
houses built by your department cannot be classified as adequate We have RDP houses falling apart everyday, with weak foundation and leaks in the roofs. That is why your department spent over R6 million in the 2017/18 financial year alone repairing RDP houses that were built. This bad quality is a result of your department reliance on outside contractors who receive tenders to build these houses. But these tenders are not given to people based on quality of work or price, but on who they know in the ruling party.
Tenders for human settlements are being used to enrich comrades in the ANC and their families and friends. The results of these were houses of such poor quality that they need to be repaired all the time. In the Free State we saw how Ace Magashule did the exact thing that I am talking about, to enrich his family. We need to have a state-owned housing construction company, and your department needs to build internal capacity. So that instead of relying on tenders the state builds the houses itself.
This will do three things, it will save money; improve the quantity and quality of houses being built; and it will create jobs. Another issue that your department needs to address as a matter of urgency is the continued evictions of in ANC and DA led municipalities all across the country. Things were quiet before the elections, the
moment the results were announced municipalities unleashed a massive onslaught against our people whose only sin was simply to build houses for themselves.
The municipal police, along with the help of dodgy private security, busy evicting our people everywhere, from Gauteng and the Free State, to the Eastern Cape and KZN. The ANC has been using the law selectively to keep African people homeless in this country. This clearly shows that the ANC government is not committed to resolving the housing crisis in this country. The budget presented here is unable to deal with the housing challenges facing our people, and cannot address the legacy of centuries of colonialism and apartheid.
The dispossession of African land in the country; the uneven development of cities; the poor employment prospects in the countryside have caused massive urban sprawl that your policy makers have been unable to handle. We know have thousands of people flocking into Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban each and every year because there are no opportunities in this country. But the state is not out of options, and can resolve the housing crisis if there is political will to do so.
This can be done through the following: Do away with apartheid spatial planning and expropriate land without compensation closer to inner city centres to build sustainable housing for all; create a housing access coordinating unit that involves national, provincial and local government which will regularly report to the Presidency on progress with housing provision, the elimination of slums and the provision of dignified sanitation; improve the quality and size of low-cost houses through the state housing construction company; ensure that the state regulates housing finance by providing housing finance that does not exceed a period of ten years; guarantee integrated human settlements that will in the real sense be definitive of all settlements led by the state and that will be equipped with guaranteed bulk services such as water provision, electricity, sewerage systems, parks and recreation facilities; convert unused state buildings into affordable housing for the poor, offering people long-term secured leaseholds to these buildings.
If your government does not take our advice and follow the steps that we have outlined there, the housing crisis in South Africa will only worsen. Until that happens we will reject this budget vote. I thank you.