In her state of the province address earlier this year the Western Cape Premier, Helen Zille, said:
... there is only one way to overcome poverty and realise a dream of opportunity for all. Unless we ensure that everyone has the chance to get a job, the South African dream will never be more than a dream. A job is a passport out of poverty and the start of the path to prosperity.
Currently it is very difficult for people in the gap housing market, earning about R3 540, to buy a house. These people have families, cars, dreams and jobs to go to, yet they can't qualify for a house. How do we support their dreams of buying a house? We are hoping that the mortgage default insurance designed to support people in the gap market will be available through the banks before April 2012. Currently we have a situation where earners in the gap market are paying for basic services yet can't afford properties, while people below the R3 500 level are being given free houses and free basic services. Surely something is wrong here. If you want to be a homeowner, it pays to stay poor and unemployed! We even have situations where people are threatening to resign from their jobs in order to qualify for houses. We have to address this distorted incentive by ensuring that the gap market is properly serviced.
The Western Cape government's primary focus is now the provision of the basic services of clean water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal. It's better first to make sure that everyone has basic services, rather than making sure that only some people have houses.
The situation of people living in conditions without these services 17 years after the end of apartheid is unacceptable. People must have basic services. Once everyone has basic services, then we can build more top structures. On this point the Western Cape is in alignment with the national government and the focus on the provision of basic services.
In the Western Cape it is our goal to have no informal settlement without basic services by 2014. Of special interest, though, are legislation and planning that hamper our delivery of housing and services. Planning processes need to be streamlined to ensure quick and effective service delivery, because now it takes at least three years to plan and deliver houses.
It makes absolutely no sense, for instance, to have 11 different grants to put together a single housing unit. Again, it doesn't make sense to have a municipal infrastructure grant separate from a housing grant, because you can't build houses without infrastructure.
Another serious problem that is stalling housing delivery is land invasion. The requirement of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act, the Pie Act, for people to be provided with alternative accommodation, encourages this practice. This makes a housing-demand database or waiting list impossible to manage.
As a result of this, people are holding government to ransom by invading any land that is earmarked for development, because they know that they will be moved to alternative accommodation. These people use the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act to force the government to give them accommodation ahead of their turn. The sad part is that those people living in backyards who have been on the waiting list for years, patiently waiting their turn, become compromised by this Act. This is not right and surely needs to be revisited. In this case it's usually very few individuals that hold us to ransom and delay housing developments meant for thousands of people.
We must change our policy in order for us to respond to the most vulnerable groups of our society, like the elderly, disabled people and child-headed households, and inculcate and encourage our economically active people to play a more active role and to take greater responsibility in the provision of the homes.
While we celebrate the fact that people have rights, we must ensure that we balance those rights with responsibilities. We must change our criteria for people who qualify for our subsidised state housing. It doesn't make sense that because a person is 18 years old and has a baby they must therefore qualify for a house. The state must create a country conducive for young people to be self-sufficient and to be the masters of their own destiny, instead of depending on hand-outs. We know that people get subsidised state houses and sell them for next to nothing and go back to the shacks, thereby increasing the demand and the spread of informal settlements.
Even though we are boasting about having built close to 2,8 million houses over the last 16 years, very few of them have been part of integrated and sustainable human settlements. How much better off are those beneficiaries, really? I thank you. [Applause.]