Human Settlements Workshop Day 2: Inclusionary Housing Policy, Accreditation of Municipalities, Urban Sprawl

Meeting report

Department of Human Settlements (DHS Workshop ): Day Two

Accreditation of Municipalities to Administer National & Provincial Housing Programmes
Ms Adelaide Mohale, Director: Intergovernmental Relations, DHS, spoke on this topic strating with key definitions of concepts such as accreditation, which was defined as the recognition by an authority of the fact that an entity had met certain criteria and standards for purposes of fulfilling a particular function. Ms Mohale explained the rationale behind accreditation and referred to the relevant legislative provisions contained in section 156(4) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. The presentation also focused on the approved framework and principles of accreditation and elaborated in detail on the Department's overall approach, institutional arrangements, funding arrangements, systems and capacity arrangements, ongoing reporting and monitoring requirements, and implementation arrangements [see document].

Discussion
Mr A Steyn (DA) asked for clarity about the presenter's submission about consistency in funding from national government to provincial governments. He asked what the process of accreditation had been like in the past so that the Committee could have clarity on how the process had evolved..

Mr Steyn asked for clarity on the presenter's summary of the rationale behind the accreditation of municipalities where reference had been made to efficiency. He wanted to know what the process was where accreditation was retracted if a municipality had not been performing efficiently.

Mr Steyn asked about the progress of other municipalities than the ones which had been highlighted in the presentation - such as Johannesburg. He was concerned that there was very little information about the progress made in accreditation.

Mr Steyn asked if the issue of capacity support was ring-fenced in the national budget.

The Chairperson made the point that municipalities did not often report their financial management accurately and tended to gloss over irregularities to produce reports that were too good to be true as had been shown with the Nelson Mandela metropolitan area. The disjuncture between reports of progress and the reality on the ground was huge and the reality often revealed a shocking state of affairs. For instance one would be told that everything had been completed in a housing project. However when one visited the actual site, one would find that there was no water connection or toilets.

The Chairperson called on the Department to reflect on such incidents and to think of ways of ensuring that such embarrassing occurrences were not repeated.

Ms Borman (ANC) agreed with the concerns raised by both Mr Steyn and the Chairperson. She fully supported what the Chairperson had stated about the need for improvement of the capacity of municipalities so they could achieve the required standards of accreditation and efficiently deliver housing.

Mr Joseph Leshabane, Chief Operations Officer, DHS, responded that the concept of municipal accreditation had been in the Housing Act since 1997 but no municipality had been accredited since. When a comprehensive plan had been drafted in 2004, one of the elements had been to enhance the role of the municipalities in the development of policy. In order to do that, there had to be a nationwide programme that supported that initiative. Municipalities had to be capacitated to a point where they could be accredited. The Department had adopted the current framework to marshal the efforts of all provinces to get to a point where municipalities acquired their accreditation.

Mr T Botha (COPE) commented that accreditation had to be located in the context of housing delivery even prior to 1994. There was a need to create capacity for municipalities. He asked whether municipalities had the capacity to implement both horizontally and vertically. He commented further that none of government's three spheres of authority could claim that they had the capacity to deliver housing.

Mr Botha also made the point that municipalities had no capacity to handle funding and to manage it.

Mr M Mdakane (ANC) commented that it was important to recognise the role of the municipalities and argued that some of them were actually more powerful than provinces. He suggested that there was a need for a systematically focused team at the national level to assist all provinces.

Mr Madakane pointed out that it was important to recognise that metros had their own revenues and were therefore capable to that extent of managing funds

Role of the Department in the management of service providers
Mr Nyameko Mbengo, Chief Director: Financial Services, DHS, explained the applicable prescripts in terms of the legislative framework and how the Department was implementing them. Mr Mbengo gave details of the functioning of the Department's Supply Chain Management Unit (SCM) and the administration of the Department's Supplier Database. He clarified that the presentation did not deal with the provinces and simply focused on the national department.

Mr Mdakane raised the point about the President's call for government to pay businesses within 30 days in response to complaints that national departments did not pay for services in a timely manner.

Mr Mbengo explained that the delays in the processing of payments were sometimes the result of incomplete information that had been forwarded to the Department such as orders that were not substantiated by requisite documentation or incorrectly filled out invoices that did not tally with the goods supplied. Delays therefore arose because of the need to verify orders before payments could be disbursed.

Mr Steyn asked if it was possible for Treasury to provide regular updates to departments on blacklisted service providers to hasten the accreditation process. He also commented about the system for selecting service providers. It appeared that only certain regular service providers became sort of cherry picked to provide services.

Mr Mbengo agreed that this was a good suggestion which the Department would pursue with National Treasury.

Mr Mbengo responded that the Department's computer system did not allow users to change the rotation of suppliers and that this therefore restricted the available pool of suppliers once they had been entered in the system.

Inclusionary Housing Policy and its development
Mr Johan Minnie, Chief Director: Management Information Services, said that the intention of the policy was to achieve a more balanced outcome of residential environments that would be more racially integrated and income inclusive. The policy was a cross cutting initiative and shift in imagination where housing practitioners in both the public and private sectors had to consciously strive to avoid racial and class exclusivity in all projects that they conceived and initiated. The policy was aiming for a socio-economic mix in all projects.

Mr Minnie touched on the key contextual considerations that informed the initiative for inclusionary housing,which included the limited scale of delivery by private developers overall in response to what was a relatively small market for middle income and up market housing; the high levels of income inequality in South Africa which was among the highest in the world; and the fact that it was harder to achieve inclusionary outcomes and retain project viability in South Africa than anywhere else in the world [see document].

Discussion
Mr Steyn commented that there was a need of something along the lines that they had seen in the presentation. However he was wary of the compulsory / voluntary aspect of it. It was a point of concern to him especially about the whole issue of credits that would be tradeable.

The Chairperson commented that there were opportunistic tendencies amongst certain municipalities of reverting to the apartheid system of racially segregated housing. There was a need to examine the South African context to see how the inclusionary housing policy fitted into this environment.

Ms Borman wondered if this policy would not actually defeat the objective to provide housing to people in the lower income group. She asked what progress had been made with inclusionary housing in Ethekwini.

Mr Minnie responded that the private sector was already embarking on certain projects but municipalities had to set the parameters. He also gave a brief summation of the progress achieved in Ethekwini. He pointed out that one of the challenges they faced in implementing inclusionary housing was that very little of South Africa's land was good and there was a need to approach the Department of Land Affairs for land which met the country's development needs

Mr Mdakane raised the concern that inclusionary housing policy implementation seemed to have isolated key stakeholders such as town planners who possessed a great deal of technical know-how and experience about human settlement planning.

Mr Minnie responded that town planners would play a significant role and they had been included in the Department's consultations.

Urban sprawl and human settlement delivery
Mr Anton Arendse, Chief Director: Human Settlement Planning Unit, DHS, referred to the discussion paper submitted to the Committee, which provided a background to the problems that South Africa was facing with its rapid urbanization. This was as a result of both rural and urban migration, the internal growth of cities and towns and the rapid growth of the informal housing sector.

Numerous policy documents, both within and outside of government had identified the need for human settlement and urban development to occur at residential densities that were higher than the current norm. Planning frameworks had a significant bearing on human settlement development planning, land use, space standards and infrastructure provisions.

The discussion paper firstly provided a background to planning regulations and policy and addressed how urban sprawl was considered within South African planning law and practice and the responsibilities of the various spheres of government with respect to land use management. Secondly, it attempted to isolate aspects that gave effect to the disjuncture between policy and practice looking at legislation, institutional arrangements and the use of fiscal tools in the delivery of human settlements. Finally, it attempted to provide some pointers for interventions currently being undertaken or that had to be undertaken, in giving effect to “contained” urban settlements [see documents].

Discussion
Ms Borman commented that classification was a policy. People were moving into cities where there was no land. There was a need for densification.

The Chairperson commented that this had been a very interesting presentation especially the point about the inefficiency of the current system. Progress was retarded.

The Chairperson asked how the issue of architecture was considered in human settlement processes. She asked which countries South Africa could learn from in terms of best practice.

Mr Steyn submitted that coordinated planning had to apply to legislation. He suggested that multi-level units versus single-unit dwellings were a cheaper option in terms of solutions for alleviating housing shortages. He asked if a comparison of costs could be undertaken with respect to these two types of housing to consider the benefits and savings on infrastructure.

Mr Mdakane commented that urbanisation was an inevitable reality and one could not stem the flow of migration within South Africa as well as from other countries. The question of densification was a question of social attitudes and changing the mindset of people. The creation of multiple CBDs creates a new problem of inner cities.

Mr Arendse responded that the exhorbitant cost of land demanded that they had to use it to its maximum. There was a misconception that the grant was not able to support higher densities.

He did not believe that there was a single solution to this problem and pointed out that the concept of a developmental state was based on an Asian model which did not resemble South Africa's democracy. The implementation of certain policies could not be done in the same way as they had been done under different political systems that were authoritarian in nature.

The workshop came to close after a summation by the Programme Director of the issues that needed further engagement by the Committee.

The meeting was adjourned.