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Housing minister: Do more with less

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Nomaindia Mfeketo
Nomaindia Mfeketo

The human settlement department could use land expropriation to force municipalities and metros to make land available for well-located social housing, rather than letting them sell it off to private developers.

Ahead of her budget vote speech in Parliament on Thursday, Human Settlements Minister Nomaindia Mfeketo told City Press the focus on land expropriation without compensation “definitely does make it easier” for the department to find more land for housing.

Mfeketo said different spheres of government and state-owned entities owned well-located land [with which] “they prefer to do something else instead of giving it for housing”.

The possibility of expropriation was useful, given her department’s new focus on creating housing opportunities on well-located land close to amenities and jobs, which is usually expensive.

Over are the days of sprawling RDP housing projects on the urban edge, without libraries, schools and other amenities, said Mfeketo.

The focus is no longer on simply providing houses for “the poorest of the poor”, but creating human settlements that provide for people’s basic needs: access to clinics, schools, libraries, sports and recreational amenities and work.

This was why the location of housing projects is so important, not only for the creation of healthy communities but also to overcome apartheid spatial planning, she said.

The medium-term framework budget cut of just over R10 billion meant her department had to find creative ways of delivering and “do more with less”.

She emphasised that public-private partnerships and inter-government collaboration would be needed.

Thembelihle Village in Tshwane, launched last month, was an example of what the department wanted to achieve, she said.

The R300 million project is managed by a Section 21 company, subsidised by human settlements combined with a favourable land subsidy by the municipality, to provide affordable rentals to more than 2 000 people, in walking distance of the CBD.

Mfeketo said there was a mix of all race groups in the 733 units, from bachelor to three-bedroom flats for “missing middle” households earning between R3 500 and R15 000 a month.

Government would continue with projects in which home loans with major banks were facilitated for lower-income households, she said.

Mfeketo blamed violent land grabs and protests on bad communication between the government and residents. Some recent protests were also the result of the focus on expropriation because some communities felt it gave them licence to invade vacant land.

“People don’t understand, we’re not expropriating land for people to put up their small shacks. We must all pull up our socks ... We must explain to people.”

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