The Political Economy of Government Subsidised Housing in South Africa

Sithembiso Lindelihle Myeni, Andrew Okem

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429774782
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book unpacks the political economy of government subsidised housing programmes in South Africa.

Exploring government policy towards subsidised housing in South Africa, this edited collection analyses various programmes, their shortcomings and potential options to address these weaknesses in the context of a country suffering from an exponential demand for housing in the face of insufficient supply. The Political Economy of Government Subsidised Housing in South Africa looks at the complex and contested nature of the issue in post-apartheid South Africa, stimulating debate and knowledge sharing on housing programmes, proffering solutions to the issue. The book explores the issue from both practical and intellectual standpoints, exploring the relationship between historical institutional legacies and contemporary power structures, and their role in provision of housing for the growing population of South Africa.

This book will be of great interest to students of urban and regional planning, political economy, development studies, and African studies.

1 Sustainable Development Goals
and the New Urban Agenda

A South African experience

Oliver Mtapuri and Sithembiso Lindelihle Myeni

Introduction

Urbanisation has been widely researched and written about with some associating it with industrialisation and socio-economic growth. Others regard it as the root cause of most of the challenges (including those considered to be wicked such as poverty and hunger) that haunt the world today. Urbanisation has also captured the interest of many stakeholders from various sectors such as governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), donors, local governments, academic/research institutions and independent researchers. Many policy documents have been tabled at local, national, regional and international levels as parties seek to better understand this phenomenon. It is not surprising that the call for sustainable development, which has links to urbanisation, has been dominating international conferences from various disciplinary angles. This chapter specifically focuses on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the New Urban Agenda. It looks at how the two are interlinked and the challenges and opportunities that urbanisation presents in pursuit of realising sustainable urban development.

The New Urban Agenda and SDGs

The New Urban Agenda is an action-orientated plan that comprises a set of global principles, policies and standards necessary for the world to realise sustainable urban development. It is an agreement reached at the Habitat III conference of October 2016, in Quito, Ecuador. The agreement seeks to expand on a vision and commitments by national governments around sustainable urban housing and sustainable urban development (Habitat for Humanity, 2017). It prescribes a set of guidelines that are deemed important in transforming the ways in which cities are constructed, managed, operated and inhabited. The plan is meant to guide efforts, by a wide range of actors, such as national governments, city administrators, regional leaders, international development agencies, the private/business sector and civil society, to enhance urbanisation and make it a more positive phenomenon for the next 20 years (Charles, 2016).

According to the United Nations (2017), the New Urban Agenda embodies a common vision for an improved and sustainable future where all people have equal rights and access, and enjoy the benefits and opportunities that are often associated with urban environments. The New Urban Agenda, as a shared vision, also recognises the need for stakeholders to reconsider urban systems and the physical form of urban spaces as a prerequisite to achieving the desired levels of urban sustainability. It arose from the realisation that:

there is a need to take advantage of the opportunities of urbanisation as an engine of sustained and inclusive economic growth, social and cultural development, and environmental protection, and of its potential contributions to the achievement of transformative and sustainable development.

(United Nations, 2017)

The Agenda aims to transform existing challenges associated with urbanisation into opportunities by:

leveraging the potential of urbanisation for structural transformation … through promoting proactive and responsive planning, innovation, industrialisation and sustained economic growth through high productivity, value added activities, resource efficiency and harnessing local economies and resources.

(Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development, 2017: xii)

The premise is that by revisiting the “way cities and human settlements are planned, financed, developed and governed” (United Nations, 2017: 3), the New Urban Agenda can be a positive step towards ending poverty and hunger, lowering inequalities and promoting inclusive and sustainable socio-economic growth. It is also deemed instrumental in achieving gender equality, empowering women and improving human well-being and health while protecting the physical environment. Such interventions are believed to be instrumental in opening up more opportunities and employment for the increasing urban population and at the same time promoting intergenerational interactions and environmental integrity (Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development, 2017). Cities have become hubs of both the good and bad of urbanisation. In many countries of the world, cities have catalysed the form and content of progress occurring within nation states and have morphed to become engines of both growth and decay, hope and hopelessness, and homeliness and homelessness.

The New Urban Agenda also acknowledges culture and cultural diversity as important sources of enrichment for humankind, which play an important role in the sustainable development of urban centres, human settlements and citizens. It further recognises the need to consider culture in the promotion of sustainable production and consumption patterns as well as the controlled use of resources and addressing the negative effects of climate change (United Nations, 2017). It presents a paradigm shift in urban perspectives based on the science of cities, laying out the standards and principles for key areas like planning, construction, development, management and improvement of urban centres. The new paradigm is anchored on five main pillars of implementation, which are national urban policies, legislation and regulations, urban planning and design, the local economy, and municipal finance and local implementation. It is regarded as an asset for every level of government, the private sector, constituent groups and everyone who regards a town or city as his or her “home” (Charles, 2016; United Nations, 2017).

According to the United Nations (2017), the New Urban Agenda recognises that there is a new connection between good urban practices/urbanisation and development. It acknowledges that there is a positive relationship between urbanisation and employment creation, enhanced livelihood opportunities as well as improved life and living standards. This ushers in the nexus between the New Urban Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with a special emphasis on SDG No. 11, which advocates for sustainable cities and communities (Cities Alliance, 2015). The SDGs are a set of development targets which are an extension of the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations in 2000 to deal with extreme poverty through the creation of a development framework for more inclusive and sustainable patterns of growth (UN-Habitat and UNECA, 2015). These goals are holistic in their attempt to address the socio-economic and environmental aspects of sustainable development and are also designed to be pursued as a combination and not one at a time (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2016).

The New Urban Agenda embraces existing synergies created by a wide range of other global agreements such as the SDGs, the Paris Agreement, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, the Vienna Program of Action for Landlocked Developing Countries, SAMOA and the Istanbul Program of Action for the Least Developed Countries to adopt a holistic transformation approach meant to address the multiple and complex challenges associated with contemporary urbanisation (Cities Alliance, 2015). This resonates with Aspiration 1 of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which states that the Union aspires to “a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development” (African Union Commission, 2015: 2).

The following are the three guiding principles that provide a strategic direction to the New Urban Agenda for the successful transformation of towns and cities:

• Urban Policies: the New Urban Agenda is aimed at developing and implementing those urban policies that are deemed instrumental in promoting cooperation between local and national government and also encourage the building of multi-stakeholder partnerships that enhance their chances of achieving sustainable and integrated urban development;

• Urban Governance, Rules and Regulations to enhance municipal finance: the New Urban Agenda also operates on the premise that the quality of urban settlement is dependent upon the quality of the rules and regulations that are put in place for this purpose and their effective implementation. It thus advocates for the strengthening of urban governance and legislation meant to direct urban development projects/programmes and the necessary stimulus to municipal finance; and

• Urban Planning and Design: the New Urban Agenda also focuses on strengthening urban and regional planning to ensure the best utilisation of the spatial dimension of the urban form and for the benefit of towns and cities.

Fabre (2017) argues that although urban areas occupy just less than 3 per cent of the earth’s crust, they are currently home to at least 50 per cent of the world’s total population with latest estimates projecting that towns and cities will experience an inflow of 2.5 billion first-time urban entrants by 2050, more than the current combined population of India and China. So intense is the rate of urbanisation that by 2007 almost 50 per cent of the world’s population was already living in towns and cities (Maxwell et al., 2008). This, in turn, points to the dire need to construct more settlement areas sufficient to meet the housing demands of the ever-increasing number of urban dwellers (Fabre, 2017). Planning and enactment of those plans for these sprouting settlements enable harnessing the energies, synergies, capabilities, talents, vitality and vibrancy that these people bring.

Commentators also forecast that, if left uncontrolled, urban population figures can expand to unsustainable levels and result in vast unsustainable urban sprawl, and the consequent creation of densely populated urban slums where living conditions and provision of basic sanitation and municipal services range from extremely poor to absent. Urban centres also generate an excess of more than 80 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product, consuming up to 75 per cent of the world’s natural resources and over 75 per cent of global energy supplies (UNDP, 2016; Fabre, 2017). They have resultantly earned themselves the qualification “engines of employment, social and economic growth and are thus thought to be accompanied by improved living standards” (Collier, 2014). We add that they have become the engines of inventions and innovation. Only their “pollutive propensities” are degenerative and devalue various environments and ecosystems – of the living and non-living, of the physical and chemical, and the human and non-human.

Scholars like Clos (2010: ii) argue that “urbanisation is jump-starting industrialisation”. Urbanisation has thus been regarded as being synonymous with industrialisation and economic development (Scott and Storper, 2014). According to UN-Habitat (2015), the continuous shift of today’s world from predominantly rural to urban (a phenomenon that Jones and Nelson (1999: 1) called a shift from a “global village to an urban globe”) makes the process of urbanisation a very important global trend. This is a significant change that has been recorded over the past two decades and has provided a lot of insight to and significant recognition of the important role that urbanisation plays in development. Stimuli for urbanisation include better road infrastructure, housing, water and sanitation, educational facilities, availability of better municipal services, and jobs, as compared to the areas from where people come.

Of note, however, is the observation that a significant number of cities are located in less developed economies which lack the capacity and resources to grow within the confines and dictates of sustainable development. Most of them struggle to provide decent housing, clean water, sewer treatment, drainage; ideal infrastructure for industrial, transport, clean energy, and socio-economic growth; and adequate employment and livelihood opportunities for the people as they accumulate more than the population they can sustain. There has also been a massive transfer of poverty from rural areas to urban centres as people flee from conflict, poverty, disappearing agricultural land/land dispossessions, natural disasters and the effects of climate change in search of better living standards and employment opportunities in the city (UNDP, 2016). This has also taken a toll on the environment as the deprived populations resort to unconventional means to cope with the ever-increasing urban human needs resulting in what Morreira (2010) described as “living in disappearing modernities”. The latter is exemplified by slums and shacks which are make-shift housing forms/settlements constructed using cheap rudimentary materials collected from rubbish dumps or bought but of low quality.

Some informal settlements have electricity while some do not. When they have electricity, it is usually illegally connected to the main grid. Housing structures in these settlements are unable to withstand storms and floods. They are prone to catching fire given the poor materials used, their proximity to each other and the reliance on unsafe energy sources for cooking, lighting and heating. The absence of planning in these settlements also makes fire control extremely difficult for the authorities. The three guiding principles of the New Urban Agenda, while well-meaning and idealistic, can only be effectuated if they accommodate and capture the histories and variegated contexts of cities and their countries. For South Africa, the legacy of apartheid is both persistent and chronic and could undermine the attainment of these three principles.

The New Urban Agenda and housing

Putting the above into consideration, the New Urban Agenda becomes a critically important measure that governments should implement in their effort to arrest negative developments associated with negative urbanisation. It also recognises that cities are the critical spaces for achieving the implementation of the SDGs, global climate agreement and New Urban Agenda.

The New Urban Agenda encourages national and city governments to create an enabling environment that allows for public–private cooperation and coming up with well-defined urban development/planning policies that are meant to promote multi-stakeholder collaboration, as well as urban management rules that provide a political pledge and protect long-term investments. The Agenda also calls on governments to have the political will to empower cities as a way of enabling them to build their capacity and resources, and raise revenue that will enhance sustainable urban development. Governments also pledged to ensure the security of land tenure for all, giving particular attention to disadvantaged groups such as women as a way of empowering them. Government is, thus, supposed to put in place “strong, inclusive management frameworks and accountable institutions that deal with land registration and governance” (Habitat for Humanity, 2017).

The New Urban Agenda commits governments to promoting participatory approaches which are age and gender-sensitive at all stages of the urban planning processes from conceptualisation to design, budgeting, implementation, evaluation and review in development projects (Housing for Humanity, 2017). The participation of city citizens in matters that affect them is critical for securing their buy-in and involvement in planning their cities in circumstances of community-led development. The needs of people in their life cycles are different. Children need to grow in proper housing. As they become youth and adult, their demand for accommodation grows in tandem with the growth of their families. At old age, places for retirement become necessary.

UN-Habitat (2015) argues that urban housing is a critical area that urbanisation has failed to address that the New Urban Agenda should consider. It notes that cities, especially in the developing world, are confronted by the incessant problem of poor provision of housing, noting that the challenge is not only limited to the enormous lack of adequate housing, but also to its quality as well as poor provision of housing-related/municipal services and housing affordability, which have exacerbated urban inequality (UNDP, 2015). UN-Habitat (2015) further argues that the manner in which housing has been and continues to be produced and consumed shapes urban growth, and has in many cases regretfully produced cities that are characterised by fragmentation and inequality, and are largely dysfunctional due to poor planning. This has, in turn, compromised the future of today’s cities and left a lot to be desired with respect to sustainable urban development. UN-Habitat (2015) again notes that housing in most cities, especially in the developing world, has not been aptly incorporated into urban plan...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: setting the scene – an overview of government subsidised housing in South Africa
• 1 Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda: a South African experience
• 2 A historicity of housing policies in apartheid South Africa
• 3 An assessment of the National Development Plan in the actualisation of government subsidised housing in South Africa
• 4 Apartheid housing and urban livelihoods in apartheid South Africa
• 5 A demand-driven subsidised housing policy for South Africa
• 6 Assessment of stakeholders’ participation in the implementation of Cornubia Housing Project in eThekwini Municipality
• 7 Enhanced women’s participation in state subsidised housing programmes: a case of Federation of Urban Poor in iNanda, Durban
• 8 Citizenship, gender and the technologies of governance: an interrogation of the low-income housing programme in KwaZulu-Natal
• 9 Revisiting land challenges in housing urban poor people in post-apartheid South Africa: an insight into Durban
• 10 Housing for individual sovereignty through innovations in policy and practice
• 11 A gendered discourse on women’s access to housing in South Africa
• 12 Climate change and housing: implications for urban poor people in South Africa
• Index