Latest AC News

On the 15th March 2012, the Executive Director, Nontando Ngamlana attended a roundtable dialogue on the roles of provinces hosted by Isandla Institute and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in Cape Town. The Roundtable enititled ‘Whither provinces: Does provincial government matter to local government and participatory local democracy?’ focused on the following issues, amongst others:
•    The role provincial government plays in the current governance system and the arguments provided to retain/merge/scrap the current system
•    The nature of problems with provincial government as a system and/or specific provincial administrations
•    From the perspective of local government and local democracy, what are the benefits/drawbacks if provincial government in South Africa is retained, merged or scrapped?
•    What are the implications for the powers and functions of local government and for overall municipal functioning? (What does it mean for the two-tier system of local government?)
•    What are the likely implications for regional political structures and how could this affect the functioning of municipalities and local political structures?
This is also in preparation for the Eastern Cape Province seminar on the roles of provinces that will be hosted by Afesis-corplan in East London on the 23rd March 2012.

The Acting Programmes Manager Ronald Eglin participated at the National Working group forum looking at upgrading of the Informal settlement. The forum was organised by Isandla Institute and took place on 6 March 2012. The purpose of the forum was to look at the role of intermediary organisations in the upgrading of information settlements. Amongst the attendances were about eight organisations in the sector and the National Upgrading Support Programme. Isandla will be appointing consultancy to research capacity of NGOs to perform the intermediary functions. More follow-ups will be held in May 2012.

On 29 February 2012, Ronald Eglin participated on the conference hosted by the Development Action Group (DAG) on Pro-poor city wide participatory planning. During the conference DAG presented on three proposed case studies for strategically located integrated development pilot projects. The issues that were raised included;
•    how to accommodate incremental development at higher density;
•    the role of public transport in promoting sustainable settlement development;
•    the challenge of preventing low income households being removed from well located land through market forces;
•    how networks of community bound organisations in dealing with land and housing can collaborate at the city wide scale around common agenda.
The issues raised at the conference are very important as they gave an insight on the creation of sustainable incremental settlements.

Musa Sebugwawo and Penelope Vellem attended a local Roads Forum meeting in Peddie, Nqushwa local municipality on 6th March 2012. The Local Roads Forum (LRF) meetings convene bi-monthly and comprise various stakeholders including state Departments: Health, Education, Home Affairs, Social Development etc. This forum also comprises other stakeholders such Community based organisation, farmers associations, Public transport Associations, people with disabilities, Local Tourism Organisations among others. Among the objectives of the Local Roads Forum is to facilitate a formal engagement and manage the relationships between the different spheres of government and relevant stakeholders with regard to the development of roads infrastructure in the Eastern Cape Province. This is done through a programme called” Roads Enterprise Development Programme” where Afesis-Corplan was appointed by Coega Development Corporation to be a social facilitator for this programme in Ngqushwa local Municipality.

Ronald Eglin and Noxolo Kabane are attending a seminar on sustainable settlements on the 24th February. The seminar was organised by the Department of Development Studies’ Sustainable Settlements’ programme. The Department of Development Studies is working together with the Department of Construction Management and academic colleagues in all other related disciplines and departments at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) to explore the implementation of truly sustainable human settlements in the Eastern Cape. Present at the seminar will be all sectors involved in this field such as local and provincial government, NGOs, as well as post-graduate research students and interested academics from other departments.

The State President, Jacob Zuma’s, state of the nation address on 9 February 2012 was very disappointing from a land access and incremental settlement point of view.  http://www.info.gov.za/speech/DynamicAction?pageid=461&sid=24980&tid=55960

While it is acknowledged that the address cannot touch on everything, the impression one gets from the address is that government is not taking very seriously its commitments from last year’s state of the nation address to upgrade informal settlements and prioritise the release of well located state owned land. There was no mention in this year’s address of what had happened to last year’s commitments and how they are to continue to be supported.   

In terms of housing, the State President chose to focus on the ‘gap market’, for people who earn above RDP subsidy housing income levels but below bank mortgage loan levels. “We are pleased to report that this [one billion rand guarantee] fund will start its operations in April [2012], managed by the National Housing Finance Corporation.”  While this is an important issue it does not directly address the needs of the most vulnerable who still living in informal settlements and unsuitable conditions.

In terms of land access, the state president basically said nothing of substance.  All he said was we all need to “participate in the process of improving land redistribution and reform to reverse the impact of the 1913 Act”; and that he believes there is “general agreement that the willing buyer - willing seller option has not been the best way to address this question [of redistributing 30% of the land to the previously disadvantaged]”.  He made no suggestion as to what a better way could be.  The land reform green paper that he makes reference to (see http://www.polity.org.za/article/draft-green-paper-on-land-reform-august-2011-2011-08-26 ) has been heavily criticised by many and the debate does not seem to be moving very fast.  (See for example ... http://mg.co.za/article/2011-09-21-green-paper-on-land-reform-offers-no-guidance/ .., and  ... {Afesis-corplan’s comments http://www.afesis.org.za/Other-News/ ).

Government needs to provide far more leadership with regard to the land question.  Land access for settlement, agricultural and other development purposes is one of the most important issues this country is facing and needs far more attention in the state of the nation address then the two or three sentences it received.

On Saturday 18th February, Ronald Eglin and Noxolo Kabane had a meeting with GIZ. During the meeting all projects that were given support by GIZ, such as the Civil Society Support Programmes which were run in collaboration with ECNGO Coalition were evaluated. As part of the assessment process, they visited some of the project sites in Duncan Village.

Project Co-ordinator Malachia Mathoho met with the Nkonkobe municipality on the 20th February. The purpose of the meeting was to establish the formation of a Project Steering Committee for the Good Governance Survey (GGS) project which will be rolled out within the municipality.