By Robin Richards

Around 60% of low-income residents in some of Johannesburg’s more marginalized suburbs believe that their city has the potential to become “world-class”. This may explain why the majority continue to vote in local elections, and a surprisingly high 40% bother to attend meetings with their ward councillors. They may also be motivated by the need to secure services and the fact that most do not experience corruption when dealing with municipal officials.

This does not mean that poor neighbourhoods are happy. In fact, they are distinctly dissatisfied about their standard of living and frequently experience crime, pollution and bad basic services. The three most widely used services, namely libraries, the police and clinics, generate low levels of satisfaction that rarely rise above the 50% mark. Local government fares even worse with less than 30% of people satisfied with municipal services. The most frequently mentioned need for improvement related to housing, in particular the lack of space and services that afflicted people in informal settlements.

These are some of the findings of a 2006 Quality of Life (QOL) survey undertaken by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (C A S E) in Johannesburg’s predominantly informal settlements of Diepsloot, Zandspruit and the more formal inner-city neighbourhood of Joubert Park. C A S E has previously conducted similar household-type surveys in other major cities and has found that this form of research can add a useful dimension to planning and the understanding of how people experience not just services but actual quality of life in these cities.

The surveyed households in the Johannesburg study represented a particularly poor cross section and a mix of settlement type with average household income at just R1 500 per month, compared to the 2004 R3 806 average for black residents of Gauteng as a whole. Only about one third of respondents had a grade 12 or matric certificate but predictably, residents in informal areas were significantly less educated on average than their counterparts in formal settlements. These trying living circumstances had apparently not been alleviated by a relatively high average employment rate of 68% of the economically active population – a level of employment seldom found in the country’s poorer provinces. Confirming the changing status of everyday technology, the survey found that despite the widespread poverty, the cell phone was the most common household asset even where stoves, TV sets, electricity, flush toilets and water were still lacking.

Significantly more residents knew the name of their local councillor and attended ward meetings in informal settlements compared to the formal inner city but a uniformly low 11 to 18% perceived their municipal officials as “contactable”. Awareness of the Integrated Development Planning process ranged from 26 to 62% but was not matched by a willingness to attend such events. The overall pattern suggested that more formal and better serviced communities are likely to have the lowest form of engagement with local government.

The full report can be obtained from CASE: email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or phone +27 11 646 5922

Sources:
Richards,R., Ismail, Z., Mutsonziwa, K., Kimmie,Z., Wildschutt, A., Delaney, A.,  Moloi, T (2006) A Quality of Life Survey in Low Income Areas in the City of Johannesburg. Community Agency for Social Enquiry

Richards, R and Kamman, E. (2006) Living in a Post-Apartheid City: A Baseline Survey of Quality of Life in Buffalo City. In Sirgy, M.J., Rahtz, D., Swain, D. (eds) Community Quality of Life Indicators: Best Cases II, Social Indicators Series Volume 28., Springer, Netherlands.

O’leary, B. (in press) Changes in Quality of Life in Durban’s People in Møller, V., (ed) Quality of Life in South Africa Ten Years into Democracy. Social Indicators Series, Springer, Netherlands.

The Local Government Transformer, Vol. 12 No. 6, Dec 2006/Jan 2007