By Ronald Eglin

Afesis-corplan, with the support of Urban Landmark (ULM), conducted a series of four workshops on land access in Pietermaritzburg, Johannesburg, Cape Town and East London during October 2008.

The workshop series explored how various government, community and non government organisation (NGO) role‐players can engage with the new opportunities that are emerging from national government relating to land access.

These include the Land Acquisition for Sustainable Settlement programme (LASS) within the Department of Land Affairs (DLA), and the Housing Development Agency (HDA), Enhanced Peoples’ Housing Process, and Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme within the Department of Housing (DoH).

At all four workshops the DoH spoke on the new Housing Development Agency Act (Act 23 of 2008, promulgated on 30 September 2008), and which paves the way for the establishment of a new parastatal institution to identify, purchase, develop and release land for housing purposes. The department is in the process of establishing a board to manage the agency and expects the agency to be operational by April 2009.

The HDA is not established to take over from municipalities and other departments but is meant to be a resource that can be drawn on by these structures to assist in the release and development of land.

Land Affairs also gave a presentation on the new Land Acquisition for Sustainable Settlement (LASS) programme that was approved by the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs on 18 August 2008. This programme provides funds to municipalities, on a first come first serve basis, to purchase land for settlement development purposes. It will be operated on a similar basis to the existing commonage programme but the department will put in place restrictions that the land must be used for settlement purposes or returned to the department after five years if it is not used.  Land Affairs has set aside 20% of its overall national budget for LASS.

Afesis-Corplan motivated at the workshops for government and communities to consider a new “land first” approach to making land available for settlement development as part of either an in-situ upgrading process or a greenfields development where the provision of land with basic services, security of tenure and within a basic planning framework is seen as the first step towards a longer term upgrading process.

The workshops briefly touched on what a possible vision could be for residential land within the next 10 years.  The following points emerged to form the basis of such a vision:

• All people in South Africa have access to land on which to live, which is affordable, with some form of security of tenure and with access to basic services and facilities.
• The land is well located and integrated with other land uses (e.g. schools, businesses, etc.), people have options for where they can live and in what type of houses, and where household livelihood strategies are supported.
• People are generally able to live where they are with minimal need for disruptive removals, where new land is made available in well located areas so people don’t have to resort to land invasions, and housing environments are progressively upgraded over time in a programmatic manner.
• Government listens and responds to the needs of people, and people participate in decisions around land and housing.

The workshops also provided participants with the opportunity to collectively brainstorm various strategies for how land can be made available for low income households for residential and settlement development.  Many interesting and creative ideas emerged from these exercises, ranging from standard responses such as the government must provide more funds for new land development within municipal integrated development plans to more unique responses such as taxing underutilised land to encourage owners to develop or use the land.

Workshop participants felt that the new Housing Development Agency (HDA) is a good initiative which will go some way towards assisting the DoH to address the key issue of making land available for low income housing.  The agency will be able to coordinate its work with all the other departments (e.g. Land Affairs, Public Works and Provincial and Local Government) that have some role to play in residential land access.

However many workshop participants expressed concerns that the agency was trying to do too much and would be unable to meet high expectations, especially in the short to medium term.  There is also a concern that the HDA will take time to become established and effective.

The Land Acquisition for Sustainable Settlement (LASS) programme was also identified as a very good initiative.  It has been long overdue but the 20% of the budget going to land for urban settlement is seen as being far too small to address the large need for urban land.  The department needs to reconsider its role in urban land issues and not just see itself as responding to requests from municipalities. The DLA should also find ways to more directly support community groups in their efforts to access land.

There does appear to be a significant improvement in the co-ordination within government between the various departments around land issues (e.g. Land Affairs and Housing), but far more still needs to be done to improve co-ordination and alignment. For example, issues like who is ultimately responsible for funding services provision and who is involved in the various planning functions still needs to be resolved.

Many of the existing traditional approaches to providing opportunities for communities to engage with municipalities around land issues are not working adequately.  Many communities feel that the ward councillors and committees are not listening to and addressing their concerns.

Communities feel that Integrated Development Planning (IDP) processes do not provide them with adequate opportunities to seriously address their specific land and housing needs.  There is a need to improve these traditional channels of participation and also identify and explore alternative approaches such as the establishment of dedicated land access forums at local, district and provincial levels.

There is also a growing realisation and understanding of the need to consider and try alternative approaches to making land available for low income households, including “land first” approaches.

Using official statistics from governments own sources (see note 1) it can be shown that if the construction of new government subsidised housing units continues at the pace it has over the past number of years, the housing backlog (plus new household formation) will only be removed by 2033.  This is way beyond the 2014 target government has set itself for a “nation free of slums”.

The workshops demonstrated that there has been some ‘confusion’ of what upgrading settlements actually means. There are broadly two ways of interpreting this goal.  The first, “eradicate and build new” involves the removal of shacks by building new houses and not allowing new shacks to form.  Those people who do not get a new house immediately must find somewhere else to live in the meantime.  Those housing role-players that focus on this route use terms such as “informal settlement eradication’ and “war on shacks’.  The second interpretation, “recognition and upgrade”, starts by recognising that people can stay in informal areas, where its makes sense to do so, and alternative land for those that are displaced or who need land is also provided while also providing some form of basic level of planning and services; and then over time these recognised areas are incrementally upgraded to full services and tenure. People can live in ‘temporary’ houses in these areas until their areas are upgraded.  This approach talks of ‘recognition of occupation’, and ‘informal settlement upgrade’.

These two approaches are mutually exclusive, in that the “recognition and upgrade” option requires the acceptance of temporary informal housing at the start.  A choice needs to be made as to which to pursue.

From the workshops, there appears to be a growing consensus that the approach of forcefully removing people from shacks is not the correct way to go in relation to improving the conditions of people living in shacks or slums. A better way is to systematically and incrementally upgrade the conditions where people are presently staying while at the same time making new land available to prevent new informal settlement growth.

Unfortunately the “eradicate and build new” approach is the easier one for people to understand and rally around.  It’s much easier for government to say, “I will build you a house and there will be no more shacks”, than it is for them to say, “I will allow you to live in a ‘temporary’ house on land that we will recognise as yours and then over time we will help you upgrade this house”.

The ‘eradicate and build new’ approach is not however in line with governments own Breaking New Ground policy, which states that government will “adopt a phased in-situ upgrading approach to informal settlements, in line with international best practice.”  The message needs to get out that the better approach is “recognise and upgrade”.

The National Department of Housing and the Department of Land Affairs, both extended an invitation to the various local governments, communities and NGO’s to approach them with proposals on how to role-out and improve the Housing Development Agency and the Land Acquisition for Sustainable Settlement programme.
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Note 1:
Housing backlog in 2001 = 2.4 million households (2001 census).
Annual increase in new household formation and urbanisation = 178 000 households/ year. (1994 Housing White paper)
Number of new houses build from 2001/2 to 2006/7.  (National department of Housing, 2004; National Treasury, 2008)
2001/2002 143 281
2002/2003 203 588
2003/2004 190 181
2004/2005 217 348
2005/2006 252 834
2006/2007 271 219
Anticipated number of houses to be built 2007/8 to 2010/11. (National Treasury, 2008)
2007/2008 220 204
2008/2009 226 471
2009/2010 242 916
2010/2011 265 330
Projected number of houses to be build 2010/11 onwards =  265 330 (assuming same as 2010/11 year)
Thanks to Warren Smit for assistance in sourcing this information.

First published in the Transformer Vol. 14 No. 6 / Dec 2008 - Jan 2009