Creating a Better Life For All Through Informal Settlement Upgrading
By Kate Tissington and Lauren Royston
In the midst of current debates about access to information and media freedom, there are important political developments happening around another vital part of South African society. And no, it’s not National Health Insurance or public sector wages (although these are critically important). We’re talking about the upgrading of informal settlements.
According to Statistics South Africa, as of mid-2009 13.4% of households in South Africa lived in informal dwellings. There are over 2 700 informal settlements in the country, comprising approximately 1.2 million households. In spite of a progressive Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme (UISP) being in the National Housing Code since 2004, informal settlements in South Africa have been characterised as sites of illegality for too long and shack-dwellers have been treated in a heavy-handed and undignified manner. In recent months Hangberg residents, and members of the shack-dweller movements Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) and Landless People’s Movement (LPM), have experienced this treatment in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg respectively.
A far cry from the ‘eradication’ discourse that has unfortunately characterised informal settlement approaches in the past, the UISP in fact highlights the importance of assisting people where they are i.e. in situ, and expressly states that relocation is a last resort to be undertaken only in exceptional circumstances on a voluntary and co-operative basis. This is the message that the National Upgrading Support Programme (NUSP), a partnership between the National Department of Human Settlement (NDHS) and the Cities Alliance to support the implementation of the informal settlement upgrading programme, is seeking to reinforce through inter alia the creation of a ‘community of practice’ – a forum of public sector practitioners where lessons can be learnt and capacity building can take place. The NUSP’s support will also come in the form of policy refinement and technical assistance.
It is at the municipal level that pressures are most acutely felt, and here too where the planning for development takes place, including identifying informal settlements for upgrade and setting targets for delivery using municipal planning instruments - integrated development plans (IDP) and their associated ‘housing chapters’, or housing sector plans.
As a result, communities living in informal settlements need to be “on the list” or “in the IDP” if they are to have any hope of upgrade in the foreseeable future (or at least the five year term of office, which is the planning horizon of municipal plans). If they are not, then there are no other options as they are unable to participate in the residential property market. Unless people register on a housing demand database (a new name for a housing waiting list) and wait patiently for their name to come up, they are identified as queue-jumpers at best and very often as illegal.
Reality, as always, is complex. Implementation of the informal settlement upgrading programme has been slow or ill-conceived, and plagued by various obstacles not least the lack of capacity at the local level as well as political will to do incremental in situ settlement upgrading for poor people on what is often well-located land. Further, the identification of informal settlements for upgrade is often the subject of much less obvious processes than the rational allocation of resources and participative planning methodologies envisaged in policy. The question of access – of being on the list, or in the IDP – is not new, but it was recently reinforced at a workshop held in Johannesburg organised by LANDfirst, a network of civil society organisations advocating a pro-poor approach to land access that emphasises incremental development, and the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI).
This event brought together community-based organisations, NGOs, social movements, lawyers and academics working in various ways on informal settlement upgrading and managed land settlement across the country. These included representatives from the Informal Settlement Network (ISN), Landless People’s Movement (LPM), Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), Isandla Institute, Development Action Group (DAG), Community Resource Centre (CORC), Webber Wentzel, Legal Resources Centre (LRC), Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), Mvula Trust, Planact, Urban LandMark, Afesis-corplan, Eversheds, Built Environment Support Group (BESG) and others. And the issue of informal settlement identification, of being on the list, was given a new emphasis because of a shift in our development context.
Earlier in the year we heard President Zuma, Minister Sexwale and Minister Molewa talk about the government’s plan to provide tenure and services to 400 000 households by 2014. This is central to President Zuma’s signature outcomes-based approach to service delivery. Recently, the delivery agreement for outcome 8 – sustainable human settlements and improved quality of household life - signed between Zuma and Sexwale has entrenched this objective. The next step is forIn November, Sexwale to signed delivery agreements with his nine MECs, and for thethe process of identification of informal settlements for upgrading is to be finalised in due course.
For the organisations at the LANDfirst/SERI workshop, a priority question was about how the process for the identification of informal settlements for upgrading is taking place.
Transparency, flexibility and the involvement of organised community organisations, social movements and other civil society groups should be critical to this process. The workshop identified the need to create a national platform for discussion on informal settlement and land access issues, as well the need to bridge the gap between community needs and technocratic ‘delivery.’ A call for dialogue between all parties, and enhanced collaboration between different role-players on the ground, was articulated. We need to identify and learn from a range of ‘good practice’ happening throughout the country, in order to replicate it at scale.
The political space being created by current developments is welcomed by civil society organisations, who have consistently campaigned in various ways for the implementation of the upgrading programme over the years.
But we cannot afford to make the same mistakes again. The creation of equitable towns and cities which provide dignity and quality of life for all inhabitants is not a pipedream; however it requires the collective buy-in and energy of local government officials, communities, social movements, planners, engineers, and NGOs.
This could not be truer at this point in our democracy, especially with local government elections set to take place early next year.
In the midst of current debates about access to information and media freedom, there are important political developments happening around another vital part of South African society. And no, it’s not National Health Insurance or public sector wages (although these are critically important). We’re talking about the upgrading of informal settlements.
According to Statistics South Africa, as of mid-2009 13.4% of households in South Africa lived in informal dwellings. There are over 2 700 informal settlements in the country, comprising approximately 1.2 million households. In spite of a progressive Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme (UISP) being in the National Housing Code since 2004, informal settlements in South Africa have been characterised as sites of illegality for too long and shack-dwellers have been treated in a heavy-handed and undignified manner. In recent months Hangberg residents, and members of the shack-dweller movements Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) and Landless People’s Movement (LPM), have experienced this treatment in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg respectively.
A far cry from the ‘eradication’ discourse that has unfortunately characterised informal settlement approaches in the past, the UISP in fact highlights the importance of assisting people where they are i.e. in situ, and expressly states that relocation is a last resort to be undertaken only in exceptional circumstances on a voluntary and co-operative basis. This is the message that the National Upgrading Support Programme (NUSP), a partnership between the National Department of Human Settlement (NDHS) and the Cities Alliance to support the implementation of the informal settlement upgrading programme, is seeking to reinforce through inter alia the creation of a ‘community of practice’ – a forum of public sector practitioners where lessons can be learnt and capacity building can take place. The NUSP’s support will also come in the form of policy refinement and technical assistance.
It is at the municipal level that pressures are most acutely felt, and here too where the planning for development takes place, including identifying informal settlements for upgrade and setting targets for delivery using municipal planning instruments - integrated development plans (IDP) and their associated ‘housing chapters’, or housing sector plans.
As a result, communities living in informal settlements need to be “on the list” or “in the IDP” if they are to have any hope of upgrade in the foreseeable future (or at least the five year term of office, which is the planning horizon of municipal plans). If they are not, then there are no other options as they are unable to participate in the residential property market. Unless people register on a housing demand database (a new name for a housing waiting list) and wait patiently for their name to come up, they are identified as queue-jumpers at best and very often as illegal.
Reality, as always, is complex. Implementation of the informal settlement upgrading programme has been slow or ill-conceived, and plagued by various obstacles not least the lack of capacity at the local level as well as political will to do incremental in situ settlement upgrading for poor people on what is often well-located land. Further, the identification of informal settlements for upgrade is often the subject of much less obvious processes than the rational allocation of resources and participative planning methodologies envisaged in policy. The question of access – of being on the list, or in the IDP – is not new, but it was recently reinforced at a workshop held in Johannesburg organised by LANDfirst, a network of civil society organisations advocating a pro-poor approach to land access that emphasises incremental development, and the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI).
This event brought together community-based organisations, NGOs, social movements, lawyers and academics working in various ways on informal settlement upgrading and managed land settlement across the country. These included representatives from the Informal Settlement Network (ISN), Landless People’s Movement (LPM), Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), Isandla Institute, Development Action Group (DAG), Community Resource Centre (CORC), Webber Wentzel, Legal Resources Centre (LRC), Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), Mvula Trust, Planact, Urban LandMark, Afesis-corplan, Eversheds, Built Environment Support Group (BESG) and others. And the issue of informal settlement identification, of being on the list, was given a new emphasis because of a shift in our development context.
Earlier in the year we heard President Zuma, Minister Sexwale and Minister Molewa talk about the government’s plan to provide tenure and services to 400 000 households by 2014. This is central to President Zuma’s signature outcomes-based approach to service delivery. Recently, the delivery agreement for outcome 8 – sustainable human settlements and improved quality of household life - signed between Zuma and Sexwale has entrenched this objective. The next step is forIn November, Sexwale to signed delivery agreements with his nine MECs, and for thethe process of identification of informal settlements for upgrading is to be finalised in due course.
For the organisations at the LANDfirst/SERI workshop, a priority question was about how the process for the identification of informal settlements for upgrading is taking place.
Transparency, flexibility and the involvement of organised community organisations, social movements and other civil society groups should be critical to this process. The workshop identified the need to create a national platform for discussion on informal settlement and land access issues, as well the need to bridge the gap between community needs and technocratic ‘delivery.’ A call for dialogue between all parties, and enhanced collaboration between different role-players on the ground, was articulated. We need to identify and learn from a range of ‘good practice’ happening throughout the country, in order to replicate it at scale.
The political space being created by current developments is welcomed by civil society organisations, who have consistently campaigned in various ways for the implementation of the upgrading programme over the years.
But we cannot afford to make the same mistakes again. The creation of equitable towns and cities which provide dignity and quality of life for all inhabitants is not a pipedream; however it requires the collective buy-in and energy of local government officials, communities, social movements, planners, engineers, and NGOs.
This could not be truer at this point in our democracy, especially with local government elections set to take place early next year.