The Weekly

Apart from making urban areas hideous and placing a humongous burden on local authorities to provide basic municipal services, informal settlements always come with a myriad other problems.

Overcrowding, poor sanitation and limited healthcare are always a cause for concern in squatter camps.

And not only do the materials normally used to put up shacks – such as cardboard boxes and plastic – leave the inhabitants vulnerable to the vagaries of weather, they also pose massive fire risks.

Then there is the lack of jobs as well as crime and rampant drug abuse.

In brief, the living conditions in informal settlements – such as Khayelitsha in Mangaung and Thandanani in Matjhabeng – are unacceptable.

In actual fact, informal settlements, also known as slums or squatter camps, should not be allowed to continue existing.

It was therefore encouraging to note that the Free State government has already reached that conclusion too.

Presenting her budget vote speech a fortnight ago, human settlements MEC Olly Mlamleli announced the provincial government was looking to rehabilitate 143 informal settlements in 20 municipalities.

A total of R1.1-billion has been set aside for housing development in the current financial year of which a significant portion will go towards upgrading informal settlements.

The department was allocated a total of R1.2-billion for the current financial year and it will go up to R1.4-billion next year before another increase to about R1.5-billion in 2017/18.

While the Free State government’s plan to upgrade informal settlements has been warmly greeted as noble and long-overdue, simply demolishing shacks and replacing them with brick-and-mortar housing units will not make this province slum-free, we are afraid.

In the first place, assuming the entire R1.1-billion set aside for housing development in the current financial year is committed to the informal settlement upgrade project, it would be extremely insufficient.

If we are to work with R60 000 a house – the minimum cost of building a single housing unit under the government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) – it means the budgeted figure will only be enough for 16 667 housing units.

That comes down to about 117 new housing units for each of the 143 informal settlements.

Yet upgrading a slum is more than just razing shacks to the ground and replacing them with proper houses.

First, land for the housing scheme has to be purchased.

Second, another huge amount has to go towards the construction of basic infrastructure such as roads, drains and culverts as well as provision of electricity supplies, potable water and sanitation and other social amenities.

While more funding can be sourced to cater for all those other expenses, the myriad challenges that come with such an ambitious programme, unfortunately, do not end there.

Without a reliable framework for identifying non-tenable informal settlements and legitimate slum households entitled to get dwelling units, the planned social housing project is bound to fail.

The prerequisite for one to qualify for a free house under the RDP scheme is simple and well-defined: one has to be a South African citizen who is unemployed or earning not more than R3 500 a month.

But when it comes to the informal settlements, how are they going to determine who deserves to benefit from the planned housing scheme?

Another big problem: is there a plan to stop new squatter camps from sprouting?

We would hate to see the government’s noble intention to provide decent housing to informal settlement dwellers and spruce up our towns backfiring.

There is definitely need to implement a solid plan to stop the establishment of new squatter settlements – including legal action against trespassing and illegal land occupation.

Without that we will see people rushing to start new squatter camps in the hope of benefiting from the state’s informal settlement upgrade scheme.

Of course, we are aware the forever-rising demand for housing in towns and the continuous rural-urban migration will not make the slum challenge any easier.

Informal settlers almost always occupy land near urban centres because that is where job opportunities, affordable transport, schools, clinics and other amenities are accessible.

It therefore goes without saying that improving the quality of life and creating greater opportunities in rural areas will prevent people from migrating to urban areas while at the same time helping to keep cities cleaner and attractive to investors.

All these issues have to be addressed, unless we want to see the informal settlement rehabilitation project being reduced to a Band-Aid solution.