Electronic,

In search of land and housing in the new South Africa the case of Ethembalethu

(Eds.)
(2008)

Abstract

This study describes the saga of how one community, instead of squatting in an informal settlement or invading a new plot of land, attempted to buy land legally and build their own houses in a peri-urban area, using their own savings. The Ethembalethu story draws attention to the many challenges that poor people face accessing land and housing in South Africa. The purpose of this case study is to highlight the complex challenges that face poor communities that attempt to secure their constitutionally mandated rights to adequate housing. These challenges stem from inconsistent or inadequate policies and legislation, confusion between the myriad agencies involved, lack of clarity over responsibilities and accountability, lack of capacity of the implementing agencies, the rising costs and delays in accessing building materials, corruption, and the absence of information and training of both government officials and the housing hopefuls. Finally, the case highlights the Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) ferocity with which wealthier citizens may still resist change in the new South Africa. This report draws practical lessons from the case study and makes suggestions for reforms. This report is organized as follows. It begins with a narrative of events, starting in 1996 and ending in 2006. It draws the key lessons emerging from this experience. It then investigates the main issues, and suggests reforms and improvements in the following areas: (i) improving access to land; (ii) simplifying and aligning legal procedures; (iii) designing a land and housing program for peri-urban areas; and (iv) reforming the land market. The report concludes with a call for further participatory action research.

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  • @juandulce
    10 years ago
    This book was written based on an investigation made by a group of researchers with support from the World Bank, about a case in South Africa that shows the difficulties that poor people in that country have in their attempt to purchase land and to build their houses, especially in the peri-urban areas. The group that conducted the research is very large and varied; it involves people from the city of Moagle, where the case that is object of study took place, as well as consultants between which is Stephen Berrisford, and much more people from a diverse group of professionals. The book was published in 2008 after several years of investigation that ended in 2007, however, the authors try to explain the context of the zone since its very beginnings trying to expose the causes of the problem. It is about an unsuccessful project in a peri-urban area outside of the limits of a city called Moagle, where a group of black people tried to build a small village, after years of saving money and assaying to make a process of occupation different than the informal one to which people where used, and promoting a more organized route. In this point it is very important to emphasize in what is called “geography of the Apartheid”, that is how was made the distribution of the city in zones, especially in terms of housing, trying to divide the zones of the white people from the zones of the black people, and to remember that the authors say that even if Apartheid has already finished, this culture remains a bit in the development and occupation of the city in these years. In a general way, the authors notice that these people in Moagle had a lot of problems in their effort to build their “own town”, firstly because they wanted a model where urban and rural activities were mixed, which was a new idea in South Africa. The authors sustain that peri-urban areas in the country are very bad conceived in the law, as they does not permit the possibility to build a low density neighborhoods if they are not inside the limits of a “township”. Also, the municipalities explicitly express that their aim is to promote high-end land development in the expansion areas, as this type of development generates more resources to the city and because they argue that taking public services there is a cost that only the rich people could pay. However, the project that was object of study for the authors was thought for having a more cost-effective network for public services, and they were trying to create also places for work, as well as they wanted to produce in their own houses with the rural-urban model, these factors combined would have raised the economy of this population and in general terms, it would have generated similar economic resources for the municipality. Secondly, the community that was studied also had a lot of obstacles legal and racial. When they tried to buy the land for executing their project there was a rejection from the white people in the neighborhood, and supported in the weak legal system the white people managed to cancel the agreements of selling the land several times, until the point these people paid to the black people community a big amount of money for buying land, with the condition that this land had to be outside their neighborhood. After passing that difficult process of purchasing the land they had a lot of problems when trying to obtain the permissions to build their village, because they have to pass two processes that run basically for the same thing. However, they generate a lot of confusion, bigger costs and they contribute also to delay the development of the new neighborhood, which is a help for those who oppose to this type of projects. In summary, this difficulties in the law and the excessively big bureaucracy tend to extend the forms of the distribution of land that were established in the Apartheid era. Thirdly, the land market and the regulations and plans that the country and the municipalities have about land make more difficult for the poor people to build their houses outside of an informal context. The land in the rural areas (containing peri-urban areas) is not taxed, generating a lot of speculation in the market and promoting the not development of this land. That makes the prices of the land really high and making it almost impossible to afford for the poor people that can only purchase very small pieces, which are very scarce because the regulations forbid the subdivision of the plots. The peri-urban areas need to have an own legislation and regulations, different from urban and rural laws, but they need to be really strict in order to prevent an excessive urban sprawl. The plans are very restrictive and they do not support the need of the poor people to access to good land, they fix the edge of the cities and do not permit the construction out of those. Making peri-urban areas a completely prohibited form of occupation, that would be very useful for some people. Actually the Integrated Development Plans are anti-poor as they do not support the housing projects for poor people and they support indirectly the racist practices of the distribution of land. It would be nice to associate this cases with the cases of common ownership in other countries, as Uruguay, Sweden or El Salvador, where it was also an organized community the one that managed to buy the land and improve their neighborhood. It started also without the support from the government, but they organized so much that they achieved to receive the attention they required and they got convinced about their rights, in other words, it was at the same time a social fight and a neighborhood creation. Bilbiography: Berrisford, S. (2008). In search of land and housing in the new South Africa the case of Ethembalethu. Washington D.C: World Bank.
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