Lindiwe Sisulu, the Minister of Human Settlements, aims to leverage the financial reserves of the National Home Builders Registration Council and Estate Agency Affairs Board to increase the delivery of affordable housing.
Sisulu also wants to get the Public Investment Corporation, the manager of the Government Employees Pension Fund, to invest in the housing market segment.
She was speaking on the sidelines of the National Human Settlements Indaba, which aims to build partnerships for the accelerated delivery of human settlements through a social contract with partners.
Sisulu said the government had committed R1 billion towards the target of delivering 1.5 million housing opportunities by 2019, which would drive economic development.
“The 1.5 million houses we want to provide is government’s commitment. We can treble that with the support of society,” she said.
Sisulu said the emphasis in the next five years was on megaprojects, while also allowing for pockets of site-and-service and people’s housing projects. Megaprojects, which delivered at least 10 000 housing units, had the advantage of building on scale and generating jobs and subsidiary industries.
Sisulu said human settlements had potential as a great job creator and they intended to harness the energy of the unemployed youth.
“We would like to test the Cuban model of a youth brigade for every project, so that we can deal with unemployment while we skill the youth, she said.
“With all that we have been through as a country, where a house was used as part of a coercive system to subjugate the masses of our people, we can use that same instrument to provide settled communities, responsible to their obligations as citizens and give them a stake in the economy.
“Together we can improve the economy of the country, create more jobs and thrive.”
The indaba follows the social contract entered into in 2005 between what was then the Department of Housing and many civil society partners that resulted in the delivery of 1.2 million housing units in the following five years.
Various organisations made commitments and pledges yesterday towards the social contract. The finalisation and signing of the second social contract is scheduled to take place today.
Pierre Venter, the head of human settlements at the Banking Association of SA, said the banking sector was committed to the social contract if it included all stakeholders.
He said since signing the initial social contract in 2005, the commercial banks in South Africa had lent more than R101bn to more than 2.2 million families to enable them to improve their housing conditions.
He said a key concern of the sector when it signed the record of understanding in 2005 was that the affordable housing market was not a normalised market segment.
“This segment is today commercially viable and sustainable despite the economic recession… and it compares favourably with other segments.
“We now have commercial banks actively competing for market share in this segment because it’s deemed to be very good business and that’s our future middle class,” he said.
A Chambers of Mines representative said the chamber and its member companies were committed to working in partnerships with all stakeholders in areas that would improve the socioeconomic and living conditions of its people.
Asked by Sisulu if the chamber would double the R1bn commitment made by the government, the representative said the funding by its members individually through their social and labour plans collectively exceeded R2bn.