Minister of Human Settlements Lindiwe Sisulu has warned that countrywide housing delivery protests similar to the current violent #FeesMustFall movement can happen if a solution to the housing crisis in South Africa is not found.
She also issued an ominous warning that the housing crisis has led to a change of government during the municipal election in London this year.
Sisulu was speaking at the inaugural national human settlements conference at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in Port Elizabeth this week where she urged various universities and housing sector experts to find a solution to the housing crisis in South Africa.
Experts, with knowledge in alternative housing methods to deal with the housing backlog, were also encouraged to share their ideas with her department.
Sisulu made it abundantly clear that, in future, her department could face similar protests affecting universities if nothing was done to deal with the backlog.
She also said that in South Africa there were still older people between the ages of 50 and 100 who still do not have houses and should be prioritised.
“As we gather here, the higher education landscape in South Africa is the subject of much animated and concerned discussion, debate and mobilisation.
“This conference takes place at a time of the heightened struggles of students for free education.
“Most institutions of higher learning have been closed for two weeks now and a national Education Imbizo that was held this past Monday could not reach an amicable solution, while the Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education and Training, headed Justice Heher was established to investigate the matter of university fees and will table its report in 2017.
“These events have impressed upon us the importance of access to higher education opportunities. As the debate rages on, we would like to borrow from our own experience, some of the concepts that we in human settlements have adopted in order to deal with our housing matters.”
Sisulu said it was necessary for her to contextualise the conference against the backdrop of education because they had gathered in PE in the pursuit of knowledge and to professionalise the human settlement sector. She was, however, adamant that no under 40-year-old qualify for a RDP house saying her department was willing to give job and skills opportunities for the under 40’s to enable them to work and fend for themselves.
Sisulu also said her department was working with other government departments, including the Higher Education Department under Blade Nzimande, to find solutions to housing problems affecting students.
According to Sisulu, her new master’s spatial plan was to ensure that they not only built the required houses, but also recreational facilities, health institutions like clinics and schooling infrastructure to complete their concept of human settlement.
“We were busy with reconceptualising our own position in 2004, shifting our paradigm from housing to integrated settlements. We struggled to find the academic support to take us to where we needed to be.
“We were carried through by the town planning discipline which, as you will know was not human settlements.
“But as we forged ahead, we found that it was necessary that we create this new discipline if we are to sustain ourselves and grow. We sold this new idea to several universities and I will never know what was more attractive: the idea itself or the money that it brought with it.”
“The global crisis on housing continues with the issue of shortage of housing, especially affordable housing, seeming to have been the main platform on which election of the Mayor of London was contested in 2016,” Sisulu said.
She said that London, being one of the oldest cities in the modern world, was still in the grip of a housing crisis saying “when considering that housing remains a global crisis, then you will understand the enormity of the problem still ahead of us.”
Political Bureau