'We Are Humans and Not Dogs': the Crisis of Housing Delivery In

ESSAY WE ARE HUMANS THE CRISIS OF HOUSING DELIVERY IN AND NOT DOGS POST-APARTHEID CAPE TOWN by ZACHARY LEVENSON t the heart of apartheid lay the The sudden lifting of influx controls A fortification of South African meant a rapid but delayed urbanization. cities as white spaces. Above all, These residents had been forcibly kept this meant the prevention of non- out of many cities since at least the whites from entering city centers by 1930s, and certainly since the passage force if necessary and cloaking this of the Group Areas Act in 1950. With in the rhetoric of legality. A series of the transition to democracy in 1994 key developments in the 1970s and and the African National Congress’ 80s, however, catalyzed a reversal. ascension to power, this immediate Most prominently was the repeal of proliferation of shantytowns was the pass laws in 1986, the set of laws viewed by the ANC as a threat to its Y that required non-whites to carry own legitimacy. Mandela’s promise pass books with them at all times of a million houses within a decade and limited their entry into spaces was expeditiously fulfilled, with the OCIOLOG S designated as “white group areas.” In development of a massive housing the case of Cape Town, designated a rollout plan in 1994 as part of the L OF A so-called “Colored Labor Preference Reconstruction and Development Area”1 during this period, Xhosa Program (RDP). People in need would residents were deemed “migrants” receive formal 40 m2 houses, called JOURN and deported over a thousand “RDP houses,” free of charge. Even EY L kilometers eastward to state-created after the closure of the RDP office E “homelands”2 in the Eastern Cape. The two years later, these houses would RK E systematic underdevelopment of these continue to be called “RDP houses,” at B rural bantustans left many so-called least colloquially, and retain this name “African” South Africans with little even today. Every person in every shack choice but to return to cities in search settlement in South Africa who I have of employment. As the apartheid state encountered knows what “RDP house” began to shy away from the 1960s and means, and this is generally the term 70s model of forced relocations ,by used to describe state-provisioned the early 1980s, black residents were formal housing. able to establish squatter settlements Since 1994, more than 3 million such in peri-urban locations around the RDP structures have been delivered.4 country, seeking jobs in cities and As Tokyo Sexwale, then Minister of having no other affordable housing Housing, famously remarked in 2010, options. This is not to suggest that “The scale of government housing informal settlements were not already delivery is second only to China”.5 present in urban areas—they date back Assuming the average household to the 1890s, and above all, to the period size of 3.6 people,6 this means that of interwar industrialization3—but they nearly a quarter of the South African multiplied at an unprecedented rate population has been housed under this during this latter period. delivery program.7 Yet during the same 14 ESSAY two decades since 1994, the number 3 million RDP homes constructed of informal settlements has increased between 1994 and 2010, more than more than nine-fold.8 Currently, 2.6 million of these are at “high risk.” between a quarter and a third of Nearly 610,000 of them need to be urban South Africans live in informal demolished and rebuilt altogether, housing9. This might take the form of and this is according to the National informal settlements, or sometimes, Home Builder Registration Council’s as in most of Cape Town’s so-called (NHBRC)11 own figures.12 Twice that Colored townships, it means that number have workmanship related people erect shacks in the backyards issues, which the NHBRC estimates of formal houses and pay rent to the will cost on average R12,000 ($1130) homeowner. Thus the same period per house. The combined cost during which all of these people were of remedying structural defects, formally housed saw an exponential minor defects, and non-compliant increase in the number of people living construction is estimated to be R58.7 in shacks. Despite one of the most billion ($5.5 billion). substantial housing delivery programs The shoddy construction is in modern history, urban informality largely attributable to so-called Black mushroomed during the two decades Economic Empowerment companies, following apartheid. in essence private sector startups The overwhelming bulk of this given nepotistic contracts with no 2014 V can be attributed to late and post- oversight or accountability in the name of some sort of progressive affirmative OL action. Given the extremely low profit . 58 What began as an attempt margins in RDP housing delivery,13 to resolve the post-apartheid larger construction companies tend housing crisis has now to shy away from applying for these government construction contracts, or actually exacerbated it. “tenders” as they are known in South Africa. In other words, the privatization apartheid urban influx, driven above of implementation means that all by the underdevelopment of the costs are trimmed at the expense of bantustans. Frequently too, RDP house providing durable structures. When recipients illegally sell their homes the Department of Human Settlements for a fraction of their value in order to releases a subsidy for an RDP house, meet immediate needs.10 If accepting the structure ultimately provided by a an RDP house frequently requires private contractor must meet a number relocation to a peripherally located of national guidelines in terms of site, commuting costs can increase size and quality. But with RDP home substantially. Given that no transport provision far from a lucrative industry, subsidy is provided and these houses these companies have every incentive do not come with jobs, they are often to cut corners. sold out of necessity, with residents What began as an attempt to returning to the same informal resolve the post-apartheid housing settlements and backyards where they crisis has now actually exacerbated were before. it. RDP delivery has reinforced the More damningly of the more than apartheid era geography of relegation 15 ESSAY by formalizing peripherally located Residents were beginning to form shack settlements, rendering their various neighborhood committees to far-flung locations permanent. With contest what they viewed as deficient these houses already deteriorating housing. One recipient of a new home, and residents frequently opting to sell Layla, took me into her new place. them off, delivery has hardly served I met her when she was still living as the antidote to proliferating urban in an informal settlement just a few informality. Whereas post-apartheid kilometers away, but after years on housing protests were initially most the waiting list, she finally secured a common among shack dwellers, cities formal structure at the new housing across the country have witnessed a development of Pelican Park just a few recent rise in protests by dissatisfied months ago. The internal walls were left RDP recipients. In Cape Town, these unplastered and made of large, light protests have spread across the Cape gray concrete bricks. If you rubbed Flats, from Scottsdene in the northeast the bricks—and not even particularly to Pelican Park in the southwest. vigorously—sandy material would fall Increasingly RDP beneficiariesaway. One could easily rub a divot Y are joining the ranks of informal into one of these bricks in a matter of settlement dwellers and backyarders minutes. OCIOLOG in organizing against the municipal “I must make it livable,” Layla S state, the perceived culprit of the post- told me, pointing to the few pictures apartheid housing crisis. and mirrors with Arabic script she’d L OF A hung on the walls. I noticed that the *** molding on the ceiling was actually When I visited one such residential just white styrofoam glued along the JOURN RDP development in Cape Town in corners. Apparently this was from EY L early June, I encountered houses the contractor—not of Layla’s doing. E much smaller than I was used to It reminded me of the so-called “New RK 15 E seeing—they didn’t even seem to Tech” houses I’d seen in Delft, B comply with the 40 m2 requirement. constructed almost entirely out of This development—Pelican Park—is a styrofoam. I asked her why the walls flagship project for the City, providing were left unfinished, and the floor was countless photo ops for Mayor Patricia exposed concrete. “The company that de Lille, Western Cape Premier Helen built these houses said they ran out Zille, and numerous other visitors. Ten of money from the subsidy. It was all years in the making, it is the City’s in the plan, and look how cheap the first integrated housing development, materials they used were, but now they meaning that RDP houses, subsidized say they ran out of money from the gap units, and mortgaged housing [RDP housing] subsidy, and so they will exist in the same development.14 couldn’t put tiles on the floors, couldn’t Roughly 2000 RDP houses will exist put plaster on the walls, couldn’t finish in Pelican Park when the project is it really. So now we have these houses, completed in 2017. and we must make it livable ourselves, Beyond the size of each house they say. But how? We have no money. though, it was the shoddy construction That’s why we’re in these houses in the that was driving recipients of these first place!” structures to organize against the City.

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