|
Mobilise
communities instead of
providing houses of cards Xolela
Mangcu,
Business Day,
FOR as long as we
ascribe the protests taking place around
the country to just service delivery, then for that long the solutions
will
continue to elude us. At root, this is a problem of the social contract
— or
lack thereof. We are reaping the whirlwinds of a technocratic,
consumerist
ideology of development that has been at the heart of government policy
since
the late 1980s and early 1990s, compounded by the neoliberal policies
of the
past 10 years. This technocratic,
consumerist approach to development was
embraced by both the National Party and the African National Congress
(ANC) for
political reasons. The National Party thought it could win the hearts
and minds
of black people by providing them with housing, and the ANC sought to
demonstrate that it could govern by building as many houses as
possible. That’s
the political part but the specific policy origins go back to the
National
Housing Forum in 1992. The debate within
the forum was whether SA should adopt the
“width” or the “depth” approach to housing delivery. The “width”
approached
focused on quantity — the number of units to be delivered — while the
“depth”
approach focused on building sustainable communities. Agencies such as
the
Urban Foundation pushed successfully for the development of the “width”
approach. After all, they had experimented with this approach when the
Independent Development Trust built hundreds of thousands of one and
two–roomed
houses that were derisively called “toilets in the veld”. This model found
new life in the form of the so-called RDP
houses. Developers made a killing by cutting corners in the quality of
these
houses. Despair set in, followed by the renting- out of these houses
and
vandalism. One only has to look at the names of these settlements to
understand
the level of community alienation from them. In my I can see why the
“width” approach would still be attractive
to the new government. The reason housing is often the development
priority in
many countries is precisely because the building of houses gives people
a sense
that progress is being made. I also suspect
there may be reluctance on the part of the
ANC to adopt a strategy mostly associated with the black consciousness
movement. But that would be childish and churlish. The movement’s
strategy and
philosophy of community based self-reliant development is exactly what
we need
in confronting our housing problems — it’s certainly what has been
tried in
certain parts of Latin America. In 1988, I wrote a
master’s thesis on housing policy. It was
a pretty dry and rather technical exercise about how to get the
building
industry, the financial services industry and the government to work on
a
resolution of the problem. The fact is that the housing deficit was as
big 20
years ago as it is likely to be 20 years from now . And that is because
people
will continue to move to the urban areas in search of work
opportunities. The solution is not
to promise people that you will close
the gap but that you will work with them as hard as you can to close
the gap,
and that you will speak to them as frankly as you can about the
challenges. In other words, use
the crisis as a way to engage with
people, instead of running away from them or reading them the riot act. There are more than
enough examples of community-based
housing development from around the world. Community
development corporations played a crucial role in
not only strengthening the capacity of local organisations but also
became
strong partners with governments in cities such as In the final
analysis, we need to rescue housing policy from
the false dichotomy of the “width” and “depth” approaches and adopt a
community
mobilisation strategy that combines the best of both approaches. The
development of housing should be seen not merely as a provision of
products but
a mobilisation of communities towards the creation and delivery of
those
products. The ANC would have
to use the very same methods it used in
getting millions of disaffected people to vote for it in the election
to
facilitate a process of public deliberation — not only about housing
but about
its other policy priorities, too The idea that you
can solve public policy problems from
From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=76609 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- |
- [YCLSA Discussion] Mobilise communities, Xolela Mangcu, Bu... Dominic Tweedie
- [YCLSA Discussion] Re: Mobilise communities, Xolela M... Mxolisi Mlatha
