Listening to the silent majority

[121]

It gradually dawned on me - and practically all interviewees touched upon this subject sooner or later - how serious the housing problems in townships are and what home ownership means to blacks in practice. The government and tpa on one side and town councils on the other are caught in this vicious circle of continued apartheid problems, to arrange for orderly urbanisation and the dream of home ownership for all. Influx Control was abolished in 1986, but at the same time provisions of the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act were sharpened up. The mayors stressed that the government did no longer control urban hous-

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ing and development. Access to land and housing had now moved into the realm of private enterprise and private developers, with the most dire consequences for the lowest income groups and the poor. Those at the bottom of the social ladder are finding themselves in a permanent quandary as to how to get acceptable living quarters. Squatters can no longer be removed and shipped off to Bantustans, but slum areas are too often cleared for private developers, which means in practice people are then removed and their huts destroyed. ‘The poor are not on the peripheries of the housing market, the job market and the transport market,’ observed Georgina Hamilton in the Sunday Tribune^104. ‘Pavements and back yards have become a refuge from the high costs of transport and housing. Informal economic activity is their bid for survival.’

According to some papers - The Star, The Sunday Times, or The City Press and of course The Weekly Mail, which excels in condemning literally everything that's happening in South Africa - developments in the housing sector are anti-black, all misguided and unacceptable. The South African Institute of Race Relations, another outfit which, of course, only finds fault with this country, supplied a flood of negative data quickly picked up by Paul Hendler to fill virtually an entire page of the City Press.^105. Fortunately there also is Black Enterprise magazine, which published in Volume 22, 1989 a 36-page survey on what really is going on in housing for blacks in South Africa. While the naysayers of the abovementioned institutions moan over black builders, who are unable to compete with the powerful white-owned development companies, black enterprise talks of ‘Challenging new housing developments’. fha Homes, the housing utility company and the Urban Foundation in Transvaal are developing 6 000 sites for black and coloured families, with 3 000 housing units. Developers also aim to provide 3 093 stands in Kathlehong township; 1 400 stands in Moleleki; 2 177 stands in Tokoza. Marimba Gardens was developed by a consortium of developers, 2 446 stands; at Vosloorus, 1 500 stands; KwaThema, 400 houses; Tsakane, 1 100; Phola Ext, 1 421 stands; Mhluzi, the township of Philip Nhlapo, 350 houses; Mamelodi, 1 300 stands; Atteridgeville, 366

104. The Sunday Tribune, June 4, 1989

105. City Press, June 4, 1989

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stands; in Protea and Dobsonville, 5 000 stands; Mohlakeng, 505 stands; Khutsong, 85 houses and 400 stands; and so on.^106.

There are more articles in Black Enterprise. One page (29) tells about employer housing packages. The following page speaks of high-quality housing for high and low cost houses, illustrated with coloured pictures. There is a page on the Steyn Housing System whereby unskilled workers being trained on the site can put prefab housing together. There is an article on the recently established pbf (Professional Builders Federation) which assists small black builders and merchants to overcome problems and get small black builders into the building industry. The Board is presided over by President L Neyembe and further consists of seven black members and one white member.^107.

The Urban Foundation has set up the Contractor Development Agency to offer managements skills to black building contractors and assists further in that adequate loan capital is being raised to finance their activities. Next, there is an article about bifsa (Building Industry Federation of South Africa) which has begun programmes to train small builders in the informal sector. Then we learn that ibm, South Africa Projects Fund, First National Bank and the African Bank have over the past 4 years helped 194 black builders in financing their respective constructions projects. Over the past 5 years; the Everton Town Council has trained construction entrepreneurs and bricklayers. This township council simply awarded housing contracts only to independent black building contractors. Then, there is an article on the Vaal Triangle Blacks Business Association. Or, an article about 70 000 trainees having taken courses in basic building skills, steel fixing, concreting, welding and other areas of skills at the Western Cape Training Centre set up for this purpose in 1985. Do I have to say more? I will never understand what the South African media expect to gain from presenting such bleak and one-sided negative images of their own country. It's one thing to be critical or be against government policy, but why do so many publications deliberately paint the worst possible picture of what is happening in South African society? Virtually all daily newspapers print a bar-

106. Black Enterprise, volume 22, June 1989

107. In the Transvaal alone, live 6,1 million blacks. The TPA, in collaboration with private-sector groups, is making sites available to settle 70 000 families in the next few months

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rage of biased reports that do not hold up against present realities. Didn't the Foundation for Community Development (fcd) announce at the end of May 1989, that the Soweto Town Council had approved a 560-million Rand highrise residential complex of 8 000 apartments for 40 000 residents? The apartment towers will have 20 and 25 floors, with 24 new schools in the vicinity, sports fields and recreational facilities.