THERE’S a famous English idiom that says “ Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth Quite simply what this means is that when given a horse it would be bad manners to inspect the horse’s mouth to see if it has bad teeth.
What this essentially means is don’t inspect a gift to make sure it matches some standard you might have, just be grateful!
This idiom came to mind when I was listening to a rambunctious election debate on Kaya FM this week. The conversation was steered to the contentious issue of housing in South Africa, more specifically affordable housing.
Incidentally I am working on a project to evaluate the success of the Human Settlements programme in South Africa so my ears perked up with interest. The opposition parties were quick to malign the 40m² RDP housing that is essentially bestowed to recipients free of charge.
This was part of the government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme which was instituted in 1994 to redress much of the housing inequalities that were inherited from the previous apartheid dispensation.
The government goal was to provide at least 300 000 houses a year over a five-year period. This was done through a subsidy for construction of the house and a serviced site.
The beneficiary moves in free of charge. South Africa is probably one of the few countries left in the world where a poor person can own a house. More recently Colombia jumped onto this bandwagon with free housing for the poor as a vote-winning strategy; the cost of which will only be felt in the long run.
In other countries, the poorest in society will either rent a shack or reside in some subsidised rental unit based on a voucher system. Yet we have people in South Africa complaining that these houses are substandard and the door comes off the hinges the minute you open it.
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I don’t know what the expectation that people had! That for a subsidy of R68 000 they would receive a duplex apartment with a garden?
However, it has been argued that most households would probably be able to build a better quality house for the same amount.
On the flip side using substandard materials is also not sustainable in that most of those new housing settlements might not be in existence in a few years’ time.
In Cape Town, RDP houses have been declared as acting as “a breeding ground for TB” by creating an internal environment far worse than informal shacks, which “are warmer, drier and better ventilated”. That said, going forward there needs to be greater attention to using more durable and eco-efficient materials. After all sustainability needs to be a key consideration.
Personally I don’t believe providing free housing is a way of assisting the poorest echelons of society. For starters it is not sustainable. Capital subsidies for free housing essentially bankrupt the State because the demand for free housing is forever a moving target. Moreover the recipients can’t afford the maintenance and upkeep of a house.
As it stands a large percentage of those who benefited from the RDP houses cannot afford to contribute towards rates and taxes, never mind the run of the mill electricity bill. Yet municipalities are exhausting their budgets in providing infrastructure and services which they will never be able to recoup.
Furthermore, because there is no underlying base to support the neighbourhood this leads to the disintegration and deterioration of these settlements thereby creating slums where the greatest poverty is concentrated.
Moreover, this compounds issues of crime, grime and other social ills like drug dealing and prostitution. Off course the advantage of being a recipient of a free house is that the beneficiary has an asset which they can use as collateral to gain a loan.
Most argue against the fact that the house cannot be sold within a stipulated period. With all due respect; the beneficiary is given a house to alleviate a need.
However it is common practice for beneficiaries to rent out their RDP homes while they reside in shacks and other inferior forms of accommodation which is probably because they cannot afford the operational costs of living in a house.
Clearly there is a need to come up with more sustainable housing solutions for society’s poor and innovative mechanisms to fund them.
The aspiration of having a roof over one’s head is a noble one, but not always a cheap one.
Sue Nyathi is the author of the novel The Polygamist. You can follow her on Twitter @SueNyathi
