uTshani Fund

By Walter Fieuw (on behalf of SWN/ISN)

Solid waste management requires citizens, industries and government to work in a collaborative manner to minimise the flow of waste to landfill sites. The City of Cape Town estimates the following breakdown of waste generation: households 46%, industry 27% and commerce 26%. Research conducted on the capacity of landfill sites as the primary waste disposal option has found that, “based on the latest assessments, the remaining lifespan of the City’s landfills, when no additional diversions from landfill are implemented over and above current diversions and excluding private landfills, is between 12-14 years counting from 2010 onwards”. Despite the environmental and community health implications of mushrooming landfill sites, this manner of waste disposal is still the preferred method.

Most municipalities in South Africa has by-laws in place and there is a growing recognition that waste has economic value – recycling and reuse creates economic activity and minimises health, socio-economic and resource impacts, thereby reducing the amount of waste that ends up in expensive landfills. Major industries have waste processing plants, and the economic value of these industries is considerable.

However, the majority of municipal interventions in Cape Town, and for that matter other metropolitan municipalities too, has done little to improve the access for informal waste pickers to markets. Despite the emphasis on finding new solutions to waste management, especially recognising the livelihood aspect of informal waste pickers, little institutional and organisational capacity has been developed to take informal waste management to scale. Research and experience has suggested that it can be highly counterproductive to establish new formal waste management and recycling systems without recognising the role of the informal sector. There is very little organisational support to encourage job creation and livelihood opportunities in solid waste management and recycling, and poor people often do not benefit from this core municipal function.

A Skip with crushed recycled glass in Sheffield Road, a settlement linked to ISN

The Solid Waste Network (SWN) was initiated in 2005 in response to the growing demand of organised communities for livelihood opportunities. After learning about informal communities organising around solid waste in Nairobi, Kenya and Cairo, Egypt via Shack / Slum Dwellers International (SDI) exchanges, groups in Cape Town started organising and collecting first batches of glass, plastic and paper, and created direct links with the formal recycling industry.

The project has 2 components: 1.) the SWN as a community-based network of communities of informal waste pickers, and 2.) the support system comprising of the collection and management team with a staff complement of five. The SWN promotes as socio-institutional approach to integrating informal waste pickers in the formal recycling industry. By creating organisational capacity to advance pro-poor and inclusive measures to integrating the poor, the SWN enables market mechanisms to work for the poor.

[vimeo width=”620″ height=”483″]http://vimeo.com/36049161[/vimeo]

The SWN has developed a socio-institutional approach to waste management, by merging access to markets with real time livelihoods support. Groups of waste pickers source waste at community level for income, adding to cleaner neighbourhoods, as well as environmental education. The collection team responds to the demands of the network, i.e. when someone is in need of cash, they make amendments to their collection plan. The SWN meets monthly as a learning platform on recycling industry and policy developments, as well as operational aspects to develop the income component. A community waste collection point is in convenient proximity for waste pickers, and acts as a learning process to replicate such buy-in model (large collectives of individual pickers) in other parts of the city. In Cape Town, the SWN has developed a working relationship with a number of industries: Paper (Nampak and Mondi); Plastic (Extrupek, New Heights and Proplus) and glass (SAB, Distell, Mega Metals, Consol and Macro). The SWN is recognized as a stakeholder in the industry, with lots of potential for expansion. The SWN, as an ISN initiative, is seeking to expand this model to communities in Joburg, Ekurhuleni, Durban, Port Elizabeth and the West Coast. Resource constraints are currently hampering this.

On 8 November, leaders of some of the larger buy-in centres in Cape Town gathered to assess the progress of goals in 2012, and to chart the ambitions for 2013. The Solid Waste Network (SWN) continually needs to assess the scale of current activities and operations due to the unique service the administrative hub provides, which is costly and receives very little external support. The administrative hub’s 5 members, repairs to the vehicles and other administrative costs are covered by the proceeds from the waste sold to the industries (CORC subsidises a large part of the fuel of the collection vehicles).

Marlene Busa, a single mother from Mitchell’s Plein, said that is was not easy for her to collect waste at the beginning. “Some people look down on you,” said Marlene, adding that “government should recognize us—us people who are cleaning our environment—because it is not a bad thing; it is a way of living. It is an income, and a service to the community”. However, despite the service to the communities and to the City, some of the communities have experienced the disempowering effect of by-law implementation when their informal buy-in centres were shut down and/or fined (up to R20,000) by Metro Police because they did not have the relevant enterprise registration papers. Such unresponsive regulations hamper the initiatives of the poor.

Reflecting on the progress made since 2006, Gershwin Kohler, an independent consultant to CORC and Solid Waste Network, remarked,

In 2006, we started have a half ton per month of glass, and that was collected in Section B, Khayalitsha. This year, we have set our sights on 50 tonnes of waste glass per month. I am happy to report that the Network has collected 54 tonnes this month. The point SWN wants to bring across is that you have to start small, and grow from there.

In 2013, the SWN aims for the following ambitious targets per month:

• 50 tonnes of glass waste (agreement with Consol)
• 5 tonnes of paper (agreement with Mondi)
• 3 tonnes of tins
• 2 tonnes of plastic
• 50 crates and 100 crates returnable bottles (agreements with SAB and Distell respectively)

The successes of Ms. Agnes Qhagana and her daughter Sheila (pictured above) were signalled out at the meeting. Sheila explained what they have accomplished in the past few years, being one of the first waste pickers to set up a buy-in centre in Khayalitsha.

We started small in Interpark and worked most weekends, my mother and I. But now we have employed two guys to help us over the weekends. Fridays and Saturdays and the holiday months are especially good times to collect the waste. From the waste recycling we have also started a car washing business. We now employ eleven guys to wash cars and we are proud to have the biggest car wash in Spine Road, Khayalitsha. We have upgraded our yard and are looking to extend our house now. The other money we are investing.

Mr. Kholer remarked that the “issue about recycling in tonnage. You must have volume”. John McKerry, the programme manager of the SWN, also reflected favourably on the past year. “What you put in is what you get out. Our service is like a lifeline to many households in desperate need of cash. The SWN is actually like a transport service that connects all the buy-in centres (the pickers’ collectives) and collects the waste at your house and create the income stream. If we work alone, transport will always be a problem. How will you get your stuff to the market if you work alone?”.

John shared a story of a man who was impatient with that the transport team could not collect the waste in a given day. He had 630kg of glass and decided to rent a bakkie (pick-up truck) and deliver the glass himself to a recycling plant in Parow. Parow would pay him 40c/kg (transport not included) where the SWN pays 30c/kg (transport included). At the plant he received R252 for 630kg, but then had to pay the bakkie owner R250 for rental and fuel. He was left with nothing. The SWN would have paid him R190 at his house.

Informal pickers in Cape Town face hardships in collecting and managing waste as an income stream. But strength lies in the collective, and now the SWN can start engaging the City of Cape Town proving that collectively they remove 50 tonnes per month out of the waste stream. In so doing, the collective waste pickers are not only ensuring clear and safer living environments, but also contributing a vital service to the City of Cape Town, and saving public expenditure through minimising airspace cost (current municipal cost of landfilling is R327/tonnes). These costs must be compared to the opportunity costs of finding alternative waste management solutions, which should fundamentally include the role of informal sector workers.

Prize winners for most tonnage generated in 2012.

Left to right: Vivian Retsha, Marlene Busa, Fufukile Tena, Elizabeth Mabayi, Agnes Qhagana, Shiela Qhagana

By Kwanele Sibanda and Walter Fieuw (on behalf of CORC)

Midvaal municipality is located in the Gauteng province and its name is deduced from its geographical location: Midvaal lies halfway between Johannesburg / East Rand and Vaal / Vereeniging areas. Together with Emfuleni and Lesedi municipalities, Midvaal is part of the Sedibeng district municipality. Midvaal is located near the Vaal Dam in a beautiful countryside and has been spotlighted for its tourism potential as it boasts eco-tourism and avi-tourism opportunities.

According to Midvaal’s 2^nd news bulletin of 2012, the 2012/2013 IDP and Budget is focussed on maintaining and enhancing basic service delivery to all areas in Midvaal with a shift towards addressing the need for additional infrastructure and social facilities in poorer communities. Midvaal has undergone a radical change from quaint country area to booming tourist, recreational and industrial centre in Southern Gauteng. According to Statistics South Africa, Midvaal has grown from 60 000 residents in 2001 to 100 000 in 2007. A report by Gauteng’s Provincial Government ranked Midvaal as the province’s top municipality in terms of quality of life. In the 2011 Municipal Productivity Index, conducted by Municipal IQ, Midvaal was ranked 5^th out of 266 municipalities.

However, despite the reforms in municipal governance spurred by the growth of local and regional economies, the life for the majority of informal settlement dwellers have not improved. The uneven development in Midvaal is perhaps most noticable in the level of services in the informal settlements. Sicelo Shiceka is an informal settlement in located 5km outside the town centre of Meyerton. There are sections that are densely populated, and other areas have easily accessible with walkable pathways and access roads. The municipality claims some areas of the land is dolomatic, a soil typology that has plagued development in many areas in Gauteng. The municipality aims to build about 450 houses in the near future, but this will never cater for more than 4,500 households living in Sicelo Shiceka. The settlement is also subjected to fierce political contestation between the Democratic Alliance and the African National Congress. On a recent walkabout in the informal settlement,  MEC for Local Government and Housing Humphrey Mmemezi commented on the situation,

I realized after the walk  about in the area that there are no toilets and people use nearby bushes and open pit toilets to relieve themselves. I made  a commitment that we will get funds  so that  we can buy toilets for the community. There are also only 9 taps for the community of 4000 shacks.

Even though the “department was able to secure R5,7million to provide 1000 toilets and these are going to be cleaned twice a week”, this was done with very little input from the community. The municipality appointed the private security company Red Ants to conduct settlement profiles and socio-economic enumerations in the informal settlements of Midvaal, which is a 3 year agreement. ISN made a number of presentations to the Head of Department: Housing and showcased the detailed eight page enumeration template which includes socio-economic and demographic questions. This information is often of paramount importance to the community’s needs. External service providers such as the Red Ants, who only have a one-page questionnaire asking the most basic questions, do not facilitate these questions. ISN and CORC also produce ID cards as a result of the enumeration exercise, which give the households protection against evictions and displacements.

In the month of October 2012 ISN and CORC supported Sicelo Shiceka settlement more intensely.  A number of engagements with the municipality and the community was facilitated and it was agreed that ISN will be allowed to conduct a autonomous and independent enumeration in Sicelo. The main objective of the enumeration is empowering the majority of shack dwellers that will not be accommodated by the 450 housing units to have a development plan with which to engage the municipality with. An arrangement was struck between CORC and the Midvaal municipality in which the municipality, through the subcontractor Red Ants, will remunerate some of the enumeration expenses. The enumeration comes as an opportunity for community organization, strengthening of leadership and saving schemes as well as paving way for future working relations between the ISN and the municipality in other settlements.

The enumeration of Sicelo Shiceka started yesterday, 31^st of October. More experienced enumerators from other communities linked to ISN in Gauteng will support the community of Sicelo Shiceka. This is the first initiative in the Sedibeng district municipality, and ISN is making in-roads in showcasing, through the enumeration and subsequent planning processes, that people-centred processes are much more effective and efficient than external contractor driven interventions. Only once the community owns the data, and plans situational responsive solutions to better service provision, livelihoods creation, and secure tenure, true empowerment occurs.

By Jhono Bennett and Walter Fieuw (on behalf of CORC)

Post-apartheid urban and housing policies have underscored the necessity of progressively integrating the poor as a means of restructuring spatially fragmented cities and eradicating asset-based poverty. Post–apartheid urban policies had to redress apartheid fragmentation and segregation and the subject of transformation in democratic South Africa has been the historically constructed uneven development of ‘islands of spatial affluence’ in a ‘sea of geographic misery’.

An artist’s impression of the devastation of informal spaces under apartheid planning

With the relaxing of influx controls during the late 1980s, South African cities have been subject to rapid urbanization and resultant growth of informal settlements in inner-city and peripheral areas. The growth of informal settlements in the past two decades have by far exceeded government’s efforts to deliver better services, provide adequate housing and mitigate against disasters and vulnerability. Despite the government’s efforts to deliver more than 2.5 million housing units since 1994, the housing backlog have remained at 15-17% of the urban population (2.1 million units outstanding). Today there are more than 2,600 informal settlements, and continue to grow between 5-7% across different regions. This is a stark increase from 300 informal settlements in 1994. Urban vulnerability has increased, juxtaposed with worsening human development indices, service delivery constraints, insecure tenure, and safety and security concerns.

Since 2004, with the introduction of Breaking New Ground, and through consecutive National Housing Codes (2004, 2007, 2009), the Department of Human Settlements have introduced the concept of “upgrading informal settlements”, which aims to progressively integrate informal settlement into the broader urban fabric, deliver better services, and incrementally secure tenure. To this effect, a performance agreement was signed between the Presidency and National Minister of Human Settlements, Mr. Tokyo Sexwale. Output 1 of the Presidency’s Outcome 8^[1] (Sustainable Human Settlements and improved quality of household life) aims to upgrade 400,000 households in-situ by 2014. Moreover, such interventions are also spotlighted by Chapter 8 of the National Development Plan (also called “Vision 2030”) which calls for the integration of informal settlement into the urban fabric through upgrading, incremental security of tenure, and better service delivery.

Community organisations of the poor have been systematically sidelined through the governments supply-sided approach to urban restructuring and housing delivery. The rally call of social movements in South Africa has been that of greater inclusion in decision making processes and meaningful engagement around settlement improvement. The Informal Settlement Network (ISN) has emerged as an alternative social movement that prioritises pragmatic engagement with government around collaborative approaches to upgrading of informal settlements. However, in Gauteng, communities have been systematically disregarded, which lead to the mobilization of thousands of informal settlement dwellers to march on the office of the premier.

In the wake of the Asihambe solidarity march on the 11^th September, and in response to the growing demand from communities to start small scale and autonomous improvement projects, the Johannesburg CORC office has begun a renewed effort through the CUFF project process of engaging and supporting the informal settlement communities in Gauteng around a range of projects.

The Community Upgrading Finance Facility (CUFF) is an initiative of the South African Alliance. The fund is capitalized by CORC, uTshani Fund and contributions from SDI. The Fund’s board—made up of 60% shack dwellers and 40% support NGO professionals—receives proposals for upgrading projects, but the community is ultimately responsible for writing up the project description, get quotes from suppliers, and implement the project (with support from ISN, CORC and uTshani Fund).

The CUFF projects are one of several tools CORC uses to support the ISN/FEDUP in mobilising organised communities towards development. The CUFF projects work synergistically with the Savings, Enumeration, and Community based planning methodologies alongside partnership formalisation with local government, and call for the identification of a key developmental item needed by a community. The leadership and community members  then work with ISN/FEDUP and CORC technical members to design, quantify and cost the project. In order to proceed, the community members are required to collect and save a fraction of the project cost towards the contribution of the overall costs that, once approved by the CUFF community/NGO board, will be implemented in the community. The objectives of the CUFF projects are to set precedents for Govenment and Community partnerships in informal settlement upgrading by providing technical assistance and seed capital for pilot projects. This process should ideally create systems, procedures and structures that enable communities to work in collaboration with government institutions.

In order to meet these growing demands, the Johannesburg CORC office has employed the help of several new interns from the 1:1 Student League Network, having gained experience in this network through the University design/build projects, they are open minded and ready to engage with the difficulties involved in the socio-technical support of community driven development processes. These interns are working under the supervision and guidance of the ISN/FEDUP’s technical community groups and the various leadership structures in the settlements.

New intern Sumaya described her experience in working directly with the community

 We met with leadership at the community hall to initiate community mapping process where we mapped out key areas and “problem” areas, as described by the Magandaganda community. Members expressed a desire to have their own yards as they are experiencing disputes regarding unclear tenure. A few members of the leadership also showed some hostility and hesitation as they felt that their concerns are not being taken further fast enough. They also expressed concern regarding the risk of crossing the rail-line that borders the settlement.

The CUFF teams are working on several projects in the City of Johannesburg and Ekurheleni such as Marathon, Delport, Peter Mokaba,  Innesfree and Magandaganda. These projects vary from the installation of communal taps to the allocation of plots in denser settlements.

Mohau Melani, regional ISN coordinator, explained the process of engaging the communities as follows,

 The enumeration will provide the settlement committee with total knowledge of everybody who is the settlement. This will also assist the community in dealing with and control of allocation into sites once their measured into a layout … The community has promised to provide us with the background history of the settlement when the community meets with ISN and CORC technical teams. ISN delegates assist the community with the measurement and costing of the pipes in order to increase a number of taps in the settlement.

The collaboration between community organisations and committees that drive local development agendas, networking at the regional level via ISN, and receive technical support from CORC and ISN is proving to be an indispensable model for community driven development.

Simultaneously the CUFF project teams are profiling and collecting critical data to prepare identified settlements for larger development processes through the National Upgrading Support Programme (NUSP).

Father Jorge Anzorena (82) is an Argentinian by birth and entered the Jesuit (Society of Jesus) order in his early thirties when he was ordained as a priest. He completed a PhD in Architecture from the University of Tokyo and has received numerous accolades such as the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding in 1994. Prior to his retirement around several years ago, Fr. Jorge taught at Sofia University in Tokyo six months of every year. The remaining six months he literally traveled around the world visiting low-income housing activities and building coalitions and networks of the urban poor.

When receiving the Ramon Magsaysay award, it was said of Father Jorge,

Given Anzorena’s nonstop networking over the years, it was probably inevitable that his many friends would also become friends with each other. Among the consequences of this networking, in 1988, was the creation of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR). Founded in Thailand by several of Anzorena’s longtime associates in the world of housing, its goals reflect the interests and commitments he shares with them. In the words of its founding declaration, these are: “to articulate and promote the conception of people’s laws and rights to housing; to put an end to evictions and displacements of people; and to define and achieve the housing rights of all.”

The coalition now links nearly a thousand like-minded organizations and individuals throughout Asia. Anzorena’s newsletter and annual pilgrimages constitute essential ties that bind the members together. Characteristically, however, Anzorena says the credit for ACHR should not be accorded to him. “They are just friends of mine,” he says. And it is true that the coalition has developed a life of its own. But Anzorena’s philosophy guides its efforts. Among ACHR’s fundamental principles, for example, indeed its operating credo, is that the contribution of the people themselves is essential both to identifying the true needs of the poor as well as to developing strategies to meet those needs. This is Anzorena to the core.

Father Jorge visits the South African alliance associated with SDI once a year. This is really a time of reflection and recasting ideas and visions of ways and means of building networks of the urban and rural poor.

On the 8th October, Father Jorge Anzorena made a presentation to the CORC Cape Town office on the three groups in Thailand and their experiences in building institutions for collaborative planning. He speaks about some of the initial champions of the community based groups and support organisations, the political and civic culture, evictions and responses from organised communities, savings and social capital, and other critical aspects according to his grassroots observations.

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Below follows a transcript of his introduction, with the full sound-clip available for online steaming.

Today I will speak about three groups that have a lot of things in common and want to see change and help the people to develop.

The one group is the organisation of the slum dwellers in Thailand. They have been trying to improve the situation and to have permanent things … Then there was also CODI (Community Organisation Development Institute), which you know of, which had many creative people and this was needed because people in government could not be very creative because they had so many rules. The other day when we were talking we said that we also have constraints, but it is the rules themselves. Seven to eight people were very creative in organising people in different activities, not only as recipients, but as actors in their development. The basic things are very much centred in the people, and are very flexible. The main mission is that it belonged to the urban poor, and later the rural poor too because they were so efficient. This is something that is very unique and creative because this institute is so flexible in the laws that activate the people.

So there are these three groups. One is government, and the two activities outlined above. They have some common approach. The basic things are that the poor has the energy to solve their problems. This means that it is not the government or the NGO, but basically the people need to solve their own problems. But they need some help in organising and then to solve the problem. The people should be the main actor in their activities. Even though the government is very flexible but there are things that they can not do. This is where these two groups come in. Firstly, the formations of slums and the coordination centre. It is a community-driven thing. In the 1990s the government was a military dictatorship, and the NGOs could not operate.

Learn more:

• Father Jorge has been writing a news bulletin about his travels for the past 30 years. The SALVIP collection are some of his favourites
• “What I have learned in the past 34 years”: A transcript of Father Jorge Anzorena, speaking at the ACHR Regional Meeting in Bangkok,  January 27, 2011

By Katia Savchuk, cross posted from The Guardian’s “Poverty Matters Blog”, Monday 8 October

The first global fund to give poor people direct control over urban development spending is having more than just a local impact

Rose Molokoane, who helps allocate millions of dollars to urban improvement projects around the world, lives in a South African informal settlement. She has spent more than 20 years organising urban poor communities, helping them to pool savings and obtain land and housing. Molokoane is also a prominent member of Urban Poor Fund International, the first global fund to give poor people direct control over development spending in cities.

“We are sick and tired of becoming the objects of development,” she told an audience at a conference in Brazil last year. “We want to build our own destiny.”

The fund was launched in 2007 by Shack/Slum Dwellers International(SDI), a network of community-based federations in 33 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Since then, it has channelled more than $17.8m (£11m) in capital and technical assistance to more than 150 community-run projects in cities.

The innovative fund lets poor communities define development strategies and manage capital from neighbourhood to global level. Urban poor federations and supporting NGOs in the network submit proposals for community projects, which are evaluated by a council of long-time federation leaders, including Molokoane. Money allocated is accompanied by strategic advice from a board of government ministers.

Resources flow through national funds to local savings collectives, mostly made up of women, that contribute their share and implement projects. Recouped money feeds back to a national revolving account. Ultimately, the goal is to create a robust network of national funds that can independently attract government and private-sector investment and help shape urban development agendas.

The fund has financed (pdf) the construction of 50,000 homes, secured tenure for 20,000 families, and supported projects in 18 countries. Without high overheads or fancy consultants, it has directly benefited poor families.

While the tangible outputs are impressive, the greatest gains don’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet. Unlike most development financing, the fund invests as much in social processes as physical projects. By supporting strategies like learning exchanges and community-based surveys, it helps urban poor groups build skills and connections across cities, regions and continents.

The fund also allows poor communities to attract external resources and make a political impact. Capital helps federations leverage finance from governments, banks and donors, while demonstration projects encourage broader investment or policy shifts. For example, projects have produced pro-poor changes in building regulations and attracted state housing subsidies. The fund also helps give poor groups a voice in municipalities and international circles. The bottom line is not full cost-recovery for atomised projects on three-year timetables; it is long-term political transformation.

The benefits of this financing model were evident in Mukuru Sinai, an informal settlement hugging an oil pipeline in Nairobi’s industrial zone. In 2009, the fund awarded $315,000 to a savings collective of 2,000 families who, renting homes on private land there, suffered constant threats of eviction and gas explosions. Armed with capital, they got a bank loan to buy 23 acres of nearby land for just over $1m, and a government pledge to provide infrastructure. Tenants are now drawing up plans to build homes, partly subsidised by developing for-sale housing on the plot. Leaders are hopeful not only that the project becomes a pilot for other informal settlements on private land in Nairobi, but also that locals will share lessons with communities in Kenya and beyond.

The cost-effectiveness and broad impact of this financing model points to the need for placing urban poor communities at the helm of development spending in cities. “All successful urban initiatives have been ones that have placed people’s knowledge and people’s action at the centre of the process,” says Diana Mitlin, a researcher at theInternational Institute for Environment and Development who has worked with SDI for more than a decade. “That doesn’t mean professionals are not needed, but it means professionals acknowledge the limitations of their role.”

Despite its success, the model faces challenges. The international fund needs to attract money, because it does not recover investments. But many donors either lack understanding of the fund’s innovative strategy or consider it too risky.

“It’s much easier to cushion yourself behind different agencies and make sure you get your money back,” says SDI co-ordinator Celine D’Cruz. “It’s much more risky to give the money straight to the mouth of the tiger. But that is exactly where the real change is meant to happen.”

Leveraging external resources and getting cities to partner with urban poor groups is also a challenge. Success stories abound, but in many places there is a long path from occasional compromises to lasting partnerships and policy changes.

The fund’s success also depends on strong community organisations. Many SDI affiliates have mobilised for decades, but newer members require time to ensure that individual projects yield stable federations and political gains. The organisation’s network extends to 388 cities and expands constantly, but the fund remains limited if only member groups have access.

To make a bigger impact, D’Cruz believes urban poor funds must be established on a city scale, governed by community leaders, civil society groups and city officials, and implemented with a strong community base.

“That would be a dream,” D’Cruz says. “And actually, it’s such a simple solution. It cuts through all the red tape.”

By Jeff Thomas (on behalf of CORC)

The SANPAD (South African /Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development), which has since 1997 been financed by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been financing research, research capacity building initiatives and research support activities over the past 10 years. The SANPAD Phase 3 (2008-2013) programme will contribute to the South African National research and development goals and agenda, the goals of the South African Higher Education Sector and the goals of the Royal Netherlands Embassy (herein after referred to as the Embassy) on research and development. The IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) partnership and the new initiatives were introduced to ensure the success of the informing global policy deliberation from a Southern perspective.

Patience, Phumelele and Jeff from the CORC Durban office attended a workshop run by SANPAD which was held to plan for a conference with the title “Rural Migration, Urban Renewal and Slum Clearance – a challenge for mega cities in the South: Development of a Sustainable Settlement Livelihoods Model in Durban/eThekwini” to be held in February 2013. CORC was asked to represent a Civil Society perspective on whether or not there is room for livelihoods in informal settlements. In our presentation we took the opportunity to inform delegates, who comprised mainly eThekwini Municipal officials as well as local academics and academics from the Netherlands, who have been working in Brazil, and some from India, on the SA SDI Alliance and particularly the work of ISN in informal settlements, as well as to provide some insights into the more informal types of livelihoods.

We also made the point that community participation in enumeration and re-blocking activities could provide those who carried out this work to develop a level of skills that they may be able to use in other contexts to generate some income for themselves. Our participation has led to a number of further useful contacts in the Municipality as well as a possibility for collaboration between SA SDI Alliance and SANPAD, if there is a feeling that this would be of benefit to us. Jeff was asked to be part of a team tasked with planning for the proposed conference in February, particularly with respect to CORC assisting the academics, both local and international, with links into local informal settlements.

[vimeo width=”620″ height=”465″]http://vimeo.com/49875035[/vimeo]

Watch this documentary film by the Pretoria Picture Company Inc. on the changing dynamics and identities of Slovo Park settlement south of Soweto. Slovo Park is also aligned to the Informal Settlement Network, and in collaboration with universities and other stakeholders, design solutions have been tabled in partnership meetings. The documentary surfaces some of the finely granulated nuances in building sustainable human settlements. According to the film makers,

Slovo Park is situated in a politically and socially sensitive stretch of land south of Soweto. The community has been known by national government as Nancefield, by local council as Olifantsvlei and in the last five years as Slovo Park – named in honour of South Africa’s first minister of housing and former Umkhonto we Sizwe General, Joe Slovo.

This forced changing of identity reflects an on-going struggle faced by the leadership of Slovo Park to gain recognition as a legitimate settlement to access governmental support. This battle has been fought through constant shifts in governmental policy, power and promises for the community of Slovo Park. Amidst the struggle, stories of sinister land dealings have emerged, outlining a possible truth that the ground beneath Slovo Park could have been sold from under the community’s feet. These allegations surface as the leadership of Slovo Park prepares itself to take action.

This video illustrates how incremental upgrading releases the imagination of communities in engaging local governments. The communities intimate understanding of infrastructure grinds and networks makes service delivery, development and ultimately sustainable human settlements possible. Buck’s, one of the community leaders, deliberations on the nature of service delivery is particularly insightful:

Because already we have got sewerage pipes that are running as far as Soweto. The one alongside the boundary road is running from as far as Leratong, and imagine we don’t have sewerage here but we can transport other people’s stuff from as “Die Kloof”. We have the dams adjacent to us; it is not even 100m to walk to the dam, and still we cant get pipes to there. But still the engineers are saying that it is impossible to have sewerage in the area. But already there are pipes running in the area and so you ask yourself, “Why is it so diffent and difficult if we must get, but the previous engineers, the previous government, installed the sewerage pipes that are running through the informal settlement that we are in”. So you ask yourself, “is it different from this year’s engineers to yesteryear’s engineers”. I don’t know how to call it, but that is what they say!

If government can’t come to us, let us do it for ourselves. We have started with a hall, which we want to expand into a multi-purpose centre for the community. We don’t have playggrounds, we don’t have parks, we don’t have a hall, which makes it difficult for kids to concentrate on their lives. So the multipurpose will help to bring them together and giving them something to do. At the same time, as the community, we will have a space to have our meetings for our offices (because we have many forums in the community, such as the business forum). My wish is to have a proper toilet, just like everyone else. Just like the premier Nomvula Mokonyane, just like our president Jacob Zuma’s toilet, that’s my wish. That has been my wish since I was a kid, and I am already 44 years old. My family has accepted this is how we will live in the meantime.

It is with great excitement that CORC reports on a year of memorable achievements on the part of the South African SDI Alliance. Slum dwellers, women savers, community leaders and NGO support staff have yet again collaborated to strengthen the voice of the urban and rural poor. In the past 18 months the Alliance have been building on our strategic vision of “Upgrading Lives, Building the Nation” and carrying forward our mission of building stronger communities to upgrade informal settlements. This report reflects the achievements of this strategy.

Since 2002, when CORC was formally registered, our core business has been the support and facilitation of learning and exposure through horizontal exchanges. This strengthens organised networks of the urban and rural poor, capable of driving their own developmental agendas. By 2009, ISN had mobilised more than 400 settlements across South Africa, FEDUP groups saved more than US$250,000 in daily savings, the FEDUP/ uTshani Fund alliance have become the largest People’s Housing Process (PHP) developers, and preliminary partnerships with municipalities were emerging around incremental upgrading of informal settlements. A working relationship has been established with the National Department of Human Settlements, the Ministerial Sanitation Task Team (MSTT) and the National Upgrading Support Programme (NUSP).

Leaders of ISN and FEDUP are advising at policy and implementation level. Within the settlements, committed mobilisers evolve into skilled community designers with a keen interest in replicating local successes to other communities and in strengthening the partnerships with local governments. A revised communication strategy brings these learning outcomes to the attention of national and international stakeholders, and aims to articulate an alternative paradigm in fighting the common enemy: poor service delivery, landlessness and homelessness, and dislocation from decision making.

The Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC) provides support to networks of urban and rural poor communities who mobilise themselves around their own resources and capacities. CORC’s interventions are designed to enable these communities to learn from one another and to create solidarity and unity in order to broker deals with formal institutions, especially the State. During the reporting period we have seen the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP) return to the practice of daily savings and recognising the savings schemes as safe spaces for women to get together, save for a purpose and a space where they can pool their collective resources to find solutions to everyday problems. Exciting stories are being told by members that we will share in this publication as well as on our website. We have also seen the steady growth of the Informal Settlement Network (ISN), which now has a presence in five of the major metropolitan areas. ISN community leaders have developed broad experience in forging partnerships with local authorities and have developed a set of tools to prepare communities for informal settlement upgrading. ISN is engaging local municipalities in developing an approach to integrated human settlements and are exploring viable alternatives to the current housing delivery model and to the ineffective top-down approach to providing basic services for informal settlements.

In the Municipalities of Stellenbosch and Cape Town the engagement have resulted in the signing of formal MoU’s. Going forward, the alliance launched the Community Upgrading Finance Facility (CUFF) or “Masikhase” that supports small community led projects. Applications are being reviewed by the CUFF board, which is made up of a majority of informal settlement and backyard shack community leaders. Community savings form the backbone of this new instrument of pro-poor urban development. Now our next step is to replicate this facility at city level and to launch city funds that will support the community led upgrading projects, city wide, in partnership with government and the private sector. Building communities, building partnerships with government, and upgrading settlements are a long, difficult process. But it is those who live with the current conditions of informal settlements today that are most prepared to lead the way to a different tomorrow. In partnership with our city governments, communities are loudly saying:

We are now ready to upgrade lives, with what we have, where we are, and build the nation that had long been our hope and dream…

Download the report by following this link

By Sizwe Mxobo (on behalf of CORC)

The South African Planning Institute’s (SAPI) “Planning Africa 2012” conference was held in Durban’s International Conference Centre (ICC) between 17 and 19 September. The SAPI’s flagship conference aims to recognise excellence in planning in South Africa, and more broadly, on the African continent. Since the inception in 2002, the conference has become the largest planning conference in Africa, bringing together a wide range of stakeholders. The conference will provide a forum for an expected 600 to 700 delegates and presenters from the across the African continent and beyond, to reflect on key issues in the African context. On Wednesday night, as the finale of the the conference, the award ceremony was hosted.

According to the SAPI website,

The National Planning Awards of SAPI was established in 2008 to reflect on and recognise the valuable contributions that individuals and organisations make, to inspire their continued involvement and those of others and to promote the key role of the planning profession in public life. It recognizes valuable contributions and extraordinary performance in all aspects of the planning profession and a strong awareness of the planning profession among related professions, all sectors and the general public.

The National Planning Awards has become more prestigious and the interest has significantly grown among members and the public. Winners of the National Planning Awards will receive a specially designed award of recognition and will be recognized at the awards ceremony which will take place during the SAPI National Planning Awards and Gala Dinner on Tuesday, 18 September 2012. The winners and shortlisted finalists and their work will be profiled and featured to promote lesson sharing and information on good and interesting practice.

Siyanda Madaka (Langrug leader), Johru Robyn (planner in the Informal Settlement Management department, Stellenbosch Municipality) and Sizwe Mxobo (community planner at CORC) attended the award ceremony were Langrug was nominated in the “Community / Outreach” category.

The “Community / Outreach” nomination category is described as follows, “For a community, neighbourhood or group of citizens that has embarked on an exemplary participatory self development and/or outstanding community development project or programme that has improved the quality of community life and/or overcome difficult community issues and/or local circumstances”

In the nomination, the impact of the Langrug project was described as follows:

The upgrading of Langrug has drawn local, national and international attention. It serves as a “learning centre” for communities and municipal officials in defining and narrating a new planning and design paradigm for inclusive and pro-poor settlement upgrading. On a visit to the settlement, Premier of the Western Cape Helen Zille remarked on the possibilities of this new paradigm in upgrading informal settlements, guided by the principles of co-production, inclusion and in-situ development. The Langrug case study was presented by Trevor Masiy (langrug leader), David Carolissen (deputy director: informal settlements department) and Zoe-Kota Fredericks (deputy minister of National Department of Human Settlements) at the World Urban Forum 6 in September 2012 in Naples, Italy.

The new partnership that was forged between the South African SDI Alliance (ISN, FEDUP, CORC, uTshani Fund, and iKhayalami) and the Stellenbosch Municipality with the upgrading of Langrug is paving the way for other informal settlements throughout Stellenbosch to see the service delivery and upgrading they require. The ISN is networking communities across Stellenbosch municipality to develop a long term upgrading strategy that will render the poor as central partners in development.

The upgrading of Langrug has demonstrated the multiplier effect of putting people first. The innovations triggered through partnerships with local government, academic institutions, and other stakeholders have rendered a locally responsive development plan that will ensure the future upgrading of Langrug.

By Walter Monyela (on behalf of FEDUP and CORC/uTshani Fund)

uTshani / FEDUP received a Star award (Silver category) from Impumelelo Social Innovations Centre. The award ceremony took place on the evening of the 6 September 2012 at Baxter Hall in Cape Town.  Marlene Don (FEDUP) and Walter Monyela (CORC/uTshani Fund) represented federation and support NGO respectively.

Impumelelo Social Innovations Centre’s vision is to build capacity for service delivery. Ceremonies are taking place every year to give recognition and to encourage and motivate NGOs that are dedicated in empowering poor communities and helping these communities fight poverty, and improving and or making basic services in the poor communities available. This recognition becomes a platform for those NGOs that received Platinum awards as they are then recognized at international level. Twenty one NGOs got recognized by receiving certificates that were really well framed and a small, an unframed copy of the certificate, a trophy and amount of money that goes with a category of the award just to say thank you to recognized NGOs. The award nomination went through four main phases, according to the Impumelelo website:

Phase 1: Applications are invited from all government departments, civil society organisations, special interest groups,and the private sector. Submissions are screened and assessed against the award criteria, leading to the selection of finalists for evaluation.

Phase 2: Professional teams are convened to assess finalists by means of site visits, interviews and relevant data gathering. A report is generated on each finalist and presented to Impumelelo’s National Selection Committee. Exhibit materials are prepared by each project in anticipation of the next phase.

Phase 3: The National Selection Committee gathers for the screening and adjudication of the finalists. This meeting culminates in an gala awards ceremony, where the winning projects are announced. An Innovations Exhibition is also held to showcase past award-winners and current finalists. Other local and international projects may also be invited to display new ideas and exciting innovations.

Phase 4: Impumelelo partners with the award-winning projects to spread information using various media to disseminate their social innovation to the public in general and government in particular.

Projects are evaluated according to the impact on the following categories:

Innovativeness: The extent to which creative and new procedures have been developed to address poverty-related issues.

Effectiveness: The extent to which the Project has achieved or is on the way to achieving its stated objectves and other socially desirable outcomes.

Poverty Impact: The demonstrable effect of the Project in improving the quality of life of poor communities and individuals.

Sustainability: The viability and sound functioning of the Project within constraints that include funding and staffing.

Replicability: The value of the Project in teaching others new ideas and good practices for poverty-reduction programmes.

This year, five organisations received Platinum, between five and ten received Gold, and the rest received Silver, which is the category FEDUP was recognised.

In building capacity for service delivery, the investment in community structures and support organisations are essential. Government, especially through the National Planning Commission’s National Development Plan (also known as “Vision 2020”), is promoting the ideas of “active citizenship”. FEDUP has been demonstrating alternative development paradigms that are rooted deep in the grassroots. By mobilising communities around their own assets, and forming collective saving schemes that concretise these networks and builds social capital, FEDUP has been in the forefront of finding innovative solutions to urban poverty.