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Sep 03
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Dream Deferred? Broken trust and the upgrading of Langrug informal settlement

By News, Publications, Resources, SDI No Comments

By Kwanda Lande (on behalf of CORC)

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the White Paper on Local Government. The theme of SoLG 2018, the state of local government – dream deferred?, highlights this critical juncture in the local governance arena. It foregrounds the fact that although achievements have been made in terms of local government service delivery and governance, significant work is still required to ensure that the constitutional objectives of local government are fully attained. As a member of the Good Governance Learning Network (GGLN), we have joined fellow civil society organisations in reflecting on the work that has been done to date. 

CORC’s contribution (on behalf of the SA Alliance) investigates dynamics that have contributed to the destruction and disruption of WaSH facilities in Langrug informal settlement. While our contribution recognises the inherent presence of conflict and contestation in collaborative upgrading processes, it also seeks to uncover ‘the generative potential of contestation’ through which new options and alternatives can arise. In this sense, this contribution is a case specific retrospective that may also have relevance for relationship building between informal settlement communities, local governments and support organisations elsewhere.

The GGLN is an initiative that brings together civil society organisations working in the field of local governance. Once a year the network produces the The State of Local Governance Publication which presents a civil society based assessment of the key challenges, debates and areas of progress with regard to governance and development at the local level in South Africa.

solg-2018-complete

May 05
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Whose Land is it Anyway? Unity and Divisions in the Development of Joe Slovo

By Archive, CORC, FEDUP, News, Resources, SDI No Comments

By Evelyn Benekane (on behalf of FEDUP) and Kwanda Lande (on behalf of CORC)

The “land issue” is probably the most debated topic in South Africa today. This is after a motion was passed by the parliament of South Africa to establish an ad hoc Constitutional Review Committee, to “review and amend section 25 of the Constitution to make it possible for the state to expropriate land in the public interest without compensation”. Currently, debates are reduced to land expropriation and neglect related issues such as land management challenges.

In this piece we share what some of these land management challenges look like for FEDUP in the Eastern Cape, where the Joe Slovo community has been struggling to access land for housing. In particular, the Federation experience highlights how conflicting interests around the Joe Slovo Communal Property Association (CPA) acted as a major impediment for Joe Slovo community members to access houses and title deeds.

“For the past 20 years the community of Joe Slovo was divided between two groups contesting the status of the Joe Slovo CPA. This left people without houses. People are struggling to buy electricity because they are not registered owners due to maladministration. There are no individual title deeds…”

(Evelyn Benekane)

This piece is an outcome of desktop research and interviews with Evelyn Benekane (FEDUP regional coordinator), who also wrote down the original content for this piece. She has been a community activist in Joe Slovo since the beginning of the settlement and she led the mobilising process to acquire land for housing since in 1995. Evelyn Benekane also acted as a signatory on behalf of the community when the Joe Slovo Community Property Association (CPA) was established in 1997 as part of the land restitution programme of South Africa . She was also elected as a spokesperson of the land committee, a platform for negotiating with the landowner and the municipality.

Joe Slovo Context and Its Development History

Joe Slovo is a settlement established in 1995 by organised members of the FEDUP. The settlement started as an informal settlement and was later developed into a formal housing (RDP) settlement. It is located on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth CBD and in proximity to the small CBD of Dispatch. The Joe Slovo community has attracted new residents over the past 21 years, mostly coming from the nearby rural areas in the hope of finding a better life in the city.

Taken in 2016 by Joubert Loots, this panorama picture of Joe Slovo demonstrate some of the housing typology and infrastructure.

Taken in 2016 by Joubert Loots, this panorama picture of Joe Slovo demonstrate some of the housing typology and infrastructure.

The idea of establishing Joe Slovo began in 1994, when residents of Veeplaas (an informal settlement in Port Elizabeth) became aware of the idea of coming together to save. This was a result of an exchange organised by FEDUP in the Eastern Cape to bring different informal settlements in Port Elizabeth to share experiences to alleviate poverty. In this meeting FEDUP introduced savings as a pivotal tool for alleviating poverty and accessing housing. In 1995 Injongo Zama Afrika savings scheme was started by informal residents of Veeplaas with the objective to acquire land and build housing by using their savings.

One of the important moments in the existence of the Injongo Zama Afrika savers was in 1995 when they identified 263 hectares of land. This land, owned by Sunridge Estate and Development Corporation (a big land developer that owned land in the area), had been lying unattended for 50 years. As a result, Injongo Zama Afrika members decided to occupy the plot and then, establish their shacks on it. In parallel, members formed the land committee as a platform for negotiations with the owners and Evelyn Benekane was elected as group spokesperson. Sunridge Estate and Development Corporation priced the land at R2million, a price that was too high for the community.

In the meantime, the municipality wanted to evict the people living in the settlement but they managed to stay since they had already started negotiating with the landowner. As the community did not have money to purchase the land, it was assisted by People’s Dialogue (a support organisation to the Federation at the time) that made contact with the Department of Land Affairs (DLA). The community had developed a Residential and Agricultural Plan that they  submitted and which was accepted by DLA. The outcome of this process was the formation of a Communal Property Association named by members as the Joe Slovo CPA.

Community Led Development in Joe Slovo

In 1997, a deed of transfer was granted by the DLA to the Joe Slovo CPA with Evelyn Benekane as the chairperson and signatory on behalf of the CPA. This encouraged the community to start designing their layout plan and, with the support of People’s Dialogue, hired Ulwazi Engineering services to formalise the plan and submit a proposal for housing and infrastructure development. This comprised water and sewer installation, and a total of 1940 houses, which were to be built in different phases. The members wanted to demonstrate how much could be done with little money in a short period of time, as the municipality did not make further plans for development.

The Joe Slovo community meets in 1997. Pictured in the white shirt on the left is community leader Evelyn Benekane.

The Joe Slovo community meets in 1997. Pictured in the white shirt on the left is community leader Evelyn Benekane.

In order to start phase one, Injongo Zama Afrika members accessed R1 million from uTshani Fund in 1997 to finance water and sewer installation for 340 structures. In the same year, the land was rezoned for township and agricultural use. The funds for bulk infrastructure and high mast lights were also approved by uTshani. To assist in paying this loan, the community decided to negotiate with the National Department of Human Settlements and Department of Land Affairs. This was after the community began experiencing some difficulties in repaying their loan to uTshani Fund. 

After 2000, the Injongo Zama Afrika saving scheme struggled to encourage members to save, as the ward councillor convinced people, that the development of Joe Slovo should be taken over by the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. By this time, the infrastructure for the 340 sites was already installed for phase one but not complete. Struggling to pay back the borrowed money for the infrastructure development, the savers decided to approach the National Department of Human Settlements (DHoS). They explained that the municipality had not made immediate plans for infrastructure development for Joe Slovo. The request was for the community to be given money to install infrastructure as there was no agreement with the municipality to install infrastructure.

Subsequently, the DoHS considered a policy that says all communities that were given land through CPAs must be given money to install infrastructure for the duration that there is no agreement with municipalities. By the time an agreement would be reached with municipalities, including approval of plans to install infrastructure, the money allocated can then be given back to the DoHS. As a result, the R1 million borrowed from uTshani Fund was paid back by the DoHS. Nevertheless, uTshani Fund decided to plough the money back, so that the installation of phase one – water and sewage – could be completed.

Divisions in the Community

Since then, internal conflicts in the Joe Slovo CPA have created challenges. Since 1999, the community became more divided. On the one hand there was a group, led by CPA members that pushed for the CPA to go forward with applications for housing and title deeds. On the other hand, there was a group led by a local ward councillor that wanted to dissolve the CPA and hand over responsibilities for the land and housing project to the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro Municipality. 

Meanwhile, in Joe Slovo, the CPA had already negotiated for phase one infrastructure and pursued agricultural projects. By 2000 the application for service installation in the second portion of the 1600 sites was already complete. However, the remainder who had not received services were getting impatient that it would take a long time to access services through loans. Instead they wanted the municipality to do the installation. This was fuelled by a promise from the local ward councillor that the municipality would install services only after the Joe Slovo land was transferred to the municipality. At one point the community even stopped saving, as word got around that government was giving away free houses.

At the time, the CPA had already applied for Provincial Institutional Subsidies to fast track housing delivery for those that had not received houses. An institutional subsidy is a government grant designed for institutions that provide the option of tenure arrangements to beneficiaries instead of immediate ownership. This housing subsidy was in the process of being approved, but the community did not accept it, because they wanted immediate ownership of their houses with title deeds. After the community had amended their initial application, they applied for People’s Housing Process (PHP) housing in the year 2003, which was approved. PHP is a process where beneficiaries are actively involved in the decision making over the housing process, product and make a contribution towards the building of their own houses.

Taken by Saga, in 2016 shows one of the agricultural project in Joe Slovo and incomplete houses.

Taken by Saga, in 2016 shows one of the agricultural project in Joe Slovo and incomplete houses.

In 2004, when the members of the CPA were preparing to implement phase two of the housing project – conducting beneficiary administration, dividing sites and preparing the community for development – the councillor opposed the initiative. His reason was that he wanted the development to be run by the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro municipality. He argued that the community would lose out on development provided by the municipality, as the community privately owned Joe Slovo. In the community people increasingly believed what the local councillor was saying. This was compounded by the fact that there was an increasing number of new residents in Joe Slovo, who did not understand the history of community organising through savings in Joe Slovo.

Joe Slovo CPA vs. Nelson Mandela Bay Metro Court Case

It was clear by 2005 that there had been a shift of power/influence in the settlement. As a result there was a growing voice demanding the handover of the Joe Slovo land to the municipality. This culminated in community dialogues that were initiated and facilitated by mediators employed by the municipality. A report conducted by the mediators concluded that the community approved that land should be given to the municipality in 2005. This statement, however, did not include the voices of the original founders of Joe Slovo and CPA members who refused to hand over land to the municipality. Additionally, members questioned the neutrality of the municipality-employed mediators.

Soon after the report was published the municipality requested hand over of the title deed, but some members of the CPA refused. Due to these events, the municipality took the refusing members to the Eastern Cape High Court in 2006. Accordingly, the CPA members required support and assistance from Legal Aid for representation. As Legal Aid advised the community, they prepared a memorandum detailing reasons for the refusal as well as a clear statement that members would only release the title deed for the sake of progress of development without letting go of their land.

The High Court welcomed the handing over of the title deed and ruled, however, that both the CPA and municipality would need to follow a process to hand over land. This would mean that CPA members must sign for de-registration of the CPA, however, this never took place. By the time the court case was closed, the councillor was appointed as chairperson of the CPA.

The Aftermath of the Court Case

The local ward councillor in Joe Slovo, as the chairperson of the CPA, further advocated for hand over of the land to the municipality. However, he was faced with a contradiction that made it difficult for him to sign for deregistration of the Joe Slovo CPA. The contradiction was that he was accepted and embraced by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform as someone who can sign on behalf of the CPA since he was a member of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro council.

Additionally, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform requested that if the Joe Slovo CPA elects a new committee it must not only have new members. The request was that the chairperson must add five more people to the top executive from the outgoing committee for continuation. But this was not done. It seemed the councillor was not interested in building the Joe Slovo CPA. 

Between 2005 and 2010 the Joe Slovo CPA did not convene any general meetings. This means that the community did not receive any formal feedback about the CPA. As a result, it became clear later that the local ward councillor did not succeed in deregistering the CPA as a result of the contradiction he was faced with. One can assume that the reason why there was no reporting back to the community by the local ward councillor/chairperson was because he did not want to tell people that he did not succeed in deregistering the CPA.

In 2009 it was evident that not everyone on the beneficiary list had received a house. As a result, FEDUP engaged with the Eastern Cape Department of Human Settlements and, via uTshani Fund, submitted an application for subsidies for beneficiaries on the housing list. Some members’ subsidies were never approved, as they needed an agreement of sale from the landowner. At this stage it was not clear to the community who owned Joe Slovo land, between CPA and Nelson Mandela Bay Metro, since there was never a community report back about the status the CPA.

Nevertheless, FEDUP approached the local ward councillor to seek assistance and clarity. The ward councillor replied by referring FEDUP to the municipality as the “owner” of the land. Based on the property register database of the municipality, FEDUP was told that the Joe Slovo land was never transferred to the municipality and that it is still owned by the CPA. Indeed, a copy of the original title deed received from the deeds office in Cape Town demonstrates that the land belongs to the CPA.

Governemental subsidy housing in Joe Slovo picture: saga

Governemental subsidy housing in Joe Slovo picture: Saga 2016

Uniting a Divided Community

Today in Joe Slovo there are people who have not received title deeds. Some never had a chance to receive houses and subsidies to build their houses. This is a direct consequence of conflicting and opposing interests in the Joe Slovo CPA, which are coined by two opposing parties, contesting the status of the Joe Slovo Community Property Association. Despite immense pressure to hand over the land to the municipality, the community was able to retain land ownership in Joe Slovo, which is legally registered under the Joe Slovo CPA.

The main problem in Joe Slovo today is political rather than legal. The question therefore is: How do you ensure that people are supported to access housing and title deeds? Today the community of Joe Slovo believes that this question can be answered by building a united community. Presently, there is a new ward councillor in Joe Slovo and this opens up new opportunities to support community led initiatives.

FEDUP is planning to conduct a community survey and the councilor is providing assistance. This community led survey will involve everyone who was a role player as a step to unite the community. It will show the houses that have been built and who built them. It will reveal who received the house, because some of the people living in these houses are not the owners. 

There is a case whereby provincial housing subsidies were approved and given to Thubeletsha Homes, which was a government-housing agency mandated to build low-cost housing. However, Thubeletsha Homes is no longer building houses and was taken over by the Housing Development Agency (HDA) due to being in “financial distress”. The community survey is the first step towards conducting a follow up on subsidies given to Thubeletsha Homes. The new ward councilor has arranged for the team from the office of the MEC of Human Settlements to provide some assistance in this regard.

Based on the meeting that was held between the community and officials from the office of the MEC of Human Settlements there was a general suggestion to request presidential intervention, since the community has engaged both local and provincial structures with limited success.

Conclusion

The Joe Slovo housing development project has existed for over 20 years. The experiences to date provide vital lessons especially in the current time, where the “land issue” is the most debated topic in South Africa. In the debate of amending laws the experience of FEDUP does not dispute the debate of legal instruments as impediment to access land/housing. However, FEDUPs experience contributes to the debate by demonstrating that there is a political layer which can be an impediment to accessing land/housing. This means that it is not enough to concentrate only on legal instruments and that there is a need to also understand the role of socio-political dynamics on the “land issue”.

Mar 27
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Women Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye

By CORC, FEDUP, ISN, Partnerships, SDI, uTshani Fund No Comments

By Skye Dobson (On behalf of SA SDI Alliance and SDI Secretariat. Original post here)

Durban-blog-post

As the Black Panther movie continues to smash box office records and enthrall the world with fearless female African superheroes, a meeting in eThekwini last week suggests we brace ourselves for Women Transformers – coming to a city near you.

The words stretch out across her bosom: Women transforming the slums of our cities, the jet-black shirt and white lettering convey the same no-nonsense, bold authenticity as the woman with the sky-blue doek (headscarf) and thick wooden walking stick. Sitting at the shiny boardroom table in the Mayor’s parlor of the eThekwini Municipal Council offices, wiping the sweat from her brow, she looks decidedly like someone who understands that transformation is not a development cliché, but an overdue national imperative.

Mama Mkhabela, (full name, Nombulelo Anna Estevao) joined the shack dwellers federation (now called FEDUP) 30 years and one month ago. She recalls the first time she sat in on a savings group meeting in Lindelani informal settlement and heard women from the settlement talking about the need to come together to solve their problems. She says the women were telling each other that poor people can’t wait for government to give them things, but must start making change themselves. Shy and quiet back then, she recalls sitting back and listening to figure out what was going on. She soon joined the Sophumelela Savings Group and quickly gained the trust and respect of her fellow savers.

At first her husband was suspicious of her work with the federation. She recalls him secretly following her to a meeting in another community one time. The meeting lasted so long that he had to stay the night and help everyone get back to their places the following day. “From then on, he stopped fighting with me. He saw that I wasn’t up to any trouble and we were just working!” she says with a chuckle. The Sophumelela Savings Group secured housing loans from Utshani Fund – a part of the South Africa SDI Alliance – in 1999 and the women in the group set about building their own houses. Mama Mkhabela managed the loan repayments and moved from a bookkeeper to a treasurer and is now the regional leader of FEDUP in Kwa Zulu Natal. The region has 70 savings groups with 9,672 members and has built over 2,500 houses.

Mama Mkhabela had not come alone to see her mayor. Two comrades from FEDUP, Rose Molokoane and Emily Moholo, accompanied her. The three women have been engaged in the struggle to transform the lives of the poor for decades.

When apartheid ended and commitments were made to house the poor, there was a sense in many communities that the battle was won. Of course, it was soon painfully clear to communities living in shacks that the structure of society rather than the lack of houses was the true cause of their deepening poverty and exclusion. FEDUP and SDI supported communities in KZN to understand the need to shape policy and practice in the city – to support people-driven housing as well as informal settlement upgrading, improved livelihoods and savings, and better access to land and tenure security. “When we started”, says Mama Mkhabela, “there were very few women in city council. The officials were all men and they were very, very difficult. Only the late Patrick (former leader in FEDUP and the Informal Settlements Network) could penetrate the city.”

But times are changing.

Rose Molokoane, President of FEDUP and the Coordinator of SDI, grew up in an informal settlement called Oukasie in the South African town of Brits. Today Rose sits on a plethora of national and international bodies tasked with shaping land, housing, and urban policy and practice. Last year she was elected Chair of the World Urban Campaign where she champions the role of grassroots communities and local government partnership for implementing global agendas. On the international stage, eThekwini’s leadership frequently encounters Rose and other SDI community leaders. SDI’s unique local to global presence has slowly but surely convinced the city of the need to partner with shack dwellers in eThekwini and has quite literally secured these women a seat at the mayor’s table.

Emily Moholo, meanwhile, was born in Mafikeng and is a member of Ithuseng Savings Group. She is a regional leader of FEDUP in the Free State and chairperson of the provincial joint working group on partnerships between the municipality, provincial government, and the Federation. She is also a member of the SDI Management Committee, and supports the SDI affiliates throughout the Southern Africa region to build strong slum dweller federations and partnerships with local government.

Mama Mkhabela, Rose and Emily invited one of the Directors of the SDI Secretariat (a woman) and the Chief Executive Officer of Global Infrastructure Basil (another woman) to accompany them. The women’s joint mission was to: a) update the Mayor on the South African SDI Alliance’s work, b) request that their MOA with eThekwini Municipality’s Human Settlements Department be expedited and signed before the close of the financial year, c) request that the Know Your City campaign be recognized by the city as an important strategy for collaborative informal settlement action to build resilience and guide climate-friendly investment in infrastructure and upgrading, d) introduce the city to GIB and share an update on the SDI/GIB partnership, and e) to demonstrate SDI and the SA Alliance’s intention to increase support to city efforts to become a leader in inclusive climate and resilience informal settlement action and to accelerate implementation of commitments made in the New Urban Agenda towards the SDGs.

“We don’t come to the mayor looking for handouts” says Rose. “We’re bringing ideas, partners the city needs, and we’re ready to work.”

From the City’s side, there were three strong women at the table. Mayor Zandile Gumede is among a growing cadre of female mayors leading global discussions to ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable urban citizens are at the center of climate change responses. She currently serves as the Chair of C40 Africa where she advocates this approach. Globally, the number of women mayors is rising rapidly, which many believe bodes well for inclusive resilience planning and implementation. Indeed, the Resilience Strategy of eThekwini Municipality, formally adopted by the eThekwini Municipality Council in August 2017, is spearheaded by an all-female team comprising Debra Roberts (award-winning global climate change leader), Jo Douwes, and Manisha Hassan, is a product of a four-year consultative process with a broad and diverse group of Durban’s stakeholders. The SA SDI Alliance provided critical inputs to one of the two critical Resilience Building Options of the Strategy, namely: collaborative informal settlement action.

The Mayor said that it was refreshing indeed to engage with groups so clearly seeking positive change. She expressed confidence in the Human Settlements team’s ability to get the MOA signed quickly to ensure stronger communication and implementation at greater speed. She recommended that implementation of the MOA involve the convening of administrative and political officials in order to strengthen leadership capacity at all levels. She highlighted the need to work together to advance the city’s 5 year agenda and to ensure eThekwini, the SA SDI Alliance, and SDI continue to collaborate at the local and global level to showcase the power of community-government partnership for implementation of global urban and climate agendas.

Chairing the meeting was former Head of Department for Human Settlements at eThekwini Municipality, and recently appointed Deputy City Manager for Human Settlements, Infrastructure and Transport, Beryl Mphakathi. Beryl has been a tireless champion of the partnership and MOA between the SA SDI Alliance and the Human Settlements Department. At the request of the team, she committed herself to ensuring the MOA is signed before the end of the current financial year. Beryl explained that the MOA is necessary to “formalize our partnership…to pull all our efforts together and to commit our capacity and time.” Beryl invited the Acting Head of Department for Human Settlements to attend the meeting and ensure the MOA is tabled in time.

When Mama Mkhabela speaks of Beryl she says, “Truly speaking I’m so happy. We are very lucky to have a woman in that position. I can say, she respects me. I respect her. She took a while to understand the federation, but when she did she started to call me her mother. Even if I call her at night she has to respond. If she can’t answer your question right away, she will call you back. We work hand in hand.” When women can forge authentic, humble, thoughtful relationships such as these, institutional partnerships between the city and communities that are based on respect and practical action emerge. Such partnerships have the potential to mitigate the overinflated egos, political turf battles, short-sighted and self-serving approaches that have characterized male-dominated city politics in eThekwini and beyond.

While the centrality of women’s social relationships as a critical resource in community-based political mobilization has long been recognized in South Africa and abroad, city decision making remains dominated by males. If the walls of the Mayoral Boardroom could talk they would have countless tales of hustlers hustling on behalf of their own personal interests. But these women are hustlers acting in the interest of their community. Women transformers from the community, the city, and the international development sector have the opportunity to generate practical collaborations and partnerships to shift the status quo through new models of leadership and pragmatic action aimed at improving the lives of communities. Critically, women transformers from the community must not devalue the power within themselves by elevating leaders or partners – male or female – above the grassroots collectives from which they emerged.

Let’s keep an eye on eThekwini’s community, professional, and government Women Transformers and see if, indeed, they can transform city governance and the slums of their cities as the t-shirt promises.

Epilogue

SDI is often asked, What about the men? Of course, men are an integral part of the SDI movement and the struggle for inclusive and resilient cities. In the meeting described, there were inspiring and committed male leaders and professionals: namely, Jeff Thomas from Utshani Fund, Ndodeni Dengo from Informal Settlement Network (ISN), and Arnotte Payne from CORC (all part of the SA SDI Alliance). These men toil hand-in-hand, day-in and day-out with the women mentioned in this blog. As a leader from SNCC (Civil Rights Movement in the USA) once said of working with strong women leadership, “you come to realize that manhood isn’t the ability to knock someone down but finding your own humanity.” Jeff, Ndodeni, and Arnotte embody this viewpoint and understand that it is not heroic individuals but committed organizers that will sustain a movement and transform the status quo.

Sep 28
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When you get a front door, remember to leave it open

By FEDUP, ISN, News, SDI No Comments

This blog  was first published by openDemocracy, on the 26 September 2017. 

By SOPHIE KING 

A Manchester-South Africa exchange reveals striking similarities in the dynamics of urban inequality.

Members of Mums Mart, Lower Broughton Life and the South African Alliance in South Africa, July 2017. Copyright: Sophie King. All rights reserved

“It’s all about trust” said Marie Hampshire, two days into a week-long community exchange with members of the South African Alliance in July 2017, a grassroots movement of women-led savings schemes affiliated to Slum/Shack Dwellers International or SDI. Marie is a member of Mums Mart, a women’s group from Benchill in the British city of Manchester that brings low-income families together around food, monthly markets and, most recently, a new kind of savings scheme.

Each member saves small amounts with the support of their local group, and in the process of coming together the group learns about their needs and challenges and tries to respond collectively. Mums Mart was introduced to savings-based organising after meeting members of the Alliance in Manchester a year earlier. Now, other groups in the city are starting to explore how women’s savings federations could rebuild trust and solidarity in their neighbourhoods.

Joanne Inglis is the Chair of a new association called Lower Broughton Life, one of these groups that is based in another part of Greater Manchester called Salford. After accompanying members of the South African Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (FEDUP) on door-to-door visits and listening to plans for a new housing development in Cape Town by the Informal Settlement Network(another partner in the Alliance), she urged her hosts: “when you get a front door remember to leave it open.”

Joanne was reflecting on how segregated life has become on estates like hers, where people look after their own affairs and many of the old spaces for communal life have closed down. She was struck that—while the signs of poverty and inequality in South Africa are only too visible in the townships and settlements she visited—poverty in the UK is often hidden from view: “our houses can look the same on the outside,” she said, “but it’s what’s on the inside that’s different.”

However, in other ways there are striking similarities between the dynamics of inequality and deprivation in both countries’ cities.  All are dealing with sharply rising property prices which push those on lower incomes further away from the city centre, and the concentration of deprivation in particular neighbourhoods which can manifest in gang-related crime and the absence of opportunities for young people. Unequal access to decisions on how public services are delivered perpetuates the disadvantages that low-income people have to deal with on a day to day basis.

 

Just as importantly, the different groups were also bound together by their experiences of strength and struggle as women and mothers regardless of where they live. During their visit to the UK, the South Africans were shocked to discover homeless people living in tents in the centre of one of the richest cities in the world, which gave rise to questions about the wisdom of looking to the global North for pathways to collective well-being.

For their part, members of Mums Mart and Lower Broughton Life reflected repeatedly on people’s pride and self-organisation despite living in highly challenging circumstances in South Africa. Both gained a fresh perspective on the possibilities of organising collectively in response to poverty.

As a member of FEDUP attested (echoing Marie), “the only thing that makes a person active is when you have trust and belief.” The members of the groups also gained confidence in one another as joint travellers on a journey of discovery—watching each other learn, adapt and embrace the experience (including some fantastic ululations!). People saw that some of the South African ideas might just work in Greater Manchester, and that they might be the ones to make this happen.

The trust they gained in South Africa by staying in people’s homes, accompanying them in their work and being part of their lives (even for a short time) meant that they were comfortable enough to share their doubts and fears—and to be open to the doubts and fears of their hosts in return. As Rose Molokoane from SDI shared:

“We are still doubting ourselves saying how can we keep driving this forward…it’s too big for us…especially because we are informal but the outside world wants to see us being formal. Most of our members are not educated; you have to create enough time and enough space to educate people about what you are.”

Rose also explained the significance for the older black South African activists of sharing their homes and their organising tools with white British women after living through apartheid, and as women continuing to struggle for justice in a highly segregated society.

The exchanges seem to have come at a critical time for the British participants. Combined with rising living costs, public service cuts and welfare sanctions, low-paid work, under-employment and unemployment are fostering severe precarity in post-industrial inner-city neighbourhoods. Thirty per cent of British children (and one quarter of children in Salford) are now classified as living below the poverty line, with two thirds living in families with working parents.

Manchester looks set to become the next beacon of social cleansing after London, with luxury high rise flats and the privatisation of the city centre making it increasingly difficult for individuals and families on low-incomes to find affordable accommodation. People in low-income areas around the edges of the central business district live in constant fear of relocation as they watch rents skyrocket in the plush developments that now surround their estates.

In many of the city’s low-income neighbourhoods, social and economic changes and cuts in public sector funding mean that people don’t come together in the ways they used to through faith-, place- or work-based forms of voluntary association. Libraries, pubs and community centres have closed down, making it almost impossible in some areas for groups to find somewhere to congregate together regularly. Rising living costs and cuts in benefits are pushing people towards pay-day loans and credit-based living, leaving them drowning under the burden of debts they struggle to repay.

The surge in support for the British Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (which is particularly visible in urban centres) suggests that increasing numbers of city-dwellers believe it is indeed, ‘time for a change.’ But how will low-income communities organize themselves and enter into movements ‘for the many and not the few’ in the years to come? That’s where networks like SDI can play an important role by inspiring new forms of mobilisation, and by linking local action into international networks for learning, advocacy and mutual support.

The savings groups they nurture are encouraged to federate, enabling them to have more influence over city and national governments in ways that are grounded in real experience. Members survey, map and profile their neighbourhoods, turning invisible challenges into concrete evidence and locally-proposed solutions. The South African Alliance, for example, has successfully advocated for a more progressive housing policy that has led to over 15,000 permanent new, affordable homes being constructed.

The SDI network used to have members in 37 countries. Thanks to a group of mums from Manchester, it may soon be 38.

May 13
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Scaling Up Informal Settlement Upgrading: The CODI Model Thailand

By CORC, FEDUP, ISN, SDI No Comments

By Yolande Hendler (on behalf of CORC)

While the value of in-situ informal settlement upgrading is increasingly recognised by national and global actors, its implementation as a co-productive approach rooted in meaningful community participation is inadequate. An exception, however, is the Community Organisations Development Institute (CODI), a finance facility of the Thai government that has facilitated community-led informal settlement upgrading in more than 250 cities and towns in Thailand, demonstrating how a national government not only engaged with ‘pro-poor’ development but also managed to institutionalise an approach and implement at scale.

Somsook Boonyabancha, Former Director of CODI

Somsook Boonyabancha, Former Director of CODI

In early May, the South African SDI Alliance together with Shack / Slum Dwellers International (SDI) had the pleasure of hosting Somsook Boonyabancha, the founder and former director of CODI for a seminar in Johannesburg and Cape Town on ‘Scaling up informal settlement upgrading: The CODI model, Thailand’. ISN and FEDUP coordinators additionally used this opportunity to share current partnership and project implementation challenges with Somsook during a visit to Khayelitsha. Her visit to the Alliance occurred in the context of a broader meeting* with representatives of the South African National Treasury concerning CODI’s approach and its value for the South African context.

Jubilant welcome by FEDUP and ISN

Jubilant welcome by FEDUP and ISN

CORC director Bunita Kohler offers a warm welcome

CORC director Bunita Kohler offers a warm welcome

Informal Settlement Upgrading in South Africa

The upgrading context in South Africa is marked by a tension between policy and practice. Part three of the National Housing Code states that the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Program (the national policy and finance instrument for upgrading) set out to “facilitate the structured in situ upgrading of informal settlements as opposed to relocation(s)”. The aim: to achieve tenure security, deliver basic services and build ‘social capital’ in communities through participatory processes.

In practice, however, municipal application of UISP has been weak, especially in terms of community participation or alternative approaches to tenure security beyond freehold (See NUSP). Even after the National Upgrading Support Programme (NUSP) was introduced in 2010 to support municipalities in addressing these shortfalls, the lack of meaningful community engagement or in-situ upgrading of informal settlements persisted. This is largely due to inadequate municipal capacity for meaningful participation, a recurring preference of relocating shack dwellers to greenfields sites (the Joe Slovo judgement is a case in point) or repackaging reports on greenfield relocations as UISP projects (see State of Local Governance, p.64-65).

Community leader of TT Section, Site B Khayelitsha welcomes Somsook to her settlement

Community leader of TT Section, Site B Khayelitsha welcomes Somsook to her settlement

Where the SA SDI Alliance has implemented participatory upgrading projects in partnership with a local municipality (such as the City of Cape Town), these instances remain limited to a handful of settlements. Avenues for scaling up meaningful participatory practice in South Africa are rare, if not non-existent. In the experience of the Alliance, key challenges to scaling up relate to the disjuncture between lengthy bureaucratic processes and the pace of community preparation in informal settlements. For example, party political frictions may extend the time required to mobilise a community while lengthy municipal procurement processes regularly stretch project timeframes beyond the designated one year budget allocation period. When budget allocations are annulled or project dates postpoined, it is twice as difficult to restart and remobilise the community. Tools that intend to support community-led action (such as the UISP), can therefore have the opposite effect: they are often not flexible enough to adapt to project preparation and social facilitation processes in informal settlement communities.

How CODI Works

As an alternative, the CODI model offers relevant insights for the South African context. Formed in 2000 through the merging of the Urban Community Development Office and the Rural Development Fund, CODI is an independent public organisation under the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security. CODI functions as a revolving loan fund that enables direct access to grants for upgrading and loans for housing. As a national implementing agent, CODI manages the Thai government’s Community Development Fund that engages urban poor communities and networks who are organised in housing co-operatives and informally recognised community based savings schemes. CODI supports the building of community cooperatives, through sub-group clusters that manage community grants and wholesale loans. Such subgroups bring about collective action through group guarantee, helping eachother, and collective repayment. Read more about CODI here.

Somsook speaks about the CODI model in Thailand.

Somsook speaks about the CODI model in Thailand.

Thailand’s Upgrading Initiative: Baan Mankong

The Baan Mankong City-Wide Upgrading initiative is one of CODI’s most notable programs. Introduced in 2004, it focuses on poverty alleviation, community welfare, technical support and tenure security through promoting savings, credit, loans and planning support. Baan Mankong (which means “Secure Housing” in Thai) facilitates capital transactions through an infrastructure/upgrading grant from central government and a housing loan lent to borrowers organised in housing cooperatives. Since 2004, Baan Mankong has approved a total of 850 projects in 1660 communities and benefitted about 90 000 families. Geographically, its reach covers 286 cities in 71 of 77 provinces. The average housing loan per family amounts to US$ 5000 while the average upgrading subsidy grant averages about US$ 2500 per family. The total loans granted by CODI’s revolving fund (at 3% interest) amount to about US$ 185m with a repayment rate of 97.5% (Figures drawn from Somsook’s presentation).

In her presentation, Somsook highlighted the following as significant requirements for a city-wide, scaleable approach:

  • Active communities: support for urban poor communities as owners of projects
  • City-wide approach: changes at the real scale of the problem (i.e. that affect all poor communities in the city) will link scattered communities and their priorities to each other, contributing to a more systematised and sustainable approach
  • Building strong communities: through secure housing and integrated development that includes:
    • collective land ownership or lease
    • community savings and fund (acting as a community bank)
    • welfare activities
    • activating the link between community networks and city organisations in regular meetings
    • collective management
  • Building partnerships: between community networks, local authorities and other development actors that enable deliberation and negotiation
  • New finance system: active community savings and credit, City Development Funds
FEDUP and ISN engage with Somsook around CODI's approach

FEDUP and ISN engage with Somsook around CODI’s approach

Scaling Up in South Africa?

With more than eighty representatives from NGOs, media platforms and think tanks in the sector, academic partners in planning and architecture and the Head of Department of Human Settlements in the Western Cape, the closing session of the seminar offered an opportunity for discussion. How does CODI straddle the tension between private and collective land ownership? Is collective land ownership/lease possible in South Africa? Is there government appetite for alternative finance mechanisms? While engaging with these points, Somsook continually pointed to the value of collective action:

“The key thing is to bring all actors to work together. Community is important to support each individual for a certain period of time. And land is an important factor [so we need] collective land as a project. Poor people will be weak otherwise. Its insufficient to just do one or two projects here and there… Let poor people at a big scale be the key actors to make a big change”

SAMSUNG CSC

Thando Mguli, HoD of Human Settlements in the Western Cape

Similarly to CODI, a co-finance facility in South Africa has the potential to locate poor people at the heart of upgrading interventions. Where urban poor communities shift from beneficiaries to activated citizens that identify, plan and implement development priorities, informal settlement upgrading can become more nuanced, responsive and participatory. For a co-finance approach, community saving is a valuable mobilising tool, an enabler for meaningful participation and an indicator of household buy-in at settlement level. A co-finance mechanism that is institutionalised in local government but not subject to its bureaucratic process can enable flexible time frames for project budget allocations that are not constrained by annual provincial or municipal allocations. In this sense, innovation and meaningful participation occur only when community members become significant actors in the upgrading process.

*The visit was supported by the World Bank

From left to right: Representatives from the World Bank, Cities Support Programme (Treasury), CORC, Somsook, Western Cape Human Settlements HoD and ISN Coordinator

From left to right: Representatives from the World Bank, Cities Support Programme (Treasury), CORC, Somsook, Western Cape Human Settlements HoD and ISN Coordinator

May 05
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Seeing from the South: an international exchange with South African shelter activists

By CORC, FEDUP, ISN, Learning Exchanges, SDI No Comments

By Dan Silver, Diana Mitlin and Sophie King (crossposted from the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester)

“We are poor, but we are not hopeless. We know what we are doing”.

This is Alinah Mofokeng, one of three activists from the South African alliance of community organizations and support NGOs affiliated to Shack / Slum Dwellers International (SDI) who came to visit Manchester last month. The three came to explain their approaches and to exchange knowledge with local organisations through a combination of visits around Manchester and Salford, and a half-day workshop drawing together activists from around the country.

While South Africa and the UK might initially appear to be worlds apart, previous discussions between low-income communities in the global North and South had identified commonalities in their disadvantage. Potentially there are approaches that can be drawn upon and adapted in order to resist marginalisation and improve local communities, which can work across different places and contexts. This was the basis for Sophie King (UPRISE Research Fellow) and Professor Diana Mitlin (Global Development Institute, University of Manchester) inviting the South African Alliance to meet with UK community groups in March, drawing on a long history of community exchanges. This coincided with the Alliance participating in the Global Development Institute’s teaching programme with community leaders lecturing on their experiences and methods.

Alinah Mofokeng (Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor), Nkokheli Ncambele (Informal Settlements Network) and Charlton Ziervogel (CORC) all talked about their experiences of being part of the South African Alliance of SDI. This alliance has pioneered people-centered development initiatives by and of people in poverty since 1991. Their foundations are established in the grassroots, working on issues that emerge from the daily experiences of poverty, landlessness, and homelessness to bring immediate improvements and long-term inclusive citizenship within cities.

SDI’s approach to organizing is grounded in women’s led savings schemes, in which each member saves small amounts and does so with the support of their own collective savings group, so they are able to improve their own lives, and that of the wider community also. Solidarity is central to their approach and savings schemes are encouraged to federate to have stronger influence on city and state government. In the process of coming together they learn about their respective needs and challenges and respond collectively. If one member’s family does not have enough to eat, the group may decide that week’s savings will be spent on putting bread on their table. Once one savings scheme is formed, they share their learning with other marginalised people around them and support others to form schemes of their own that can join the network.

This extends beyond initial collectives to direct community-to-community learning exchange at city, national, and international levels. From here, they are able to show that they are together and are capable, which means they can influence the government from a more powerful basis – as Nkokheli said, they have been able to say to the politicians: “you are eating our money and not doing what we want. We say, enough is enough!” Nkokheli said that once the community shows that they are capable, for example through building their own toilets in the informal settlements and developing savings, politicians are more likely to listen.

The exchange of different ways of doing things between the South African Alliance and UK organisations certainly had an impact – showing us that the exchange of ideas about solidarity, a self-reliant ethos, and having a long-term vision for more inclusive cities is powerful enough to make sense across continents. One of the participants in the meeting was Ann from a group called Five Mummies Make, which is a self-help group in Scotland who have come together to sell handmade crafts, put on events and contribute to local charities; through meeting every week, the women have improved their own well-being in the process.

After the workshop, Ann was inspired to make a bigger difference than they were already achieving, saying that:

“If we bring together a bigger group, a federation, we can make such a bigger difference within the community, so not just small differences for individuals…I want to go back now and make the changes in the community, without having to go cap in hand asking for help constantly, but saying – this is what we want…”

Alinah, Nkokheli, and Charlton visited the United Estates of Wythenshawe for an extended lunch to meet people involved in Mums’ Mart. Mums’ Mart was started by a group of parents who came together after speaking to each other in the playground at their children’s school in Wythenshawe. Through chatting, they realised that they shared experiences of feeling isolated, and that their kids weren’t getting to take part in everyday activities. To address these problems the mums now meet every other week to have a meal while their children play, and they organise ‘market days’ to bring people from the estate together and raise money to take their families away somewhere fun for a day or a week.

After the exchange, members of Mum’s Mart have begun to emulate the SDI savings model and are holding weekly savings meetings, alongside their income-generating activities and monthly committee meetings to review progress; they also have ambitions about how over the long-term they can bring practical social change beyond their immediate group.  Sharon Davies, the group’s treasurer, told us that since the visit Mums’ Mart have set up their own savings scheme and it is going well, and that they “have loads of really good ideas as to where we are going to go with Mums’ Mart from now on”.

This was certainly not just a one-way street of learning from the SDI approach. Nkokheli, who was initially surprised that poverty existed in the UK after visiting a homeless group in Manchester, told us that: “The exchanges are very important to us, because it mobilises the community…and also [helps] to train communities to do things, [to see] what other people are doing for themselves. Here in Manchester, I learnt a lot…The systems are not the same, but the look of things are the same – there are things we can learn from Manchester, and there are things Manchester can learn from us”.

Through this exchange then, there have been concrete changes that have already taken place. It also shows the value of bringing together groups who might be marginalised from politics and from economic opportunities, to share ideas, tactics and strategies. There is most certainly scope in the UK to build on the approach that SDI take: developing a more self-reliant social action approach; coming together, initially in close supportive relationships between neighbours, but with a view to wider solidarity across groups and between areas; and showing the government through practical activities the capabilities of people living in low-income areas and the direction that poverty reduction strategies should take.

As Alinah said, “we are not hopeless. We know what we are doing”.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/164289875[/vimeo]
Apr 22
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Reflections on H3 Pretoria: Can we Implement Progressive Outcomes?

By CORC, ISN, SDI No Comments

by Ava Rose Hoffman, Yolande Hendler and Skye Dobson (on behalf of CORC)

From 7-8 April 2016, the SA SDI Alliance together with Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) participated in the United Nations Habitat III Thematic Conference on Informal Settlements in Pretoria, advocating for the inclusion of  the voices of the urban poor in crafting the “New Urban Agenda” (NUA).

SDI Team

SDI Team

The Problem of Mass Housing, The Potential of Informal Settlements

In his opening address, Dr. Joan Clos, emphasised that informal settlements and housing should be “put at the centre” politically and physically. Mass housing projects on the periphery of cities would need to be diminished because without economic activity and mixed (land) use they become dormitory neighbourhoods for the poor. Clos suggested that urbanisation needed to be used as a tool for socio-economic development through well-planned and managed cities, proposing that the following three dimensions of urbanisation need to be considered:

  • The Legal Dimension (requiring new rules and regulations)
  • The Physical Dimension (spatial planning and land use)
  • The Financial Dimension (enabling economic design and finance)

While Clos noted that each dimension requires strategic instruments to address the “proliferation of slum dwellers”, we wonder where the “Social Dimension” featured in this discussion. The absence of shack dwellers as central agents and decision makers in planning, implementation and access to finance produces limited and brittle results. The South African Minister of Human Settlements, Lindiwe Sisulu, alluded to this effect: “We [the Department of Human Settlements] experienced challenges from time to time because we did not always understand the environment we were going in to. We are looking to adjust this legislation.” Whereas adjusted legislation carries some impact, the underlying value lies within the experience that informs strategic contributions of slum dwellers themselves.

Opening address by Joan Clos, Executive Director of UN Habitat

Opening address by Joan Clos, Executive Director of UN Habitat

Where Planning Falls Short…

However, what purpose do master plans render if they are not implemented? And, how do we rethink the relationship between living spaces and workplaces? In a panel on the role of urban planning and land use, Julian Baskin (Head of Program Unit at Cities Alliance) emphasised that the urban agenda was not only about housing but how we access cities and livelihoods. Slum dwellers are no longer waiting for government, Baskin explained, but are organising themselves, forming their own plans and collecting their own data.

Slum dwellers are arriving at local governments around secondary cities saying, ‘We have our own information, partner with us’. When you have people in communities who understand plans and how to control their own development, you suddenly gain multiple planners….National governments need to build enabling legislation for cities, between local governments and communities, so that planning can be transferred to slum dwellers themselves.

Informal Settlements: Productive Centres for Resident Organising and Livelihoods

In two side events, community leaders affiliated to SDI spoke of the connection between informal settlements, livelihoods and mobilisation strategies through savings and data collection. The conversation was grounded by the very personal account of Catherine, a young mother from Johannesburg who spoke of her experience as a waste picker and recycler. In a soft, and, at moments, shaky voice, she recounted,

“I am a waste picker because this is how I support my children. This is how my mother supported us. I mainly work with cardboard and scale it every day. For 1Kg I am paid 90c.”

Catherine

Catherine

Based on Catherine’s account and a further presentation by SDI partner movement, Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), it was evident that daily life in informal settlements significantly co-exists and intersects with livelihood activities such as waste picking, street vending and home based work. Therefore,

  • Informal settlements are spaces of productivity and economic activity: homes are productive assets that contribute to economic livelihoods.
  • Basic services are inputs for informal workers’ productivity and function as a direct link to livelihoods.
  • Informal settlements are intricately connected to economic migrants and livelihood opportunities.

Rose Molokoane, Coordinator of FEDUP and Deputy President of SDI spoke about the broader involvement and mobilisation of shack dwellers in global discussions on development:

“As informal settlers we ask ourselves, what was achieved by the MDGs discussed twenty years ago ? Will the SDGs really attend to the needs of poor people in informal settlements? People who are planning for us without us are making a mistake. Informal settlements keep growing because most of the time we are taken as the subject of discussion without including us in the discussion… We use the power of savings and information about our informal settlements to organise ourselves, to reach out to our communities, to do something and to allow government to meet us half way” (Rose Molokoane, SDI & SA SDI Alliance)

Victoria Okoye (WIEGO) and Rose Molokoane on the left,

Victoria Okoye (WIEGO) and Rose Molokoane on the left,

As a collective of global movements, WIEGO, SDI and the Huairou Commission seek to ensure that the NUA promotes inclusion and produces equitable social and economic outcomes. Some of these include:

  • Recognition of all forms of work, both informal and formal
  • Greater access to affordable financial services, training new technologies and decent and secure workplaces for all women and men
  • Adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services
  • Security of tenure for the urban poor and a stop to all forced evictions

Know Your City: Community Collected Data for Collaborative City Planning

With panelists clad in Know Your City T-shirts and the presentation of a KnowYourCity explanatory video set to an upbeat soundtrack, the mood was set for a different kind of panel. Thus far, the voices of informal settlement dwellers had been sparse in the conference. That was, until the Know Your City side event.

SDI’s Know Your City (KYC) campaign emphasises that the “data revolution” is central to the New Urban Agenda (NUA). It constitutes a true data revolution as shack dwellers are organised across the Global South not only to gather invaluable data on informal settlements, but to use it as the foundation for partnerships and collaborative urban planning. While “partnerships” between communities and government are widely accepted as critical to the success of the NUA, the mechanisms for actually realising productive partnerships are poorly understood. The KYC campaign has proven a highly effective strategy for catalysing such partnership and sustained dialogue between communities and government.

Mzwanele Zulu and Joyce Lungu, community leaders of urban poor federations in South Africa and Zambia, spoke of their experience profiling, enumerating and mapping their cities. Joyce spoke of the Zambian federation’s work to profile Lusaka through the strong organisational capacity in slum dweller communities. While the challenge for non-residents concerned entering and gathering reliable data, the power this information constituted for residents was evident when it was shared with government partners in the city council to identify incremental upgrading of settlements through prioritising needs and projects.

Mzwanele Zulu appreciated the large audience at the event, but gave an impassioned plea for more government officials to make the effort to attend the panels of informal dwellers. He highlighted the critical role of household level enumerations in organising his community in Joe Slovo, Cape Town.  Initially, the government claimed there were too many shack dwellers to accommodate in the planned upgrade and advised on relocations to the outskirts of the city. The enumeration revealed the actual population to be far smaller and negotiations with government resulted in an agreement to undertake an in situ development. The enumeration data was also vital to the beneficiary registration process – something often mismanaged in upgrading projects, often at the expense of the poorest residents.

SAMSUNG CSC

Joyce Lungu, Zambian Federation Leader

Julian Baskin (of Cities Alliance) reminded the audience that a tremendous change is required to create an environment that catalyses the efforts of the urban poor to improve their communities instead of simply “controlling” urban poor communities. He applauded the efforts of organised slum dweller communities in SDI to gather critical data, plan for settlement improvements and seek partnerships with government. To meet the demand of informal settlement upgrading in the Global South, partnerships that bring the efforts of a billion slum dwellers to the service of city development will be essential.

CORC Deputy Director, Charlton Ziervogel, wrapped up the discussion by explaining the process undertaken by the SDI network to standardise profiling data. Such standardisation makes it possible to aggregate data at the regional and global level which is currently hosted on SDI’s Know Your City online platform. In South Africa, FEDUP and the Informal Settlement Network (ISN) are working on two government tenders to gather data on hundreds of informal settlements in the Western Cape. Affiliates in Uganda and Kenya are making similar progress. These cases serve as powerful examples of authentic government partnership and a data revolution that chooses communities over consultants to gather data and serve as the foundation for inclusive, collaborative planning.

SAMSUNG CSC

Know Your City Side Event

How Can we Implement Progressive Outcomes? 

The two day thematic meeting ended with the adoption of the Pretoria Declaration on Informal Settlements, which is considered as official input on informal settlements to the New Urban Agenda. UN Habitat also launched its “Up for Slum Dwellers – Transforming a Billion Lives’ campaign, hosted by UN Habitat’s Participatory Slum Upgrading Program (PSUP) and the World Urban Campaign with the aim to bring about a new paradigm regarding global responses to slum upgrading.

In its current version, the Pretoria Declaration presents progressive and people-centred recommendations that relate to embracing the importance of in-situ participatory slum upgrading approaches, pursuing a focus on people-centred partnerships as suggested by “People-Public-Private Partnerships”, using participatory and inclusive approaches to developing policy, strengthening the role of local government and recognising civil society as a key actor in participatory processes. The Declaration also emphasises that the NUA should be action-oriented and implementable.

Although the declaration indicates that action should be concentrated at the local government level and that UN Habitat support to states occurs through tools such as the PSUP (See Point 9 in the Declaration), “the how” remains a strong concern for members of the South African SDI Alliance, and SDI network. While the SDI network and “Know Your City” approach was characterised by a strong presence and the message of “plan with us, not for us” was well received the mechanisms for implementation remain unclear:

“We have this beautiful constitution, but how will South African municipalities act? Politicians and officials talk very nicely – I hope that they will open doors for us when we engage them. Since I joined ISN in 2009 we are battling to sign Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with municipalities for upgrading. We only have the MoU with the City of Cape Town and eight provincial agreements with national government, but those are for the People’s Housing Process and not for upgrading. Do we know what is really happening on the ground or are we just becoming advocates of theory?” (Mzwanele Zulu, SA SDI Alliance)

“The highlight for me was making sure that our voices and messages were heard. Part of my concern was when I looked at the expenses of this event. There are a lot of people who don’t have and here is our government spending so much money on this event. But when you go and ask them to assist poor people you don’t get that response” (Melanie Manuel, SA SDI Alliance)

Watch Rose Molokoane’s input to the NUA on behalf of SDI here.

Apr 08
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The Pretoria Declaration on Informal Settlements: Perspectives from the urban poor

By News, SDI No Comments

On 8 April 2016, SDI leader Rose Molokoane delivered an address on the New Urban Agenda at the final plenary session of the UN Habitat III Thematic Meeting on Informal Settlements in Pretoria. The thematic meeting took place in preparation for the upcoming UN Habitat III Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development, to be held in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016.

The plenary session in which Rose spoke was entitled: “Together transforming a billion lives: Participatory approaches in planning, implementing, and monitoring informal settlement/slum upgrading.”

Watch the speech here:

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/163418761[/vimeo]

As a founding leader of the Shack Dwellers International (SDI), a network of slum dweller federations spanning 38 countries, I understand the critical need for increased focus on informal settlements in the urban agenda as this is where close to a billion of our brothers and sisters live. We’re not the subjects of this discussion. We are part of this discussion.

As chair of the Grassroots Constituency Group of the General Assembly of Partners, representing slum dwellers, informal workers, organised youth and marginalised women in our cities, I am very pleased to take part in this Thematic Meeting on Informal Settlements towards Habitat III and the New Urban Agenda. This is OUR agenda. I only wish this whole venue was full of slum dwellers.

We call for specific mention in the New Urban Agenda of the urgent need to combat the spatial, social and economic exclusion of informal settlements and the informal sector in cities and to mobilise the requisite resources to address this.

This will require a New Urban Agenda that commits itself to support the process of organizing communities to partner effectively with governments and other urban actors. We must find ways of institutionalising these partnerships in the decision making and planning process. Do you Know Your City? This should be the question we ask our communities, our politicians and our technocrats.

We urge partners to recognise the role informal settlement dwellers must play in the implementation of scalable efforts to build urban resilience and promote climate change mitigation and adaptation at the local level.

Effective implementation of the New Urban Agenda demands robust partnerships between local governments and organised communities of the urban poor. These must be at the core of policy making and development planning and implementation in cities and stress the need to strengthen existing cooperation mechanisms, platforms, and partnership arrangements.

Community-collected slum data should form the basis of collaborative informal settlement policy making and development planning, and is a critical tool to implement, monitor and evaluate the SDGs in cities across the globe. When organised informal settlement dwellers gather these data, they become active and organised citizens with the capacity to engage in action-oriented partnerships.

We are going to change this world by hook or by crook.

In solidarity,

Rose Molokoane, SDI
Chair
Grassroots Constituency Group
General Assembly of Partners

 

Mar 09
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How High-Tech Maps Could Help Urban Slums Plan Better Streets

By CORC, SDI No Comments

By Laura Bliss and Aarian Marshall (Cross-posted from CityLab)

In this Jan. 29, 2016 photo, Tainara Lourenco, who's five months pregnant, stands outside her stilt home that stands over polluted water in a slum in Recife, Brazil. Lourenco became pregnant at a scary moment — the dawn of an extraordinary Zika outbreak, as authorities came to suspect that the virus was causing an alarming spike in a rare birth defect called microcephaly. "If you have to get sick you will get sick," she said. "It's everywhere." (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In this Jan. 29, 2016 photo, Tainara Lourenco, who’s five months pregnant, stands outside her stilt home that stands over polluted water in a slum in Recife, Brazil. Lourenco became pregnant at a scary moment — the dawn of an extraordinary Zika outbreak, as authorities came to suspect that the virus was causing an alarming spike in a rare birth defect called microcephaly. “If you have to get sick you will get sick,” she said. “It’s everywhere.” (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

In slums, buildings are often so densely packed that many are cut off from streets and pathways. This creates a literal roadblock to much-needed public resources.

“In South Africa, governments will often say that informal settlements are too dense to install adequate services,” Charlton Ziervogel, deputy director at the Community Organisation Resource Centre, a Cape Town-based slum advocacy and support NGO, tells CityLab. “So you’ll find municipalities that install toilets, but only at the edge of a settlement, because they perceive that there is no space inside.”

It’s a serious matter. Across the global south, hundreds of millions live in slums lacking piped water, proper drainage, and sanitation—ideal breeding grounds for virus-carrying insects and other types of disease. To fight epidemics such as Zika, experts warn, living conditions for the urban poor must be improved. But to do so, many slum communities first need to open up space.

A new tool might help. Open Reblock is a free, open-source platform designed to simplify the process of thoughtfully reorganizing slum communities. Funded through OpenIDEO, it’s the product of a major research collaboration by the Santa Fe Institute, Sam Houston State University,UC Berkeley, and Shack/Slum Dwellers International, a global network of community-based organisations representing the urban poor.

The only input that’s required for Open Reblock is a good-quality map with details on each property inside a community and its access to the street network. The tool uses an algorithm to identify the least disruptive reorganization of a cluster of slum blocks so that each parcel gets access to the street—nudging this house two meters east, extending that road a few meters south. It produces a new map of this “reblocked” community, which residents can adjust to their needs and use to push local government (or other support sources) to begin construction.

“How to change the physical slum? You tap into the knowledge of the people who live in the slum,” says José Lobo, an economist and sustainability researcher with Arizona State University who has worked on the project. The tool, he says, captures that knowledge—physically, on a map—so it “can be shared, examined, revisited, and acted on while minimizing disruption.” Indeed, the philosophy behind the tool is that no one is better positioned to help plan a community than those who actually live in it and have the social knowledge to understand how people need to move around their neighborhoods. In other words: This thing will be very useful in community meetings.

In its simplest terms, reblocking has been going on as long as there have been slums—“It’s just playing around with space,” says Ziervogel. In the past decade, organizations like his, operating under Shack/Slum Dwellers International, have worked with slum communities around the world on formal reblocking efforts using hand-drawn maps—translated into design software—to gradually improve street plans.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/103700821[/vimeo]

Last year, Flamingo Crescent, an informal settlement outside Cape Town, completed reblocking and installing water, sanitation, and electricity for all of its 104 households. It took nearly three years to get there, and for good reason: Neighbors had to negotiate inherently sensitive changes to their properties, and the community had to work with NGOs and local government align the plan with municipal expectations. Technology will hopefully speed up this process.

“In a lot of formal urban planning, the question is, ‘How do we solve the slums problem?’” says Christa Brelsford, a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. “The conception is that this is too hard, that the only way is to start over from scratch. People who live in slums don’t agree with that assessment, and don’t want to be resettled.”

The researchers are very clear on what the Open Reblock tool will not do: command community members to raze their houses and rearrange them into straight, neat grids. The source code favors pathways that do not get in the way of existing homes or neighborhood fixtures, which means they sometimes turn out a bit wiggly. And the physical construction process is meant to be gradual, with community members working with government to upgrade clusters of blocks at a time.

The graphic below depicts a sample re-blocking project in the Epworth neighborhood of Harare, Zimbabwe. The far left shows the area before reblocking, with streets in black and properties without street access highlighted in orange. Properties with access are surrounded by dotted gray lines. In the middle is an image of the same neighborhood in the midst of reblocking, with just four properties left still isolated from road access. On the far right is the neighborhood after reblocking: All parcels now have access to the street.

A sample reblocking project in the Epworth neighborhood of Harare, Zimbabwe. (Open Reblock)

A sample reblocking project in the Epworth neighborhood of Harare, Zimbabwe. (Open Reblock)

Eventually, researchers say, the tool will be available both on and offline. They expect to finish the prototype within three months. Meanwhile, Brelsford will travel with other research team members to Nairobi, to learn more about slums from a design perspective. Eventually, SDI will select a community in South Africa in which to first use Open Reblock.

While the tool’s potential for streamlining reblocking is great, it’s not a silver bullet. “There’s a specific social process that needs to be part of the solution,” Ziervogel says. “Technical solutions cannot be simply dumped on a community. They need to be involved in shaping and leading the process.” Tools like Open Reblock wouldn’t even exist, he adds, without the foundation work of community-driven organizations like SDI and its many affiliates on the ground.

“One of the things that is defining of SDI’s work is helping communities put themselves on the map,” Lobo says. He describes the power and attention slums can draw—from governments, from government services, from other people who live in the city—by creating a way to point to the places where people work and live. “That simple map is an issue of great contention between slum dwellers and the powers that be. [They say,] ‘We are making ourselves visible.’ They want to and need to tell the authorities where they live.”

Feb 29
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From Nairobi to Cape Town: Learning about Upgrading and Partnerships with Local Government

By CORC, FEDUP, ISN, Learning Exchanges, SDI No Comments

By Yolande Hendler (on behalf of CORC)

From Ghetto informal settlement in Nairobi, the Kenyan SDI Alliance together with an official from the nearby Kiambu County Government visited the South African SDI Alliance on a learning exchange in Cape Town from 22 – 25 February 2016. Community leaders and an official from Ekurhuleni Municipality, near Johannesburg, also joined the group.

The purpose of the exchange was to share experiences regarding informal settlement upgrading, partnership formation between community movements and local governments, project planning, preparation and mobilisation processes. Kenya’s Federation, Muungano wa Wanavijiji has been supporting Ghetto community in obtaining tenure security and identifying housing beneficiaries. Currently the settlement is set for the final phase in a government-upgrading project that requires re-planning its public spaces and houses, a familiar process that the South African Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP) and Informal Settlement Network (ISN) call “reblocking”.

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Priscilla, community leader in Sheffield Road speaks about reblocking

With introductions and an overview of the SA SDI Alliance on the first day, the visitors shared their key learning interests as relating to

  • Partnership Formation between communities themselves and between communities and local governments
  • Upgrading Processes – how communities organise themselves during upgrading, how technicalities in construction and implementation are dealt with, the role of project funding and community saving

Savings and Income Generation

With savings as the core practice of the SDI network, the afternoon visit took place at a FEDUP savings and income generation group in Samora Machel, Philippi. The group explained how its FEDUP membership enabled individuals to access small loans from the Federation Income Generation Program (FIGP). With a particular set of criteria for loan access, repayments and additional loan cycles, the group had established a number of small businesses such as beading, second hand clothing, fried chicken or locally tailored clothing.

The meeting sparked an animated discussion on how savers could maintain their momentum and interest in savings, especially after receiving a house or an informal settlement upgrade upgrading can be seen as fulfilling the “immediate savings purpose”. A loan group member explained that she viewed saving as valuable backup to draw on when problems arose. In Kenya, members became tired of “saving for nothing” – they therefore began using their savings in smaller projects while waiting for larger projects to occur. The Kenyan visitors further noted the value building trust between members through administering loans to small groups of five savers.

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Mary Wambui (Kenya SDI Alliance) and John Mulia (Kenya Official) look at FEDUP savings book

FEDUP Income Generation businesses in Samora Machel

FEDUP Income Generation businesses in Samora Machel

Reblocking in the City of Cape Town

Over the next two days the group traced re-blocking projects and informal settlement upgrading projects in the municipalities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch.

In Cape Town the SA SDI Alliance used its first re-blocking projects in Joe Slovo and Sheffield Road settlements to build a partnership with the City of Cape Town to jointly pursue future upgrading and reblocking projects. As a result the City adopted reblocking as a policy, an indicator of increased intent to engage with community-led processes. In Sheffield Road the group saw how reblocking establishes access routes, courtyards, increased space for communal water and sanitation installation as well as safer public open spaces. Since reblocking, the community has successfully negotiated for electricity installation.

Courtyard in Sheffield Road after reblocking

Courtyard in Sheffield Road after reblocking

In Sheffield Road: Rashid and Samuel (Kenyan Federation) in discussion with Lulama (ISN leader for Philippi region)

In Sheffield Road: Rashid and Samuel (Kenyan Federation) in discussion with Lulama (ISN leader for Philippi region)

Mtshini Wam was the first settlement that was reblocked in partnership with the City of Cape Town in 2013. While walking through the settlement the group noticed the improved differences between the projects: the layout of Mtshini Wam enabled 2 households to share water and sanitation facilities. Noticeably, a number of residents had self-built a second storey on to their structure after having participated in a community design process for double storey units as further development after upgrading. Through persistent negotiations after reblocking, the community received municipal electricity and ground levelling to mitigate flooding. ISN National Coordinator, Mzwanele Zulu, explained that such incremental upgrading contributed to incremental tenure security.

Double storey structures in Mtshini Wam

Double storey structures in Mtshini Wam

In Flamingo Crescent, the most recently upgraded settlement (2014), community leader Maria Matthews introduced the group to the settlement’s reblocking experience: engaging fellow community members to save, planning meetings with the City and community participation during reconstruction. Due to its enumeration figures and the reblocked layout, the community succeeded in negotiating for individual service installation and electricity per re-blocked household (1:1 services). Flamingo’s site was levelled with all access roads paved and named before erecting the reblocked structures. The visitors saw that for the SA Alliance, upgrading / reblocking is a cumulative experience, with consistent improvements in new projects based on past project learning.

“Reblocking made a big difference, but upgrading is far from over,” Maria Matthews explained. “We have many social and health problems remaining here.”

(Maria Matthews, Flamingo Crescent Community Leader)

Arrival in Flamingo Crescent

Arrival in Flamingo Crescent

After reblocking in Flamingo. 1:1 Services per household.

After reblocking in Flamingo. 1:1 Services per household.

Upgrading in Stellenbosch Municipality

In Langrug the group encountered an example of partial reblocking in a settlement about ten times the population size of those in Cape Town, with about 4000 residents. Community leader, Trevor Masiy, traced the settlement’s partnership with the SA SDI Alliance and the joint partnership agreement with Stellenbosch Municipality, which informed the settlement’s upgrading initiatives in drainage and storm water projects and two Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Facilities. Trevor also highlighted the challenges experienced by disrepair of past upgrading projects. He therefore emphasised the value of community involvement not only in project planning and implementation but also in maintenance.

Walking through partially reblocked section of Langrug.

Walking through partially reblocked section of Langrug.

View on to Langrug

View on to Langrug

Water and Sanitation Facility in Zwelitsha section, Langrug

Water and Sanitation Facility in Zwelitsha section, Langrug

Partnership Meetings

Two separate partnership meetings with Stellenbosch Municipality and the City of Cape Town allowed the visitors and two visiting officials an insight into the practical workings of partnership building and project negotiations. The partnership meetings in Cape Town and Stellenbosch focussed on updating all gathered on current project progress and discussions on renewing and continuing the partnership relationships. Discussion highlights included:

Cape Town

  • Alliance emphasises that its partnership focus with the City is not only reblocking but also informal settlement and area-wide upgrading

Stellenbosch

  • The muincipality explained that reblocking is not just about structure upgrades but about enabling basic service provision
  • The municipality spoke about its partnership with Langrug and SA Alliance as fluid, moving towards different ways and means of reaching a common goal
Partnership Meeting with Stellenbosch Municipality in Franschoek

Partnership Meeting with Stellenbosch Municipality in Franschoek

Alliance begins Cape Town partnership meeting in song in Bosasa Community Hall, Mfuleni

Alliance begins Cape Town partnership meeting in song in Bosasa Community Hall, Mfuleni

Reflections and Learnings

On Upgrading:

  • “We have been focussing on permanent houses. This can become strenuous for communities because it demands resources and scaling up. But our thinking has changed when we saw how reblocking has attracted government attention. (Rashid Muka, Kenyan Federation Leader)
  • “In Kenya we always thought that upgrading means erecting permanent structures. I am learning about incremental upgrading – something I’d like to take home” (John Mulia, Kiambu County Government, Kenya)
  • “The value of an incremental approach is that you don’t start with the end product (a house) and impose it on a community. Upgrading is not only housing. You can be in a temporary shack and as long as you have opened up spaces to basic services, then that is upgrading.” (Mary Wambui, Kenyan SDI Alliance )

On Building Parternerships

  • “What is key in achieving a relationship with a municipality? Involving the community, drafting good plans and implementing precedent setting projects that can influence policy, especially if there is no policy yet” (Sizwe Mxobo, CORC Technical Support)
  • “Strong social movements that know what they want are important in building partnerships. They can remind municipalities about their commitments” (Nkokheli Ncambele, ISN Coordinator Western Cape)
  • “We want to pull stakeholders together and understand how to journey together. We want to be able to say this exchange gave birth to some of the lessons we learnt. What has come out clearly is the value of learning by doing.” (Rashid Muka, Kenyan Federation Leader)
Group gathers in a courtyard in Sheffield Road

Group gathers in a courtyard in Sheffield Road

On Community-Led Engagement

  • In this exchange I understood a lot about talking with communities. Government needs to understand the value of partners coming on board. The government of Kenya has made many plans but the community needs to point out what they want and need, not us the government. A project becomes sustainable when it is community driven.” (John Mulia, Kiambu County Government, Kenya)