* REPORT : 79

Minister Sisulu's Address at FEDUP Conference, May 2006

Partnerships between government and slum/shack dwellers’ federations – Lindiwe Sisulu

BACKGROUND:  The text below is the keynote address by Lindiwe Sisulu, the South African Minister of Housing to a Conference organized by Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) and the Government of South Africa’s Department of Housing in Cape Town, 19th-21st May 2006. This Conference was organized to highlight the achievements of partnerships between governments and slum/shack dwellers’ federations. The text below is taken from the official text, released by the Department of Housing.  However, at the Conference, Ms. Sisulu’s speech went further than this and she committed the equivalent of US$40 million from national and provincial governments to supporting the house-construction and upgrading work of this South African Federation of the Urban Poor in the coming years.  Mrs. Sisulu also committed herself to promoting comparable partnerships between government and slum/shack dwellers federations throughout Africa through the Special Ministerial Conference of the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development (AMCHUD).  At the end of the text of the speech, a paragraph from a subsequent speech by Ms. Sisulu is included, which gives more details of the support her government will provide to the South African Federation of the Urban Poor.

The Conference was attended by representatives from slum/shack/urban poor federations and the local NGOs that work with them from 11 nations. The Conference included many joint presentations by federation members and government staff of the work they were undertaking together.  These included:

• The Malawi Homeless People’s Federation described the 220 homes they had built, when the government had provided them with land while the presentations by the Lilongwe city planner and a city councillor from Blantyre described about how impressed they were with this and of their change in attitude towards the federation.  The presentation by the Malawi Minister of Housing talked of his Ministry’s partnership with the Malawi Federation and he promised that 11,000 land plots would be made available to the Federation, in Lilongwe and Blantyre, to support the Federation’s housing programme.
• The Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and their support NGO (Dialogue on Shelter) described their productive partnerships with some local governments in Zimbabwe, despite the national policy that has favoured massive evictions. This partnership was also described and endorsed by the city planner of Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo.
• The Namibian Shack Dwellers Federation described the support they have received both from national government and from local governments, including those from Windhoek (the capital and largest city) and Gobabis. 
• The Ghana Federation and the local support NGO (People’s Dialogue) describe the emerging partnership with city and national government, especially in Tema, a city of around 200,000 people that is close to Accra; this partnership was also described and endorsed by the Government of Ghana.
• The Federation in Brazil and the local NGO that supports them (Interaçao) described how they are working in six cities with 11,000 families with government and the private sector; this partnership was also described and warmly endorsed by the Brazilian Government’s Director of Housing from the Federal Ministry of Cities.
• A community leader from Mahila Milan (a federation of savings groups formed by women slum and pavement dwellers) and SPARC (the NGO that supports them) described the hundreds of community-designed and managed toilets built with support from city and national government; also the partnerships that had developed between community organizations and the police in Pune and Mumbai on policing in the slums.
• A representative of the Kenyan Federation (Muungano wa Wanvijiji) and from Pamoja Trust (the NGO that works with the Federation) talked of their partnerships with city and central governments in regard to getting land already occupied regularized (in 34 sites, this process is underway) and new land for those who have to be resettled (for instance, those who live just beside the railway tracks).  
• The South African Federation of the Urban Poor’s partnership with Durban City Council was described both by Federation members and staff from Durban government, including the work on community toilets and household enumerations in informal settlements.  

I accepted the honour to open this Conference with a great deal of humility. Humility because, I who represents those who are seen to have plenty, have to stand here in front of you who represents the poorest of the poor and pretend that I some words of wisdom to impart to you. But I stand here with pride, and I am proud too, because you have chosen my government as a partner in a cause that goes right to the heart of what we are and what we fought for all those years. For me this can only mean an endorsement of your confidence in us, that with us, through us your ideals can be achieved.  I welcome your confidence in us for we in turn will use it to spur ourselves on to ensure that our common goals are realised. It is an honour for us to be counted on as one of the champions of the poorest of the poor.

The great revolutions of modern times have apart from the influences of technological advances and progress been the result often of the kind of progressive action that had found its source from the grassroots. Such has been the influence and the power of the grassroots in the present time that none who held political power could on their own define and occupy the political space that is critical to issues of sustainable development.  We are all one human force, inexorably drawn to the ideal that until all are free, free from the shackles of poverty, none of us is free. Because by some strange reason we are bound to this universe together. There is some logic in this contradiction. If we to move forward – progress our collective pace will be determined by the slowest, in this case the lowest. The great irony of our time! The future of our civilisations rests on how we determine our way forward. We shall not be identified as the civilisation of great poverty, that cannot defines us, we who are proud inventors of everything that has culminated into our launching into space to seek answers about what lies beyond. Perhaps, this is a justifiable deflection as we remain unable to solve problems that lie at our feet.

Intellectually, one of the best periods of recorded history, but morally very wanting. The consciousness of the rich closed to the poverty that surrounds them.    In convening this Conference, Slum Dwellers International (SDI) and the (South African) Federation of the Urban Poor, give us reason to have greater confidence that the common struggle we share against homelessness will indeed achieve its greater results during our own lifetime. No moment in the history of human society has landed itself to this possibility other than ours.  I have just retuned from a trip to India – a most valuable learning experience it was. I did not get to see the Taj Mahal but what I experienced was more valuable than the Taj. I went out to see to see the pavement dwellers of Mumbai living in the most shocking conditions on the edge of society – having lived that way for all their lives. But a people with hope. An entrepreneurial people taught me the value of saving and the spirit that drives them to ensure that they do provide a house for their families. A people determined that they will do their bit to restore their dignity.  I yearn for that spirit here. A spirit that says this is our government – how can we help it in this huge challenge to provide housing? What can I – sitting in a shack house do to help to ensure that I too have a house? We need to infuse this in our people. We were once a proud people that moved heaven and earth and did do the impossible. The present challenge is within our power to resolve.  In India, I also had a tour of projects that had been undertaken by slum dwellers, projects that demonstrated resourcefulness, originality and innovation. They vindicated the belief I had always had that if government was to accelerate the delivery of housing then the complete involvement of the poor needed to receive full support. 

I then began to reflect on the 2005 World Summit Outcome that committed governments to specific actions in relation to slum prevention and slum upgrading. Key among the resolutions was the commitment to increase resources for housing and the related infrastructure. Gandhi believed that there was an innate goodness in human nature which at all times is able to perceive the truth as though by instinct.  We are a people with a very proud history, proud of what we can do for ourselves. My worry right now is that this proud heritage is dissipating now that we have our own government, the government of the poorest of the poor, the disadvantaged. And we have ourselves to believe that the government will provide.  I have been very attracted by the founding ethos of Shack Dwellers International, that no matter how disadvantaged, we can still do it ourselves, that in fact it is nobler if we do it ourselves. Help me plant this into the heart of every disadvantaged South African. Help me inspire them to stand up.  At the Special Ministerial Conference of the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development (AMCHUD), that we held a month ago, in Nairobi, resolutions had been passed to effect these outcomes of the World Summit by focusing governments on the resourcefulness of the poor.  Having ourselves placed the issue of slum prevention and slum upgrading at the top of the international agenda we resolved not only to prevent new slum formations but to also look into the existing policies, legal, institutional and regulatory frameworks that hinder our abilities to deal with slum formation in ways that affirmed and strengthened our relationship with the poor.  We therefore resolved to review the frameworks that exist to enable an environment where the full capacities of community organisations and non-governmental organisations were utilised. In practice, amongst other things, this will mean the promotion of community-led development processes in slum prevention and slum upgrading and the identification of ways to assist initiatives relating to savings.        

I am gratified that the relation we have cultivated with yourselves has enabled us to implement some of these resolutions already. The (South African) Homeless People’s Federation, that we had interactions with in 2004, enabled us to make this start. The Conference cements the relationship by now enabling us to act together at the international level. It is my hope that such collaboration will help encourage a fundamental rethinking of issues connected with sustainable development and the achievement, specifically, of the Millennium Development Goals. It is a great contradiction of our times, in my view, that whilst on the one hand we correctly extol the virtues of economic progress and political stability, on the other hand, we remain unable to expend and invest sufficient resources to achieve those outcomes.         

I have had occasion to look back and assess the damage done to all of us in this country by the policies of inequality. It has cost us dearly. If eighty years ago we had all progressed along the same path, I leave you to imagine where this country would be today. We held back on the development of a segment of our society and we live with those consequences.  The steps that we have taken to support and assist initiatives from the Slum Dwellers International and (South African) Federation of the Urban Poor recognizes this singular truth. As government we recognize that apart from the market mechanism, other initiatives and ways that have their origins in the people who make up our cities and towns, exist.  This is the experience that yet again I was exposed to when again I visited Thailand last year. I was exposed to a unique programme that forms partnerships between communities, government, and other stakeholders in identifying and developing suitable land for housing. This was a partnership to ensure that communities were located in the most opportune locations where their actual needs could be addressed in a sustainable manner. We are thus committed to learn through practical experience and to enhance our programmes to ensure that community needs are achieved. And I thus welcome the proposed structured cooperation arrangement that will be established during the Conference for the implementation of projects linked to policy and strategy enhancement.  The Conference is a unique opportunity for all of us to learn how partnerships with civil society are formed and should operate.  I would like to congratulate all of you for the achievements that both individually and collectively you have made in advancing the cause of slum dwellers.  Finally, Jockin, I do not know what to say to you. You remind me so much of my own father. You are beautiful in every single way! I thank you most sincerely.

(A speech by Mrs. Sisulu on the occasion of the Budget Vote 2006/2007 at the National Assembly in Cape Town on May 24th, 2006 included the following: “ It was with a sense of real achievement and pride that we co-hosted the very successful Slum Dwellers conference which ended at the weekend here in Cape Town, where we were able to forge a formal relationship with those communities whose daily lives are plagued by the elements, by insecurity and poverty.  Together we forged a new way of doing things and we have formed a partnership, built on an understanding that we, each of us have a responsibility toward changing the fortunes of the poor.  It was a high point of our time in housing.  The message is out – we are in this together. We have pledged a sum of R185 million, which represents 5 000 subsidies to the South African Federation because in them we have found an ally that will help mobilise our beneficiary communities to understand that they have a responsibility, that they can take up arms against poverty and join government in this crusade, that it is in fact in their interest that they do this.  Together we can do it so much faster.  At bottom we need to create and emphasise a culture of joint responsibility and equally importantly inculcate a culture of saving.”