Tag: South Africa

South Africa Response to Covid-19

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Over the past two months, the South African SDI Alliance has taken action in various municipalities where they are active to implement effective preventative measures to slow the spread of Covid-19 in South Africa’s informal settlements. The SA SDI Alliance’s has worked in partnership with civil society actors, development partners, and local and regional government, to jointly develop and implement Covid-19 responses in the City of Cape Town, Swartland Municipality, Stellenbosch Municipality, eThekwini Municipality, and with the National Department of Human Settlements (NUSP).  Every week, representatives of the South African SDI Alliance participate in discussions between various civil society organisations and the Department of Human Settlements to develop effective partnerships and  strategies to combat Covid-19 in South Africa’s informal settlements.

As of early April 2020, the SA SDI Alliance had already engaged national and provincial government on the development and dissemination of a targeted information campaign that includes the development of materials specifically targeting the realities of informal settlement dwellers and providing practical advice around measures that can be taken to reduce risk of exposure (See example below which has been produced in all local languages). In addition, quick snap data collection has taken place in various informal settlements during the crisis to assess communities’ ability to access clean water, frequency of toilet cleaning and refuse removal.

Following the initial response phase, the SA SDI Alliance decided on seven strategic focus areas:

1. Improve internal & external SASDI Alliance communication infrastructure;
2. Safeguard physical and psychological well-being of social movement leadership;
3. Identify basic service delivery challenges & monitor service delivery in informal settlements;
4. Organize structures in informal settlements that can receive and distribute food parcels;
5. Behaviour Change Communication Campaign;
6. Lobby & advocacy at national, provincial and municipal government level and raising community voice;
7. Monitoring, Reflection, Learning & Documentation.

One of the most critical areas identified by the SA SDI Alliance is food security, as many informal settlement residents are struggling to earn an income – and therefore buy food – during the country’s prolonged national lockdown. The Alliance has been working with other social development organisations to access and distribute food parcels to urban poor communities, and has begun to explore urban farming as an effective solution for informal settlement residents. In Cape Town’s Mfuleni settlement, residents have started gardens where they are able to grow fruits and vegetables for their families, and as a potential source of income.

In addition to the work being done to address food security, the SA Alliance has rolled out relief work to build hand washing stations, and make and distribute face masks, hand sanitiser and hand soap to their own federation members and the communities at large. In addition, they have made efforts to educate their members on how to make these at home in order to facilitate better use of these preventative measures.

Most importantly, the SA Alliance is continuing to dialogue internally to ensure that the needs of communities on the ground are being heard and that these continue to be communicated to relevant government structures through feedback sessions between the Alliance and local, provincial, and national government structures. As Rose Molokoane, national coordinator of Fedup, said recently, “It is important for them to talk to us, we have raised concerns, we want them to come back to Federations to get what we requested.”

PRESS RELEASE: Ground Breaking Informal Settlement Ruling: Upgrading Policy is Binding and Must Be Obeyed

The below press statement was released by Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) South Africa on 5 April 2016. 

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The Days of Spurious Opposition Are Over, but What is Going to Happen to Spurious Democracy?

By Joel Bolnick and Ted Baumann

Since well before 1994, the élite of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has comprised two broad factions: True Believers and Entrepreneurs.

The True Believers — mainly educated technocrats — adhere to the Leninist doctrine that capitalism can be used to strengthen the state, which can then be used to engineer revolutionary change. The Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, just want to get rich and thereby eventually to displace South Africa’s white capitalists. This means that neither faction has an incentive to end white domination of capital — instead, the want to use it for their own ends.

The two factions are united by African nationalism, which holds that any advancement by black Africans is progress, even if it’s within the distorted capitalist framework inherited from apartheid. True Believers might want ultimately to get rid of capitalism, but in the meantime having black faces in the boardrooms and society pages serves their purposes. In any case, their race-based consciousness dictates that black capitalists will automatically be more progressive than whites, so black workers will win too.

True Believers and Entrepreneurs also share the assumption that the ANC’s historical legacy, as the party of liberation and Mandela, can survive long enough in the popular consciousness to allow their plans to unfold, even if not much changes in real life. Indeed, past election results have given the ANC nearly 2/3 of the vote every five years.

It should not be forgotten that the recent violent anti-government protests by black and white students on South Africa’s university campuses come hard on the heels of massive shifts in South Africa’s political landscape. In addition to a populist breakaway party in parliament (the Economic Freedom Front), the ANC’s labour wing, COSATU, has suffered significant defections. NUMSA, its largest affiliate, has officially withdrawn from the so-called “tripartite alliance” of the ANC, COSATU, and the SA Communist Party (home to many True Believers). That’s a big deal.

These two processes — one middle-class and the other amongst workers — are closely related, and illuminate the fundamental weakness of South Africa’s ruling party and its project.

The student’s protest shows that the ANC’s historical legacy cannot protect it from widespread anger and resentment amongst the “born frees,” those South Africans who have grown up post-apartheid. Whereas their parents generally cling to the idea that all will eventually be well if the ANC stays in power, the youth sees the party as the corrupt vehicle for personal enrichment, technocratic domination, and the de facto protector of white capital that it has long been. That makes sense: Whilst their parents collect government welfare and pension cheques and are allowed to join the queue for free houses, the youth face 50% joblessness and a dismal future.

Notably, even “ethnic” ties, such as residual Zulu affinity for President Jacob Zuma, count for little amongst these young adults. They see no progress — quite the opposite, as the economy slows to a crawl and prices skyrocket. And they no longer buy the story that it’s all white people’s fault.

What about slum dwellers? For one thing, South African informal settlement dwellers number less than 15% of the country’s urban population — much less than other countries in Africa. Two social movements define the organized sector of the urban poor. Both have had periods of significant scale and impact, but are relatively quiescent at the moment. One of these is the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP), whose practice has been defined by a pragmatism that has sought to combine confrontation and challenge with brinkmanship and negotiation. The other is Abahlali Basemjondolo, who have taken a more direct, confrontational path in a fight against inequality and injustice. Neither organization currently commands the kind of scale of support that could make a meaningful contribution to political change in the country. But this could shift in an instant.

Most activism in the informal sector has taken place spontaneously through localized service delivery protests — actions that have presaged, in many ways, the current student protests. Here too, disgruntled and alienated youth have been at the forefront. But shack dwellers, more than any other sector of South African society, are in the thrall of politicians and officials who have consistently controlled their lives through a relentless mix of patronage and institutional violence. These realities and apartheid demographics make it difficult for shack dwellers to unite and to replicate the scale that the students have achieved in recent days. Nevertheless, if and when the current wave of resistance jumps these barriers (most likely in middle-sized towns like Grahamstown or Stellenbosch) the foundations painstakingly built by both FEDUP and Abahlali may serve a much broader movement very well.

For their part, those shack dwellers who are also formal workers have learnt everything they need to know about the supposed progressivism of black African capital from the Marikana Massacre, where cops sent by a black cabinet minister murdered dozens of miners protesting poor pay by a company with prominent ANC-connected members on its board. It was the worst single instance of state violence since 1994, and it was for the benefit of black bosses who were supposed to be more progressive by virtue of their skin colour. In fact, they have behaved no differently from white bosses, because they thought they could hide behind the shield of the ANC’s legacy.

The upshot is that the ANC stands exposed. It is increasingly reliant on itself — on the mutual back-scratching and self-dealing that occurs between factions who rely on access to the state and to the continued existence of white capital to distribute riches. It cannot rely on the working class, the youth, or the millions of unemployed and uneducated people in essentially unchanged townships, with no jobs, educations or futures.

Of course the ANC completely controls the government apparatus and much of the mainstream press, so opposition will require much effort. But important forces within South Africa smell blood in the air, as do the foreign investors who have withdrawn millions from the country over the last six months, sending the Rand into a nosedive.

The ANC has recently spent a lot of time and effort cosying up to China, holding it up as a model of development. But China has no meaningful democracy and the Chinese Communist Party is struggling to contain the rising discontent produced by its own missteps. Both the missteps and the discontent are bound to escalate in coming years, and while the South African technocrats aspire to learn from the Chinese counterparts, the most meaningful exchange of knowledge and tactics may be in counter-revolution — not in development.

What may trump them both, unfortunately, is that the ANC may need to adopt more features of the Chinese model sooner than it thinks, beginning with an even more severely diluted democracy. It will probably have to, since like Mugabe to the north in Zimbabwe, this will create the conditions that will enable it to refuse to be voted out of office.

The problem is that the ANC, like the Chinese Communist Party, has no viable path other than the one they’re on. That means things will get worse before they get better.

Launch of Upgrading at Flamingo Crescent with Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille

**Cross posted from the SA SDI Alliance blog**

Authored by CORC

“People said Flamingo Crescent [Upgrading] will never happen. But today is here and this is the proof that it has happened – one cannot do it alone we need to work as a collective!”

– Melanie Manuel, Informal Settlement Network (ISN) Co-ordinator

Last week’s upgrading launch at Flamingo Crescent informal settlement celebrated the completion of re-blocking, installation of water, sanitation and electricity services for each of Flamingo’s 104 households, the unveiling of Flamingo’s first formal street names and opening of the settlement’s own crèche, Little Paradise. Moreover it marked a milestone in an ongoing upgrading process, showcasing what is possible when communities, intermediaries, governments and stakeholders form partnerships.

Delegates from community organisations and networks, the Mayor of the City of Cape Town, delegates from various government departments, ward and sub-council politicians, NGOs and support organisations gathered in the Lansdowne Civic Centre from 11:00 on Monday 10 February.

The re-blocking project is lauded as a successful demonstration of community-led, participatory planning, collaborative implementation and improvement of informal settlements. The uniqueness of the project was that despite the settlement’s density no one was displaced and grossly inconvenienced during the implementation of upgrading 104 structures.

Flamingo Crescent before and after re-blocking and upgrading. 

First engagements around Flamingo Crescent 

First engagements began in 2012 after the City of Cape Town signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the SA SDI Alliance around joint community-led upgrading of 22 informal settlements, of which Flamingo Crescent is the third, having built on the experiences of Mtshini Wamand Kuku Town. It differs from the previous two in the severity of its socio-economic challenges – high levels of crime, unemployment, violence and poverty. Given these circumstances the Alliance’s Informal Settlement Network (ISN) facilitated implementation and engagement between the City and the community.

Melanie Manuel (Flamingo Crescent ISN facilitator) shared,

“When we started the partnership with the City of Cape Town in 2011 in Vygieskraal it was a day of celebration and no one knew the hardships that would lie ahead. As time went on we realised we fundamentally believe in community participation, a bottom up approach because we know communities understand their settlements best.”

Read more background here.

The Launch: Messages on Upgrading and Inclusion in Services

At the launch, the first speaker, Councillor Anthea Green shared,

“Since 2012 I have said that we need to upgrade Flamingo Crescent, despite resistance from the rate payers and residents’ groups. We were committed to work with the community, and now this is a transformed settlement”.

Informal settlements not only face substandard basic services like water, sanitation and electricity but are also cut off from functions of city administration such as receiving a residential address. The re-blocking project allowed the City and the Post Office to give Flamingo Crescent street names and addresses, after the community made this requirement upfront in their development plan.

Gerald Blankenberg, regional director of the Post Office, said that the Post Office Act and other regulations require the post office to expand addresses to underserviced communities.

“Informal communities are often times socially and economically disconnected from basic administrative functions, and therefore a residential address will give the Post Office an opportunity to serve the community with dignity”, he said.

In the keynote address, Mayor Patricia de Lille emphasised the significant role of Flamingo community’s steering committee, the Alliance’s ISN and Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC) in the success of the project. She, however, expressed concern about the slow pace of project implementation, emphasizing the need to boost municipal and community capacity to ensure the roll out of more projects in the City’s 200 informal settlements.

“The aim of re-blocking is the improvement of informal settlements while people wait for a housing opportunity”, she observed.

In closing of the ceremony, the Mayor handed over certificates of tenure to community members, ensuring formal recognition of residence and tenure security.

City of Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille with Flamingo Crescent community leader, Maria Matthews. 

The Impact of Upgrading : Before and After

Before re-blocking, the community of 405 residents had access to only 14 chemical toilets (of which 7 were serviced) and 2 water taps. There was no electricity so that contained fires in tin drums dotted the settlement’s dusty pathways. The community was especially concerned about the safety of its children playing in the busy street.

Re-blocking restructured space in the settlement, opening courtyard areas and clearly designated access roads, enabling the City of Cape Town to install individual water, sanitation and electricity services per household. What sets Flamingo apart from previous projects are its paved pathways, with official road names as well as the construction of a crèche.

The community contributed 20% to the cost of its structures through community-based daily savings. During the implementation phase, 20 jobs were created through the Expanded Public Works Programme.

Flamingo Crescent before and after. 

Into the Future: Community voices on Partnership and City Fund

“Since 2010 we have been thinking about improvements in our settlement. This is when we got in touch with ISN, who introduced us to CORC, and we then made a partnership with the City [of Cape Town] We explained what we wanted from the city – our own taps, toilets and electricity. But we needed to come together and draft our own plans”.

(Maria Matthews, Flamingo Community Leader)

Through the SA SDI Alliance the community additionally partnered with several organisations. iKhayalami supported the community, ISN/FEDUP and CORC around training community members and top structure construction. The community established the re-blocked layout and community-based maps in partnership with students from Cape Peninsula University of Technology and support staff from CORC. With the support of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI, USA) the community drew up plans for the crèche. Habitat for Humanity South Africa contributed to construction by supplying the roof sheets and windows. The Centre for Early Childhood Development (CECD) donated funds to build the crèche. CECD will also support around the training and registration of the crèche.

From Melanie’s speech it was clear,

“This project is successful because of the methodologies we use. We allow communities to do their own designs. The community also made a [financial] contribution [in a settlement] where 95% of community members were unemployed. How do we change the mind-sets of people who are still waiting for adequate housing? Let’s change the way we are living now while we are waiting for housing to come.”

(Melanie Manuel, ISN Facilitator)

Important as settlement improvement is in itself, the methodology is just as significant. Moreover, Flamingo Crescent serves as a precedent for informal settlement upgrading on a larger scale. The day ended with the community leading the Mayor through their settlement, unveiling Flamingo’s new street names and officially opening the Little Paradise crèche together. It is Melanie Manuel’s closing words that speak of the future:

 “We need to look at a holistic plan for the metro. Let’s look at how we can reach basic services much quicker and how we can scale up. The Alliance projects do not only focus on reblocking but on basic services in every form. The Alliance has designed a City Fund with which communities can directly access money for upgrading in Cape Town. In Flamingo the Aliance’s Community Upgrading Finance Facility (CUFF) helped us match the 20% that each community member contributed to their structure. This kind of facility on a city-level will go a long way – we challenge the City to continue partnering with us and match our contributions in the City Fund!”

Academic Partnerships to Co-Produce Knowledge

SDI affiliates continued to work closely with academic institutions to co-produce knowledge through undertaking collective planning studios. SDI’s position is that these types of engagements expose students and academics to informal knowledge and conditions that call into question existing presumptions, planning frameworks, infrastructure standards and laws. Through this experience the capacity and knowledge of slum dwellers as capable actors in developing upgrading plans and precedents for their own communities is illustrated. Collective studios are the first step in training the next generation of planners who will one day become officials shaping the development and inclusivity of cities. If practical collaborative studios (between planners and the urban poor) become embedded in University curricula, inclusive planning practices can become the norm rather then the exception.

“In communities we know the number of settlements, services and origins of the people. We know how they spend their money and how they would like to develop their areas. You cannot plan from the office but if you go to the ground and speak to people and learn from them it can help you plan better.” – Katana Goretti, Ugandan Federation

Reforming the manner in which planning students are educated is one step towards shifting planning paradigms in Africa. On this basis SDI entered into a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with Assosiation of African Planning Schools (AAPS) in 2010, promoting co-operation between country affiliates and local planning schools. The MoU recognizes that the most effective way to change the mindsets of student planners is to offer direct experiential exposure to, and interaction with the conditions and residents of slums. In this manner students will be exposed to the value of informal knowledge and community participation in planning for settlement upgrading. During this period SDI affiliates and AAPS have conducted six collaborative planning studios in which students, staff, and urban poor communities engage directly in data collection, analysis, and the development of upgrading plans. Studios have taken place in Uganda, Malawi (two), South Africa, Kenya, and Namibia. In many cases local government officials have been invited to witness studio outputs and participate.

In Kampala, Uganda a studio with Makerere University planning students led to detailed reports reflecting informal challenges and upgrading plans that were submitted to local governments. During the studio the Ugandan Federation referred to themselves as “community professors.” Two concurrent studios took place in Blantyre and Mzuzu, Malawi. In Nancholi, Blantyre Federation members worked closed with the University of Malawi-Polytechnic to identify upgrading priorities and develop plans for improved circulation and drainage. In Salisbury Lines, Mzuzu, poor drainage and groundwater pollution were key priorities around which collective planning took place. In South Africa, students spent six months developing upgrading plans in conjunction with residents of Langrug informal settlement in Stellenbosch. In Gobabis, Namibia, students from the Polytechnic of Namibia undertook a site analysis of the Freedom Square informal settlement. Loraine, a community member from Block 5 in Freedom Square noted:

“The site analysis brought to light to how I see my surroundings. I learned how to use a GPS as we were doing the mapping. I also got to see which areas are suitable to build my house on and which aren’t, in order to avoid flooding, during the rainy season.”

It is important that studios become part of annual university curriculums, entrenching new approaches to planning over a sustained period and encouraging the participation of city governments. In all the aforementioned countries commitments have been made to replicate the studio process. Across the SDI network affiliates are exploring these types of engagements. For example a further studio recently took place between the Zambian affiliate and the University of Zambia in Lusaka. The municipality is looking at the possibility of implementing some of the proposals that emerged and has pledged to quicken the process of declaring the targeted settlement a legal residential area, as it is currently an illegal settlement under the 1975 Town and Country Planning Act.

In February 2013 a further planning studio was organised between the South African communities of Mshini Wam, Shukushukuma, and Ruo Emoh and architecture and planning students from the University of Melbourne to investigate new solutions for informal settlement upgrading and housing development. In Shukushukuma, plot sized placeholders were cut to scale and laid out on an aerial photograph. The location of visible infrastructure was mapped, such as electricity poles, toilet blocks, and water taps. The Mshini Wam group looked at alternative typologies for densification and formalisation after re-blocking projects. A visual fly through model was created, building on the new layout of re-blocked settlement.

During the year a German Agency for International Co-operation (GIZ) sponsored initiative was also undertaken to investigate the conditions for successful projects and partnerships between local government and urban poor communities. The report produced drew on experiences in Harare (Zimbabwe), Pune (India) and Kampala (Uganda) – locations that were visited by the investigating team. The team consisted of David Satterthwaite from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Celine D’Cruz, an SDI Coordinator and co-founder of SPARC, and Sonia Fadrigo, a Core Monitoring Team member.

In 2013 SDI affiliates continue to consolidate partnerships with academic institutions with the goal of cementing collaborative efforts (e.g. planning studios) within university curriculums. SDI’s strategic medium term goals recognise the value of producing citywide data about informal settlements. Data can be used both to engage government and to assist in implementing projects that move beyond single settlements and tackle poverty at scale. Urban planners, architects, surveyors, and managers can, and must, play a vital role in critically engaging with this data. By accepting the validity of such data (and assisting in its co-production) academia can add both political and practical value increasing impact and scale.

To read more about SDI’s partnerships with academic institutions, check out our Annual Report. 

In Situ Upgrading and Accessible Cities

Accessible and inclusive cities demand systems and policies that provide the poor with equal access to the social, economic, and service benefits of the formal city. Relocation to the periphery (or even worse eviction) severs social bonds, increases urban sprawl, and aggravates spatial inequalities. In situ upgrading of informal settlements presents an opportunity to build denser, more climate friendly and equitable cities. Citywide data collection processes through profiles and enumerations form the baseline to plan for in situ upgrading. 

SDI therefore understands in situ upgrading as a key part of integrating the excluded and informal poor populations into the city as a whole, providing meaningful access to the social and economic benefits of living in a city. An array of interventions have been developed by SDI’s affiliates to prepare communities for in situ upgrading projects and subsequently implement infrastructure and housing upgrades.

In Harare, Zimbabwe the Zimbabwean Homeless People’s Federation (ZHPF) and their support NGO, Dialogue on Shelter, have supported the incremental upgrading of Dzivarasekwa (DZ) extension in partnership with the City of Harare. To date almost 500 families have built incremental housing and accessed water and sanitation services. Surrounding informal communities have become interested in taking up these upgrading interventions and the Zimbabwean Alliance has plans to significantly scale up sanitation provision in DZ extension. Other city governments and communities (e.g. in Chinhoyi, Bulawayo, Kariba, and Kadoma) have been exposed to the projects and steps are being taken to replicate upgrading interventions. The partnership and pilots in Harare have influenced government (locally and nationally) to accept dry sanitation options (ecosan) and adopt incremental upgrading practices in the new National Housing Policy.

In Kampala the Ugandan Alliance has focused on pilot sanitation and market upgrading projects. In terms of sanitation the Federation has piloted a number of different toilet prototypes in Kinawataka, Kisenyi, and Kalimali and other municipalities outside of Kampala. The pilot projects have enabled the Federation to: a) engage local government substantively on the issue of sanitation discussing policy, regulations, and management strategies; b) change perceptions on what “public toilets” are from dirty, smelly, single-purpose units to units than can serve multiple functions – such as community halls, income generating spaces etc. and c) test different technologies – from solar lighting, to rainwater harvesting, to low-cost building materials in an effort to find the most efficient combinations for sanitation facilities. The Federation is now seen as a critical actor in the sanitation sector and has increased its networking with other actors in the field for enhanced learning. As a result of these pilots, the Federation was able to leverage significant resources from Comic Relief to continue its sanitation work over the next five years.

The vast majority of Kampala’s slum dwellers work in the informal sector – many in the city’s informal markets. As the city plans to upgrade these markets from cramped, muddy, and poorly ventilated and serviced to something more formal (and taxable) there is a danger the existing vendors will be pushed out due to affordability concerns.

The Federation is working on a pilot market upgrade in Kinawataka, Nakawa which will combine low-cost stalls and more formal “lock ups” to cater to the different needs of city dwellers. Many market upgrading projects in the city have been stalled for years due to the wrangles of market vendors, local politicians, and landlords. The Federation is working with the Kampala Capital City Authority and the Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Urban Development to try to demonstrate an alternative community-driven approach that may minimize these roadblocks to successful market upgrading.

In Cape Town, the South African Alliance has piloted three in situ upgrading projects. Over the last year Mshini Wam has been re-blocked, opening up space for safer and more dignified communities, as well as for infrastructure. Through the growing partnership with the City of Cape Town, water and sewerage pipes have been installed for the 250 households (497 people) in the settlement. Road surfacing is under discussion and during the next financial year electrification is planned. Nokwezi Klaas, a community leader from Mshini Wam, describes how re-blocking has changed the settlement: “Prior to re-blocking, the settlement was very dense. There were no passageways and when there were fires it was virtually impossible to get into the settlement. All the toilets were on the outskirts and there were only three water taps for over 200 households in the settlement.”

In Kukutown, a far smaller settlement, re-blocking has taken place and one-on-one services (water, sanitation, and electricity) have been installed. In Flamingo Crescent the re-blocking process is currently underway. In Stellenbosch a community managed WASH facility has been constructed in the Langrug informal settlement. Mshini Wam, Kukutown, and Flamingo Crescent have been used to show the possibilities for in situ upgrading in Cape Town and to catalyse other interventions at a city scale.

Their impact has been significant with the City of Cape Town drafting a re-blocking policy which could potentially be rolled out to other settlements across the city and aligned with municipal development plans, frameworks, and budget lines. During this period several consultation meetings have been held with the City to expedite and refine this process, addressing challenges and delays that have emerged.

In situ upgrading projects based on solid community data present a viable alternative to relocation and eviction. The variety of pilots and interventions trialed throughout the network highlight alternative visions for the city that include the poor, rather then relegate them to the periphery. The methods deployed represent a “tool-kit” which is contingent on local contexts especially the nature of relationships with local governments. What will become increasingly vital in the next year is how SDI federations are now in a position to scale up informal settlement upgrading interventions that form part of a coherent, affordable, and scalable citywide plan.

Check out SDI’s 2013 – 2014 Annual Report for more on in situ upgrading.

Reflections on the Southern African HUB Meeting: Lusaka, Zambia

By Noah Schermbrucker, SDI Secretariat 

HUB meetings are gatherings that bring affiliates together to collectively set the agenda for the region. They are used as a mechanism to share collective learning, devise targeted support strategies (e.g. exchanges) for individual countries and concretize planning, on a regional scale, for the next period. The Southern African HUB recently took place in Lusaka, Zambia. Delegations from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Botswana and Malawi attended the 3-day meeting. A team from Uganda, who had recently hosted the East African HUB, participated in order to promote continuity. Ghana was also invited as the West African HUB has been indefinitely postponed due to the Ebola outbreak. 

Below find my reflections on the meeting. I hope that they provide some insights not only into SDI processes at a regional level but also the “nuts and bolts” of which this process is comprised. This is hence not an exhaustive description of the meeting but aims to give the reader a “practical flavor” of SDI’s work as it plays out in the interactions between slum dwellers, support professionals and government.

Day 1: Engagement with Ministry of Local Government, field visit to Garden Park community under threat of eviction (only some delegates) and meeting at Lusaka City Council (LCC).

The Zambians were clear that the first day’s agenda was about taking their process forward, especially in terms of achieving tangible outputs from government. South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Malawi and Ghana all stressed the actual outputs of their relationship with government to both the Ministry of Local Government and LCC. As was noted, “ An M.o.U with government is just a piece of paper unless it has actual tangible outputs attached”. 

Making the first day about taking the Zambian process really orientated us within local challenges and used the HUB as an instrument to open space with government for the Zambians (which they are now following up on). The Southern African HUB has previously been very “talk” orientated and not substantively relevant to the local process so this shift was refreshing to see. A trick that we missed out on was not inviting government officials from the countries attending as the Zambians felt that this would have deepened the impact in these engagements with government. As a federation member noted “governments like to talk to other governments”. 

Through the site visit to Garden Park, evictions were placed on the table as a key issue with the HUB committing (on the final day) that each federation will draft guidelines on evictions sharing their experiences and strategies used (this emerged out of a separate federation only session) 

Women from Garden Park meet to discuss eviction threat

Day 2: New Secretariat systems (L,M&E, New Secretariat structures) 

Day 2 was spent at the Zambian federation’s resource center in George compound with significant participation from the Zambian federation. Mara (from the SDI Secretariat) and Muturi (from the Core Team) did a fantastic job in taking everyone through some of the new systems developed by The Secretariat including the L, M &E worksheet and call for support. There was a vibrant discussion about these new systems and some very important suggestions made as to how they could be refined (e.g. definitions of certain terms such as “secure tenure” need to be clarified). These issues were noted and will be shared with the secretariat team.

A very critical issue was raised around the learning center and its role within the HUB, a number of people felt that the HUB itself was serving as the learning center. We need to think carefully about how the learning center fits into the HUB-especially in the case of Southern Africa were conditions and experiences in Cape Town are quite different to the rest of the countries. People felt strongly that different countries had different strengths (e.g. Namibia and Zimbabwe around collection of their savings number & indicators).

 Day 3: HUB Business

The day was focused on collecting country reports that were compiled previously by each country. These will be used to aggregate a set of Southern African HUB figures that can be taken to the Board & Council (B&C) meeting. Each country handed in their reports but then spoke about the “burning issues” and what support was needed. This led to suggestions for further exchanges that have been noted. The HUB also discussed progress made on exchanges decided at the B&C. In general this approach was well received as countries did not use up time providing long lists of figures but rather focused on the key issues that they wished to raise. The exact role and nature of the CORE team was also explained at length. 

Throughout the meeting the participation of members from Kenya, Uganda and Ghana was extremely helpful. Their insights were valuable and contributed to the discussions with government. The continuity between the East African HUB and this HUB was definitely beneficial and something that we could take forward.

An issue that emerged from some was how we can include more “voices” in the HUB and encourage everyone to participate and speak more fully. It seemed that when we broke into country teams it allowed for more even discussion and participation as opposed to just a few people speaking in the bigger forum.

A HUB report is currently being drafted by Zambia and will be shared shortly. 

“Carrying” water home in Chazanga, Lusaka

South African Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s Tribute to Patrick Hunsley at the Govan Mbeki Awards Ceremony

Today we also want to recognise an outstanding, humble man who helped us shape our policies and understand how people who live in slum conditions are not victims, that they have the power, together with our support, to take themselves out of their poverty. His name is Patrick Magebhula and he passed away on Monday 4 August 2014. It is a sad loss for us. We will bury him on Saturday with all the dignity that he deserves. Today we honour him as an internationally recognised champion and pioneer of the empowerment of the poor and acknowledge his outstanding contribution. We and his broader family of the Federation of Urban Poor and SDI will have to double our collective effort to further his work to ensure that his life passion was not in vain.

– Minister Sisulu’s heartfelt tribute to Patrick Magebhula, delivered at the annual Govan Mbeki Awards Ceremony, where she honoured him with a posthumous lifetime achievement award

National Community Exchange – Durban to Cape Town

**Cross-posted from the South African SDI Alliance blog.**

By Yolande Hendler, CORC South Africa

Informal settlement leaders from Kenville and Foreman Road in Durban are mobilising their communities to upgrade their settlements with better services and improved spatial layouts. Last week’s exchange to Cape Town (29 April – 2 May 2014) therefore presented a first-hand opportunity for them to draw insights from fellow community leaders.

Over the week the Durban visitors were hosted by Kuku Town, Flamingo Crescent, Langrug & Mtshini Wam communities in and around Cape Town. Each day was dedicated to an in-depth visit of each settlement. This included a detailed site visit, discussions on  collecting savings, enumerating and profiling settlements and contributing to planning and mapping. Besides bringing leaders together on a national level, the exchange also connected communities locally: for leaders from Kuku Town, Flamingo and Langrug the exchange comprised a first time visit to the other settlements. Exchanges are thus the most important learning vehicle in the South African Alliance, facilitating the direct exchange of information, experience and skills between urban poor communities.

Day one in Kuku Town: Upgrading & Savings 

Community leaders met in Kuku Town, a small settlement that recently completed re-blocking and in the process secured one-on-one water and sanitation services from the City of Cape Town. Read more about Kuku Town and re-blocking here. In the discussion community leaders took the visitors through a step-by-step picture of Kuku Town’s experiences. ISN representative, Melanie Manuel, explained that

Community leaders share their experiences around organising and upgrading in Kuku Town community hall.

“What we do in ISN is not only to beautify our settlements but to actually change the way we live. Savings and partnerships – like we had with Habitat for Humanity and the municipality – are an important part of this.”

Yet, before partnerships can be formed, a community needs to know its settlement in terms of the number of (un)emloyed people, the number of structures and families and details on service provision (electricity, sanitation and water). This information is collected in enumerations. Kuku Town community used its enumeration data to plan its re-blocked layout and to negotiate the provision of one-on-one services and short-term employment opportunities through the City’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP).  Community leaders explained that they organised themselves in clusters to be able to navigate the logistics around communication and construction during re-blocking.

Among a variety of questions, the visitors took special interest in understanding the connection between savings and upgrading, especially the role of community contributions. Melanie explained that

“Savings contributions enable us as communities to take ownership and responsibility of the changes and upgrading in our settlements. We want to move away from a ‘free for all mindset’ and restore dignity and pride to our communities”

But collecting savings poses a continuous challenge. How to go about motivating communities and responding to accusations? Flamingo Crescent’s community leader, Auntie Marie, shared her experience:

“Getting the community’s commitment for daily savings is difficult. People only want to act when they see that things are happening. You’ve got to be tough. If you’re not tough you won’t get anything right”

For Kuku Town community leader, Verona Joseph, the partnership with the City and its support in this regard, was crucial.  This became evident at Kuku Town’s official handover that afternoon which was attended by the ward councillor and City officials.  The handover and a site visit completed the first day of the exchange, demonstrating what a tangible community-government partnership can look like.

Exchange participants join handover ceremony in Kuku Town. 

Kuku Town site visit: Inspecting water and sanitation units provided by the City. 

Day two in Flamingo Crescent: Re-blocking and Partnerships

Flamingo Crescent is about to begin re-blocking and – in partnership with the City of Cape Town – is set to receive one-on-one services. On a walkabout through the smoke and dust-filled pathways community leaders received a thorough impression of the settlement’s layout. Most structures – consisting of old cardboard, zinc, timber and plastic pieces – are situated around a broad, u-shaped pathway that is intersected by smaller, narrow footpaths. Flamingo’s population of about 450 people resides in 104 structures. The entire settlement makes use of only 2 taps and 14 chemical toilets that are emptied three times a week. The absence of electricity means that fire is used as a central source for cooking and warmth.

In a nearby community hall, Flamingo’s steering committee explained its relationship with ISN and the challenge of collecting savings contributions due to its high unemployment rate (50%). Flamingo’s enumeration acted as a powerful entry point to negotiating an improved layout and service provision with the City of Cape Town. Together with students from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (USA) the community designed the re-blocked layout and conceptualised plans for a crèche and a play park.  Later, the visitors joined the steering committee’s meeting with a Cape Town City official who provided an update on the City’s contribution to upgrading.  For the visitors this was of particular value as it emphasised the crucial role of partnerships and the number of actors involved in a given project. The question at the forefront of many minds was: how can we do this in our communities at home?

For Auntie Marie, Flamingo community leader, it is evident that

“If it wasn’t for ISN, I don’t know where we would be. Through ISN we were introduced to the City and we got a partnership. We started thinking, ‘Now something is going to happen’. Flamingo is going to be re-blocked!”

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Check back here in the coming days for more on this exchange. In addition, you can take a look at an additional report on the exchange, put together by the Durban representatives, here. 

No More Kid Mangwangwa

Both India and South Africa are voting today in parliamentary elections. But change is not something that comes about every four or five years at the ballot box. The real change-makers are on the streets, moving towns, cities, and nations, forward through their daily struggles. Pule Raboroko was one such unsung South African leader. The below is a retrospective that honours this key personality in the South African SDI Alliance. Similar short biographies of the men and women who have forged this global social movement will be featured regularly on the SDI blog. 

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“It is my subsidy you are talking about. It is you the government who promised it to us and it is you the government who tell us that the R15,000 is all we are going to get for our years of misery and suffering. And now you want me to accept it when you pour my subsidy down the drain, down your throats and the throats of developers.” – Pule Raboroko.

Pule Raboroko was stabbed to death in a Kanana shebeen in the early hours of Sunday 25 October 1998. His young wife lost a husband, his little children lost a father, the Federation (uMfelandaWonye) lost a national leader and the nation lost an unsung hero.

Pule Raboroko was an ordinary man. Pule Raboroko was never going to get a minute’s silence in parliament or an obituary in the daily papers, written by one of the venerable scribes of the new elite. It is left to his family, his community and his comrades in uMfelandaWonye to honour his memory. Raboroko would have preferred it that way.

He was born in Sebokeng in the late 1950’s. Like millions in his generation he grew up with the painfully simple aspiration to help to overturn the apartheid regime that tormented and degraded him. Raboroko grew up to be a proud man who did not like to be humiliated. He wore his wounded manhood on his sleeve, and in the end it might well have cost him his life. Just like it has cost the lives of countless men in this country’s racially segregated ghettos.

Pule Raboroko spent 15 years of his adult life in a back-yard shack in Sebokeng. In 1983 he was in the forefront of the riots that rocked the Vaal and ratched up the fear and the desperation of the white state. He was a member of UDF and ANC street committees until 1994.

On the day of the elections he led his people out of the backyard shacks and into a promised land – 15 hectares of dry veld that, of course, was called Kanana. In the eyes of the new authorities (what did Fanon say – Black skin, White masks?) that act made Raboroko into a land-grabber, a leader of queue jumpers, someone who undermines development and profits from the desperation of the poor.

Raboroko was no angel, but he did deliver 3000 homeless families in the Vaal Triangle from decades of humiliation and extortion in the backyard shacks of Sebokeng. And this action inspired thousands of others to follow this example, for Raboroko had exposed a universal truth. Government queues don’t move, they just groove for the corrupt. Government threatens land invaders with harsh recrimination, but nothing gets government to negotiate as quickly as a land invasion.

It is not the point to praise or condemn invasions, but by honouring Raboroko’s memory we honour the real urban planners of our cities – those men and women who have been desperate enough to occupy land, build shacks, source water at great risk to themselves and their loved ones.

First came the backyard shack-dwellers of Sebokeng. Then came their comrades from Small Farm, Evaton, Sharpeville. Soon the settlement of Kanana was followed by Election Park, Boitumelo, Botshabelo … And Raboroko was always at hand to help his fellow squatter citizens, to block out sites, to draw as good a layout plan as any professional surveyor, to design and help build infrastructure, to provide water.

The politicians did not believe him when he told them that he was not undermining Government but was helping them to deliver on their promises. The people did. Not only the people in the Vaal, but poor people throughout the land.

They are crying for Pule Raboroko today in hundreds of informal settlements throughout South Africa. They mourn him in Joe Slovo Village, Despatch where he helped design a layout plan that helped settle two thousands families. They mourn him in VukuZenzele, Cape Town where he did the same for 250 families more. And the women in Nonzamo, Queenstown are wailing for the soul of the man who helped them get running water. The men in Newlands West, Durban sit silent and solemn by the side of their stoves, thinking of the man who was with them when they fled the violence in Siyanda and sought a safe place to live. And it is a pall of sadness as well as a pall of smoke that covers the shack settlements of the Vaal region this week. There is hardly a squatter family in Kanana, Agrinette Hills, Patrick Hunsley, Election Park, Boitumelo that is not reminded that it was not the liberty that was awarded them by this new government that gave them land.

In the time of the bitter arrival of freedom, Raboroko was your everyman. Raboroko was a rough, even violent and self-destructive man. But then he was a product of the urban shacklands, and violence and roughness is the equilibrium of the shacks. So why is it so difficult to recognise that rough men like Raboroko who are committed to their communities are central to our urban transformation? Why point self-righteously at his scars, why look at his warpaint and say “I told you so”? Why not rise above the insalubrious, just like Raboroko did?

In the city centres and the suburbs where planners and politicians live, memory subsides into the new demands of reconciliation and consumption. On the outskirts where Pule lived, and debauched and tried to build a better life with his fellow squatter citizens, people have nothing and so they survive on memory. Not rigid, not dogmatic, not even angry, but the memory of old roots, the memory of community, a memory that spreads over time, carried by imperfect heroes like Pule Raboroko. It is that memory kept alive that is the key to a better tomorrow. It is not a sanitised solution, ribboned with red tape. It is beauty replete with horror. It is the simple order in the very heart of disorder.

A cowardly thrust of cold steel on a dark night and the Federation lost its first urban planner. Not a well heeled professional, schooled in an urban grammer, made up of grids and regulations, but a multi-lingual, multi-historical visionary, trapped for a lifetime in a mosiac of shacks and unlit streets and stagnant puddles. This was his backdrop. This was his home – be it in Kanana or Piesang River, Khayelitsha or Cato Crest. Our urban planner took the Federation’s message to the formal world – where he and his colleagues were often ignored and ridiculed.

But what is it that the Raboroko’s of the Federation are trying to say? That development is not a linear progression to be mapped and regulated. It is a process whereby the poor themselves show the way to make throbbing mosaics out of the haphazard whirls of life.

There will not be a minute’s silence in Parliament for Pule Raboroko, but the women of the Federation hold his memory to their hearts and their whispers accompany his spirit on its journey to his ancestors. Our tired eyes are burning with tears held back, as if by clouds of thick smoke on a highveld night, dust, and a wind as sharp and merciless as death.