President must stop Province from worsening housing crisis in Johannesburg
14 December 2018
Yesterday, I have written to President Cyril Ramaphosa requesting him to urgently prevent Provincial Government from worsening the housing crisis faced by the City of Johannesburg.
The Provincial Government has, without warning or reason, reduced the City’s Human Settlements Development Grant (HSDG) funding by R180 million for the current financial year.
At the start of this financial year, the City was informed that that our HSDG funding would be in the region of R248 Million on the basis of the City’s Department of Housing’s business plans, which were adopted by Council and ultimately the Province.
To our shock, a recently published gazette indicated that the City’s HSDG funding from Provincial Government would only amount to R68 million – wholly insufficient to meet the desperate housing needs of our residents.
Indeed, the City has a housing backlog of an estimated 300 000 units needed by some of our poorest residents.
Over the past few months the City and the Provincial Department of Housing have been locked in an ongoing dispute regarding the redemption claims that must be sent to the Provincial Department of Human Settlements in order for the Province to release our HSDG funding.
We have been forced to speculate as to this being the root cause of the Provincial Government’s strange action. However, this would still not fully account for Provincial Government’s actions.
Despite the City having provided the Provincial Department of Human Settlement with our redemption claims, in a bizarre assertion, the Provincial Department has stated that the City has not complied with this redemption requirement.
Furthermore, the City is in possession of email correspondence from officials within their department, dated 5 November 2018, confirming that we have complied with the redemption requirements. We therefore were of the opinion that the dispute had been resolved.
The withholding of the remaining portion of the City’s HSDG funding will have serious implications for the City’s housing projects which require the HSDG funding. If the funding is not forthcoming, the City may not be able to pay service providers and this will result in major delays in the projects. The timeous delivery of housing to our residents is of massive importance.
The following housing developments, to name a few, will not proceed as a result of Provincial Government’s irrational action (previous budget allocation in brackets):
· Elias Motsoaledi housing for Military Veterans (R2 288 661);
· Elias Motsoaledi’s RDP housing (R13 439 705);
· Fleurhof RDP housing development (R33 703 913);
· South Hills housing project (R67 053 913); and
· Riverside View development (R63 643 600).
This follows a pattern of Provincial Government intentionally reducing the City’s HSDG funding post the 2016 local government elections in which the ANC lost control of the City’s purse. Prior to the 2016 elections the City was allocated R411 million for housing projects, however soon after entering office this was reduced by R66 million. The following year, the Province reduced the City’s HSDG funding from R411 million to R145 million. What the Province fails to realise is that these irrational decisions hurt our poorest residents the most.
The City is of the opinion that the latest decision by the Province to, without basis, withhold a major portion of our HSDG funding is an irrational and arbitrary decision.
In the interests of inter-governmental relations, I wrote to Premier Makhura on the 5th of December 2018 requesting his urgent intervention. I then wrote to Minister Mfeketo, the Minister of Human Settlements requesting her urgent intervention. I did this in total good faith and in the spirit of co-operative governance as is required by the Constitution. However, these letters were met with dead silence.
I have therefore been left with no option but to call on President Ramaphosa, as the highest authority in the land, to urgently intervene to prevent this irrational administrative decision which will have a profoundly negative impact on our residents, especially the poor.
Should our genuine plea for intervention be ignored by the President we will be left with no choice but to institute an intergovernmental dispute and/or approach the High Court of South Africa requesting that they review and set aside this irrational decision.
However, litigation is expensive and the fact that public money will be used to ventilate this dispute, we are ethically required to approach the courts as a last resort. This is a matter that should be resolved by the different spheres of government working together for the benefit of our people.
Issued by Luyanda Mfeka, Director: Mayoral Communications, Office of the Executive Mayor, 14 December 2018
