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BOOK TITLE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF GOVERNMENT SUBSIDISED HOUSING IN SOUTH AFRICA: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

South Africa’s current trajectory in the provision of sustainable housing for the poor is linked to its political past which was characterised by the spatial segregation and unequal development of the apartheid era (Mitlin and Mogaladi, 2013). To undo the injustices of the past and attend to the housing needs of vulnerable South Africans, particularly those that were previously disadvantaged, the democratic government has designed and implemented a number of housing policies and programmes in the past two decades. The country’s commitment to addressing the housing backlog is demonstrated in the implementation of series of housing legislations, policies and programmes (such as the Housing Act, the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act, the Rental Housing Act, the National Norms and Standards, the Social Housing Act, the White Paper on Housing, the National Housing Code, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, Breaking New Ground, Growth, Employment and Redistribution and the 1996 Constitution).

The government housing programmes constitute an important segment of its redistributive policy stance. In the past two decades, the government housing programmes have seen some successes as evident in the provision of approximately “2.5 million houses and another 1.2 million serviced site” (Tomlinson, 2015). Despite this progress, the provision of sustainable housing continues to be a moving target. A recent report notes an increase of housing backlogs “from 1.5 million to 2.1 million units, while the number of informal settlements has gone up from 300 to 2 225, an increase of 650%” (Tomlinson, 2015). Over the years, the provision of sustainable housing has been bedevilled by a plethora of challenges including political interference, the perpetuation of the geography of apartheid, maladministration, poor services, lack of basic amenities, and corruption. In recent years, the rising impacts of climate change on human settlements continue to worsen the already dire situation in the provision of sustainable housing.

Recognising the above challenges, it is opportune to put together an edited volume that attempts to understand the political economy of housing programmes in South Africa. The proposed book aims to stimulate debates and knowledge sharing on issues on housing programmes in South Africa with the aim of preferring solutions to addressing what has essentially become a ‘wicked problem’ for the South African government.

The proposed book seeks to adopt a multipronged approach to understanding the dynamics of South Africa’s housing programmes. We solicit contributions from multidisciplinary perspectives including the built environment, public policy, public administration, sociology, development studies, urban and regional planning, political science, and gender studies. It is expected that contributions in this volume will tackle the housing issues in South Africa from this multiple perspectives in order to advance a robust understanding of the multiple challenges facing the housing sector. We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions. The following are some of the issues that prospective contributors should aim to assess:

1. A historicity of housing in South Africa
2. The politics of government housing programmes
3. Sustainable housing development in South Africa
4. Climate change and housing in South Africa
5. Administration of housing programmes in South Africa
6. Community/local participation in housing programmes
7. Housing and Gender in South Africa
8. Land and Housing in South Africa
9. Housing and Traditional Leadership Institution in South Africa

ORGANIZATIONAL SCHEDULE:
Deadline for abstract submission: 29 July 2016
Notification of accepted/rejected abstracts: 8 August 2016
Deadline for full paper submission: 31 October 2016
Notification of accepted/rejected 30 November 2016
Submission of revised papers: 9 January 2017
Publication: May 2017

GUIDELINES/Administrative Issues
Abstract: Abstract should not be longer than 300 words.
Length of Contributions: Individual chapters should not exceed 7000 words including the reference list.

Plagiarism: We strongly encourage academic integrity and will, therefore, subject all submissions to plagiarism checks.Peer Review: All submissions will undergo double-blinded peer review. The final decision to accept/reject a paper rests with the editors.

Writing Workshop: A two-day writing/engagement workshop will be organised to facilitate the completion of accepted manuscript. Dates of the workshop will be communicated at a later stage.

Proposed Publishers: Policy Press & Springer International Publishing

Submissions: Interested contributors are asked to submit their abstracts to: Myenis1@ukzn.ac.za and copy okem@ukzn.ac.za
Enquiries should be directed to okem@kzn.ac.za

The Firm Survey Analysis is a project focusing on issues that were raised by over 100 firms that participated in the 2003-2004 Firm Survey. To date the project has been run by Development Studies researchers (Professor Sarah Bracking, and co-Principal Investigators, Dr Myriam Velia and Glen Robbins) located the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at UKZN and supported by the SARChI Chair in Applied Poverty Reduction Assessment.  Professor Imraan Valodia has now moved to the University of Witwatersrand, and remains an institutional collaborator.

With the data analysis having come to an end, the current focus is on dissemination of the data analysis. This will be done in a variety of ways mostly through presentations at workshops. Conference presentations and proceedings are included as part of disseminating to the wider public the on-going research work-in-progress by the team. The major purpose is to update and inform the major funding parties as well as to influence policy makers. This will be done more precisely in a policy report and a policy brief that will detail the findings of the research as well as suggest some policy recommendations.

The survey analysis focused on identifying the challenges that are faced by manufacturing firms of different sizes. These challenges ranged from operational issues like maintenance, as well as other factors beyond their control like the fall in the ZAR-USD exchange rate as well as the economic recession of 2008 and the 2013 economic crisis and how this affected the local markets. Among the issues raised, skills constraints have been identified as a major problem in some of the manufacturing industries. There is an identified gap between technical skills that are required in most industries and the skills training offered by most TVETs within Durban.

[Photo credit:  M Mungroo,  From left: Professor Nobuhle Hlongwa, Professor Betty Mubangizi, Professor Cheryl Potgieter and Professor Sarah Bracking]

On 25 November 2015, UKZNdaba online published an article on Professor Sarah Bracking’s inaugural lecturer at UKZN.  The article can be found here by clicking on this linkfound here by clicking on this link.

The 12 November 2015 lecture titled, “Poverty in South Africa: residual, performative or structurally reproducing”?  highlights some of the measurements in South Africa on poverty, but cautions on better understanding the causes and the actual action taken by government to its alleviation.  The article further states: 

In her lecture, she talked about the extent of poverty in South Africa and some characteristics that define what it means to measure. ‘The importance of measurement is to try and catalyse social change by giving citizens and policy makers the knowledge they need to act and spend wisely for a better South Africa,’ she said.

‘However, measurement in itself tells us nothing about the causes of poverty, and little about what policy makers may in fact do with the evidence, particularly when it competes with other spending priorities,’ explained Bracking.

In her lecture she examined what the category of poverty does in public policy discourse, and how poor people sit at the bottom of a social order which often produces wealth for others because of their poverty.

The lecture then progressed to asking whether poverty is a small residual problem of cleaning up conditions for a small group who have somehow been left behind, like waiting for growth to do its job, or whether the macro-economy of South Africa and global financialisation are producing the same conditions that will continue to cause poverty into the future.

The inaugural lecture presentation can be found here by clicking on this link.

 

 

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