At the Human Settlements and Exhibition Indaba held in Durban, the availability of land for human settlements and enhancing the planning and coordinating processes in government were highlighted.
Mmamoloko Kubayi, the minister of human settlements, provided a report on the plenary sessions that took place on Monday. She said that the delegates came to an agreement on the areas that needed more attention, which included the availability of land for human settlements.
“There is an urgent need for attention to the problem of land availability for human settlements.
As the Minister of Human Settlements, I am often reminded that the law gives me the authority to expropriate property without just compensation if necessary, given that the area is fit and required for human settlements.
The most crucial thing, in my opinion, is that we must make use of all the resources at our disposal to satisfy the need for land in both urban and rural areas.
Since we want to make sure that our planning processes are better integrated inside government institutions and between government and the business sector, the land problem is strongly related to planning, according to Kubayi.
During the planning commission meetings, the topic of how projects that have funds secured and are prepared for execution fail because governmental organisations fail to make land accessible on time owing to internal governmental inefficiencies emerged forcefully.
In order to address some of these issues, Kubayi stated that the department would bring this up through intergovernmental mechanisms, such as the District Development Model (DDM).
She pointed out that the government’s attempts to address apartheid spatial development are being hampered by the shortage of urban land availability, which has resulted in projects relocating from inner cities to the periphery, or urban drift.
Urban drift is expensive since it necessitates more infrastructure spending in new construction projects. However, there are also concerns about ageing large-scale infrastructure in the inner city.
“Planning is also vital to ensuring that the funds are allocated to the proper projects and that budgets are spent on meaningful initiatives. The availability of serviced parcels of land may quickly expand the number of housing options.
So that money is not returned to Treasury, we need creative house-delivery strategies, Kubayi said, adding that it shouldn’t take so long to release land for human settlements in different regions.
The Minister emphasised the need for municipalities’ town planning to speed up the process of releasing land, stating that projects could not fail as a result of ineffective intra-government planning coordination.
To ensure that we facilitate quicker project development, an accountability mechanism should be put in place at each level, according to the Minister.
She emphasised that the government cannot raise sufficient funds for the housing sector on its own and that a collaboration with the private sector is essential for the government to be able to reach the established housing objectives.
Community involvement is essential for sustainable housing
Kubayi said that building livable communities still depends heavily on community involvement.
Human settlements are ultimately made up of humans.
For this reason, in our opinion, developing high-quality buildings and homes will be sufficient to establish sustainable human settlements and clear the backlog. Communities must actively participate in our strategy, according to Kubayi.
Developing an ethical, capable developmental State to lead projects, crowding in funding for projects, developing accountability mechanisms for monitoring the performance of all stakeholders, as well as the need for innovation in project development, funding, and technical capacity utilisation are other areas that have been identified as crucial for getting the sector going.
On Monday, the two-day indaba came to a close.