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My Mother Built This House
Victoria Mxenge was the first of the housing projects founded by the South African Homeless People's Federation in the 1990s in Khayalitsha, meaning "New Home", a huge sprawling township on a windswept, sandy flood plain outside Cape Town. A small oasis in a seemingly infinite sea of squatter settlements, the project has several streets of neat houses, a creche, an office built from old, brightly painted shipping containers and a small shop selling basic essentials. Behind it, and beyond the railway line that carries commuters into the city, the endless shacks stretch out to the distant horizon - and the distinctive outlines of Table Mountain. Nearly one-third of Cape Town's population of three million live in slums or squatter settlements.
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For 30 years there has been an ever-increasing flow of people from the desperately poor rural areas of the Eastern Cape to the city - where there is some hope of work. These migrants, often women and children, build squatter settlements for themselves outside the city - not even the Apartheid laws forbidding blacks to live in areas of the country reserved for whites could keep them away. When the ANC came to power in 1994 President Mandela promised to build a million houses in five years. The new government introduced a system of one-off grants and subsidies to enable small houses to be built for the very poor. It has met its target - a considerable achievement - but many are still waiting for houses.
Over 70,000 very poor women belong to the Homeless People's Federation, which was founded to transform the suffering of shack dwellers in South Africa and provide them with the opportunities and choices they'd been denied under apartheid. The Federation is part of Shack Dwellers International - a world wide organisation of homeless people which helps to provide the poor with opportunities that otherwise they would never have. Most of them live in shacks. All of them dream of owning their own houses.
The Government has housed 4 million people since 1994, in small but decent homes which have water, sanitation and electricity. Joel Bolnick, Secretary of Shack Dwellers International, acknowledges the achievements of the government, but says that the houses meet only a very minimal standard. "There is quite a negative association - even within the communities - towards what are known as 'the RDP houses'." RDP stands for the government's Reconstruction and Development Programme.
But Mildred Mqwathi, who lived in a shack for 28 years, is very pleased with her RDP house. "I was tired of shack life - this is much better. In a shack, when it's cold it is cold inside, if it is hot it is dreadfully hot inside. Also, people die in shacks; they are burnt alive in shacks." Still, the house is not nearly adequate for Mildred's needs: "There are nine children in my care now - counting the grandchildren. Seven of them are my own and two are grandchildren. We sleep four to a bed. Next to the bed we use a mattress. We don't get much sleep."
Charlotte Lamohr, Director of Cape Town Housing Management, paints a depressing picture of the work still to be done: "In the metropolitan area there is something in the region of 160,000 shacks at the moment. I think it will take a long time - it will take more than 20 years to work off that backlog alone." And that's not counting the 10,000 extra families who arrive in the Cape Town area every year... Overcrowding is a serious health problem, with the Western Cape having the highest TB rate in the world.
The Victoria Mxenge Housing Project was started by a group of 30 women who lived in squatter shacks in Khayalitsha. They drew their inspiration from the Bombay slum-dwellers who visited them in 1991. Patricia Matolengwe, now National Chairperson, was one of the Federation's first members. "I think that for the women it was because it was something that was voluntary. Men always like to involve themselves where they are going to get something towards what they are doing. So I can say that because women are always dedicate themselves to be volunteers then it was easier for them to involve themselves than the men."
The women in the Federation make regular savings of small sums of money, which are pooled in a savings scheme. This enables them to add to the government grants and with input from themselves, build bigger houses.
The Federation of Homeless People have now built nearly 10,000 houses themselves throughout South Africa - a remarkable contribution to the government's housing target. There are now nearly 600 houses in various stages of construction at Victoria Mxenge and the related developments of Hazeldean and Vukuzenzele.
The houses vary in size and design depending on how much the women are able to contribute. Lulama Katscha has built a bigger house - and can hardly believe it's true. "My house is 72 square metre. It's a three bedroom and a bathroom and the kitchen, a dining room and a lounge. I'm very proud of it and I say that I did work very hard for it. I'm telling you - about two, three I will wake up; it's as if I'm dreaming of I'm still there, it's as if I'm in another place."
Each year there are exchange visits between members of the South African Federation and similar organisations in other countries - like India, Thailand and Ethiopia. These visits have been crucial to the way the federation has developed.
Says Patricia: "I learnt a lot from them because we were having exchange programmes that - so that we can see that we are not the only one who are the very poor. I mean, in some of these countries - most of these countries - we were sharing the experience of the poverty."
The work of the Federation has inspired similar saving schemes in South Africa and has also influenced government policy. Sankie Mthembi-Makanyele, Minister of Housing, is impressed: "You look at the participation levels of the Peoples' Housing Process: it's the women. You look at the majority of the members of the saving schemes that we've been talking about: they are women." And Joel Bolnick adds: "The government is moving very clearly towards placing savings at the centre of its subsidy system - and that can be traced directly to the Federation."
Perhaps most of all, the project has prospered because of the level of popular involvement, as Sankie Mthembi-Makanyele underlines: "If you've involved people initially from the planning process to the completion of their home, they get attached to that structure because they've added what we call 'Sweat Equity'. They've made sure that they've participated in acquiring their own home."
Certainly, Jane 'Ma' May's new house is her pride and joy: "When I move here they make the finishing day on top there - it was on Friday. I come and sleep here on Friday, the same day! I say, 'I-I cannot wait!' And I called the guy there, I say, 'Please go and put my doors in. I don't mind the windows haven't got glasses.' I will stay in my house, the same Friday when they finish I move in. I sleep here, on this mat here on the floor. I was so happy. So happy! I couldn't believe... It's for my kids to stay here when, - when I'm dead. This house they can show and say, 'This house - my mother built this house'."
TRANSCRIPT
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