Human Settlements Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi has tabled her department’s Budget Vote for the 2022/23 financial year at a time when there is rising demand for reform on housing delivery and heightened attention on the portfolio following flood disasters in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.

The Department of Human Settlements’ (DHS’s) budget allocation for the 2022/23 financial year amounts to R33-billion, of which R18.7-billion is allocated to provincial grants, R11.7-billion to municipal grants and R1.6-billion to Human Settlements entities.

In delivering the budget on May 10, Kubayi highlighted how the Human Settlements Development Grant Framework for the new financial year now provides for provinces and municipalities to access up to 30% of the Human Settlements Development Grant for bulk and linked infrastructure services, to help unlock some of the blocked housing projects in the country and considerably increase the scale of housing delivery in a short space of time.  

The department will also start implementing front-loading in the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape in the 2022/23 financial year, which will help unlock stalled projects and increase the pace of provision of title deeds to rightful property owners.

To deal with a slow pace of delivery in the department, the DHS has established a “war room” team to fast-track implementation of projects and coordinate reporting of various entities of the department. The team will also identify strategic partners who can assist in unblocking project implementation.

The DHS intends on undertaking a scoping exercise that will include site verification and estimation of all cost implications related to the unblocking of housing projects. Kubayi confirmed that a diagnostic report would be published by the end of the current financial year.

Meanwhile, Kubayi implored municipalities to effectively deal with illegal occupation of land. She mentioned that there are about 2 700 informal settlements in South Africa, most of which are located on unsuitable land, in terms of housing emergencies.

“It is these areas that are most impacted by natural disasters, as evidenced a month ago on the KwaZulu-Natal coast.”

She referred to the flash flooding experienced in Durban and surrounds and up to certain areas of the Eastern Cape, which left more than 15 000 houses damaged to varying degrees.

During the 2021/22 financial year, the DHS published a request for proposal calling on private developers to partner with government on integrated housing projects’ development. The department received 95 proposals from individual companies, consortiums, developers and communities that own parcels of land.

Kubayi noted that announcements on Phase 1 of this initiative will be made upon the successful conclusion of public-private partnership agreements.

In the new financial year, the DHS has decided to focus on housing for mining communities and, to strengthen the department’s relationship with mining companies, will establish a framework to help guide the implementation of joint projects for housing.

Kubayi concluded her address by acknowledging the persistent title deeds backlog, and reiterated the department’s commitment to fast-tracking delivery of housing deeds by partnerships with financial institutions and the Youth Employment Service.