Chairperson, hon Minister, Deputy Minister, hon members, hon MECs, and distinguished guests, when I offered my congratulations to the Minister and Deputy Minister during the debate on the President's state of the nation address, they were both at the time absent from the House. I would therefore like, once again, to congratulate Minister Sexwale and Deputy Minister Zoe Kota on their appointments to lead this important Ministry. I would also like to congratulate hon Dambuza on her appointment as chairperson of the committee.
Deputy Minister Kota, as chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Housing over the past 10 years, comes with political knowledge from the side that must hold Cabinet to account and in-depth knowledge about the needs of the communities, whilst Minister Sexwale brings political and, importantly, shrewd business savvy to the department.
The Housing Ministry has never had a Deputy Minister before and it is my sincere wish that the combination of these two individuals will finally lead to the creation of sustainable communities.
In 2004 a critical review of the housing policy was undertaken, and what emerged from the situational analysis offered a lens for self-reflection by the government on issues contributing to housing delivery or, perhaps more correctly, nondelivery. Some of these are access to available opportunities, the product supply value chain, policy review and its implementation. The outcome of this critical review was the launch of the much publicised Breaking New Ground plan, commonly referred to as BNG, by the then Minister of Housing, the hon Lindiwe Sisulu.
Perhaps the most prominent flagship project under this new plan was announced in September 2004, the now infamous N2 Gateway Project. In December of that year the hon Nomaindiya Mfeketo, the then mayor of the City of Cape Town, said, and I quote:
The first 22 000 homes are scheduled to be completed by July 2005 and the R3 billion N2 Gateway Project aims to transform the informal settlement of about 100 000 people along the N2. It is the gateway to finding a solution to sustainable human settlement in South Africa, and towards a sustainable, productive and inclusive city.
By January 2005 the headlines read: "Demands of N2 Gateway Project impossible." After a technical briefing in that same month, an unnamed engineer said a number of major listed contractors considered the requirements to be crazy, in fact, gobbledegook, he said. Attempting to complete the project in such a short timeframe can only result in reduced efficiency, loss of control and increased costs, and hasty design in construction will result in errors, which we will have to live with, because there will be no time to change or finetune it.
It is currently estimated that this project is three years behind schedule and some R700 million over budget. It was said at the time that the business plan for this project was being generated through close co- operation and collaboration between the three spheres of government, but guided by the inputs gathered from wider stakeholder consultations. This is pretty much what the Minister said earlier here today.
Hon Minister, I raise this because a lot of what you said today about creating sustainable human settlements was encapsulated in the N2 Gateway Project. The same buzzwords that were used then are being used now. However, the N2 Gateway Project has to date unfortunately not delivered the lofty ideals of a sustainable human settlement.
In the strategic plans of the department 2008-11 it is acknowledged that the service delivery environment of the department was not strategically aligned for optimal delivery of the mandate. It further says that there was a lack of common understanding of the shift in focus and emphasis in the interpretation of the department's mandate.
However, it also says that this shift is clearly articulated in Breaking New Ground, but was not fully reflected, nor did it cascade into the department's operational delivery focus, and therefore a department-wide strategic alignment became necessary. It sounds like a bit of a contradiction, hon Minister, doesn't it? The question that begs to be answered now is whether this department-wide strategic alignment resulted in the renaming of the Ministry from "Housing" to "Human Settlements", and what exactly it is going to achieve.
Is it meant to align the service delivery environment for optimal delivery? Do we even know at this stage what impact this name change is going to have on the human resources within the department over the next year or two whilst this shift is cascaded into the department's operational delivery focus? Has the impact on the department's financial resources been quantified? Should we perhaps not be identifying the shortcomings in the implementation of the BNG, address those and then get on with the job of delivering sustainable human settlements within a housing Ministry, rather than thinking that if we actually call it the "Ministry of Human Settlements" it will automatically deliver human settlements?
I was privileged to witness the handing over of some houses in KwaZulu- Natal last Friday by invitation of the Minister. I say houses because, even though the hon Minister is at pains to stress that the department is no longer building houses but rather homes, the handover I witnessed cannot be called homes just yet. Yes, the quality certainly appears to have improved, and with additional contributions by the province the houses are slightly bigger. They are plastered and painted and are covered with roof tiles instead of the conventional corrugated roof sheeting.