Chairperson, hon Minister and Deputy Minister, hon members and guests, during the past few years I have been privileged to be involved in the building of houses in an informal settlement.
One of the millions of South Africans who had never owned a house was an old lady of 85. Ever since the arrival of democracy she had dreamt of owning her own house. I promised her that she would be in her house for Christmas and she could invite her family to come and share Christmas dinner with her. However, the project ran late and she did not get her house for Christmas. The housing development was ready in February, some three months later. The week we were due to hand her the keys, her daughter came to my office to tell me that her mother had died. She never lived in the home that she had waited for for so long. The family collected the key and buried her from the house. That's sad.
I also refer to the state of the nation address where our President reminded us that we will proceed from the understanding that human settlement is not just about building houses, it is about transforming our cities and towns and building cohesive, sustainable and caring communities with closer access to work and social amenities, including sports and recreational facilities.
The Freedom Charter states:
All people shall have the right to live where they choose, to be decently housed and to bring up their families in comfort and security;
Slums shall be demolished, and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, crches and social centres ...
Our old lady in the informal settlement would have been 30 at the time and her hope of a house would have been kindled by that event. Many more like her are still alive and hoping, and we dare not fail them.
In our ANC manifesto we have pledged to halve the levels of poverty and unemployment by 2014. The building of houses can go a long way towards achieving this goal, as we have a ready-made job creation situation right here. This is acutely so in our informal settlements, which we are upgrading as an urgent priority. This is where the poorest of the poor are to be found. As a committee, we would like to see the department put a figure on the number of jobs we will be able to create, so that we can measure what progress we are making.
The building of houses also affords our emerging contractors an opportunity to be growing in their businesses. However, sadly, we have seen a situation - and this has already been referred to - where the contractors have delivered the worst quality.
I remember the excitement felt by all when we were about to hand over our first 18 houses in the Cato Crest informal settlement in Durban. This community had been waiting for 12 years for something to happen. When I went on the morning of the handover to do an inspection, I couldn't believe what I saw: big gaps between the wall and the window frames; broken windows; uneven floors, with the mess of the cement mixing left there; and broken toilets. I just wept.
In addition, as has been referred to, in many projects, the wrong mix of the dagha (mortar) has resulted in cracked walls and poor foundations. We acknowledge this. We do not only have to build houses; we have to build good quality houses.
The portfolio committee is committed to exercising its oversight role. We owe it to our people, especially the vulnerable people, to do this.
The ANC government has delivered on housing, and we are very proud of this achievement. Not only has the number delivered been impressive, but the size and the subsidy have been increasing as we have sought to deliver a better product.
We are happy to note the increase in four of the five programmes in the budget. This will allow the department to accelerate delivery. We are concerned, however, that the strategic relations and governance programme of the budget has been chopped.