The budget cuts are set to affect at least 15 projects in the formal housing and informal settlements upgrade programmes across the metro in the current financial year. The City is currently looking at all options to see how the delivery challenges can be addressed.

Importantly, for the year ending June 2020, the City managed to spend an impressive 90% of its overall USDG funding despite more than a third of the financial year being heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and national lockdown. USDG funding is primarily oriented towards services such as housing, informal settlements and basic services in some of the most vulnerable communities.

Its Human Settlements Directorate spent 95% of its budget in the 2018/19 financial year and 94% of its budget in the 2019/20 financial year despite the greatly negative COVID-19 and lockdown regulations’ impact on its programmes and operations. Primarily, delays were caused by the COVID-19 and national lockdown, which led to the shutting down of construction sites, among others, leading to projects not being able to be completed before the end of the last financial year. There are some instances where the City has not been able to proceed due to contractual matters or in areas with high volatility. The money is not lost for contractually committed projects that meet the requirements related to a rollover as per the Division of Revenue Act (s22).

In addition to budget cuts, orchestrated land invasions are having a severe impact on City basic services, community facilities, communities and planned housing projects and its beneficiaries. Some R1,3 billion of City housing projects, which include formal housing and upgrade of informal settlements programmes, are under threat from the illegal occupations. It could likely affect more than 5 000 beneficiaries if the current spate of attempts to invade City land and projects are successful.

Illegal occupation statistics since 11 July 2020:

• 109 land invasions
• 25 000 plots cleared from plots that demarcate land for illegal occupation, among others
• 84 arrests for public violence
• 17 new court orders obtained

The City has lost more than 357 ha of land in the last two years due to illegal land invasions, which has a great impact on projects and plans in accordance with the City’s Integrated Development Plan.

‘We urge political parties, activist organisations and community leaders to please consider the bigger picture and to stop driving or condoning land invasions for short-term gain as the long-term impacts are immense. We are also receiving wide-spread reports of ‘shack-farming’, which is the illegal selling of plots of public land for R1 000 or more at a time. City officials are reporting that large numbers of pre-built structures are transported and dropped directly onto land. Criminality on this scale cannot be tolerated in our society.

‘This, together with the fact that we’ve not been spared from the fiscal cuts implemented at a national level, illustrates that we need greater innovation, partnership and cost-effective large-scale human settlements delivery mechanisms. Next month, a new strategy for human settlements will start to undergo extensive public engagement, after serving before the oversight committees of Council. It has been in formulation for almost two years as a means to enable greater partnership interventions in the human settlements sphere. This is crucial, as a City government - a local municipality - cannot be solely responsible or solve the challenges of urbanisation, increased informality and of more affordable accommodation on a larger scale. It needs all levels of government and private sector support and innovative, collaborative approaches to change the current trajectory.

‘We are working towards this goal already of finding new, workable ways to tackle increased urbanisation and poverty due to South Africa’s dire economic picture, but if we lose more land and projects to invasions, our city will continue to carry the negative impacts of illegal land occupation such as fires, floods, health and safety conditions, unrest and instability,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Malusi Booi. 

Seven key focus areas

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