South Africa urgently needs to rethink its approach to housing

Protests over housing at, an informal settlement near Johannesburg.
EPA/Cornell Tukiri

The recent protests over housing shortages in Gauteng, South Africa’s richest province and economic hub, have put the spotlight on the problem and the role of the government in providing it.

Housing is a contentious political issue in the country. Strict social engineering during apartheid meant that black people were disadvantaged. Cities were racially divided, and the black population forced to live far from places of economic activity and without public amenities.

When it came into power in 1994 the new government tried to address these issues through various strategies, initially focusing on building houses, then attempting to shift the focus from “housing” to “human settlements”. A new plan was announced in 2004, designed to address problems arising from the policies of the first ten years of democracy.

But problems have persisted, leading to protests across the country. This article focuses on Gauteng where the housing backlog is big and tensions have been running high.

Gauteng has a backlog of a million houses. The problem has been exacerbated by budget cuts. In addition, it is said that more than 100 000 people move to Johannesburg a year, making it impossible to address the scale of demand.

Recent events seem to imply that the government may be resorting to short-term measures to pacify anger and protest. But a major overhaul of housing policy is what’s actually needed.

The government’s response to housing protests

Pinning down the exact size of the housing backlog is difficult. What’s clear is that the government’s ability to deliver has declined. Protesters point out that they have been on housing waiting lists for many years. Extreme frustration has given rise to violent protests which have been growing in intensity.

People are unhappy with unclear time frames about when developments will take place. Tired of empty promises, they now want “time lines and commitments”.

The Gauteng government initially responded by outlining the projects it was planning. But these longer term visions are starting to give way to unrealistic promises being made at community meetings. These include plans to initiate land distribution and housing projects as soon as next month.

The danger is that government runs the risk of deviating from designing innovative, lasting solutions. Despite claiming that it’s committed to changing the way in which it manages demand; the more vocal residents are, the more the pressure piles up to continue providing houses in the same way.

This further delays the need to shift its focus from greenfields, peripheral locations to “corridors” that connect different parts of the disjointed city.

Successes and failures

South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution emphasised the right of everyone to adequate housing. This has been reaffirmed in subsequent Constitutional Court judgements, such as the celebrated Grootboom Case of 2000.

The housing programme is based on the Reconstruction and Development Programme of 1994. “RDP” houses became a colloquial term for free houses provided by the government under a subsidy programme.

South Africa’s mass housing programme has been hugely successful in terms of the number of houses built: nearly four million “housing opportunities” – serviced stands, houses or social housing units – have been built since democracy in 1994.

Yet the supply of houses has not been able to keep up with the increase in demand in urban areas.

And the government’s approach has given rise to rows upon rows of “one-size-fits all” houses located at the periphery of cities, far from work opportunities and services, reinforcing apartheid’s spatial patterns.

While it’s acknowledged that the country must think beyond free houses, and that sustainable human settlements must include socio-cultural amenities and jobs, not much has been done to make this a reality.

Government is fully aware of this challenge. According to Paul Mashatile, the minister in charge of housing for Gauteng:

RDP houses used to be built far away from anything. Today we are bringing RDP, bonded houses and rental stock together. We want poor people to live in the same space as everyone else.

In a bid to achieve this objective, and to increase the supply of houses, two years ago the government announced a programme to deliver mega housing projects. These and other government plans will, over the next few years, see people being housed in new developments.

But corridor developments and mega projects bring new layers of complexity. Can these be managed? Can demand be addressed and anger reduced? Can this be done fast enough?

Time for change

Models of delivery can’t continue to depend on the government. Instead, it should see its role as facilitating a diverse and multifaceted approach to ensure the involvement of many role players. This would result in different types of housing products and housing delivery methods that are less reliant on subsidies.

There are potential solutions that the government could pursue. These include:

• Rethinking government’s role as the sole funder. Diverse funding streams and the involvement of a range of stakeholders would allow for low cost and affordable housing to be an integral part of all city developments in well located, mixed income, mixed function, mixed community settings.
• There should be a shift away from ownership and more focus on rental options. Private developers must be supported to operate in the field.
• Delivery needs to be quick and efficient with minimal bureaucracy and delay, and must acknowledge the social as well as the technical aspects of housing.
• Policymakers must revisit the questions of who should be targeted, what housing products should be delivered and how they should be delivered. For example, there needs to be a shift away from individual subsidies and products to collective models of housing.

There has been surprisingly little innovation in the field of housing. It’s time for that to change, before it’s too late.

Amira Osman, Associate Professor in Architecture, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

As Trump smacks the climate, world must do better to save planet

As Donald Trump’s America drops out of the Paris Agreement, it’s high time to ask whether conventional approaches to sustainable development are enough to deal with the multiple crises facing the world.

A shift to a “green economy” is essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But more is needed to build truly sustainable economies, which not only curb emissions, but also drastically reduce all the negative impacts on nature and society.

In my new book, Wellbeing Economy: Success in a World Without Growth, I argue that the climate crisis should be seen as an opportunity to redirect our development trajectory away from increasing consumerism. We need to shift towards a much more intelligent economy rather than continuous exploitation of humans and nature.

Achieving such a “wellbeing economy” would be the best way to demonstrate how backward and self-defeating Trump’s strategy is.

Beyond consumerist growth

Since the 1950s development has been closely associated with continuous economic growth. While this has generated unprecedented consumption in the West and some emerging economies, it has also caused serious concerns among the scientific community and society at large.

In what has been termed “The Great Acceleration”, skyrocketing consumption has caused a massive increase in polluting emissions. But there is more: water use has multiplied and marine fish capture has grown exponentially, along with ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, depletion of natural resources and soil erosion.

Coupled with climate change, all these processes threaten not only further economic development, but our very existence on this planet. Besides all sorts of environmental problems, such consumption has also caused inequalities, stress, waste and a growing number of social tensions.

The concept of “decoupling” aims to address some of these problems. It suggests that the connection between growth and environmental degradation can be delinked by introducing clean technologies and renewable energy sources.

The decoupling promise has been the cornerstone of America’s climate change policy in the past few years. So much so that former US president Barack Obama has presented it as the silver bullet. He published an article in the journal Science arguing that the

decoupling of energy sector emissions and economic growth should put to rest the argument that combating climate change requires accepting lower growth or a lower standard of living.

Obama is right: fighting climate change need not imply a lower standard of living. There are good reasons to believe that a truly “green” economy, which puts people and planet at the core of development can massively improve our lives. It can deliver better jobs, reduce unnecessary expenses, help small businesses thrive and connect producers and consumers with a view to minimising waste.

But to do this, the world needs more than green technology. It needs to reassess what economic growth really means.

When growth outpaces efficiency

It is true that many production processes have become more efficient worldwide. Yet this hasn’t resulted in less overall pollution. This is because growth has outpaced efficiency by orders of magnitude. Most things we produce are now less polluting than before, but we produce many more things overall.

A massive conversion to renewable energies may result in “cleaner” growth. But there is a limit to the use of renewable energy sources too. Indeed, there is a finite surface to capture solar radiation, wind and tidal currents as well as geothermal forces.

There is also a limited amount of rare earths and other minerals, which are indispensable to build the PV panels and wind turbines that produce renewable energy. Moreover, the exploitation of such materials causes additional environmental damage. There is therefore an ultimate ceiling on “green” growth.

The other critical factor is that energy consumption is just one sub-section of the economy’s overall material consumption. The world consumes natural resources for many other things too, like buildings, roads, cars, computers and so on. Besides energy, the list of natural inputs to production is very long – from water to land, timber, iron, phosphates and so on. Once again, these are finite.

Without dismissing the importance of greening technologies, it must be recognised that many industrialised countries have been able to reduce their material consumption mostly because production processes have been outsourced to companies operating off-shore. In what looks more like a convenient facelift, the West appears to have shifted the responsibility for its pollution to the so-called developing world, mostly in East Asia, where the bulk of global goods are presently produced.

If such material impacts were charged to the countries where the final consumption takes place, many green economies wouldn’t look so green anymore.

The need for a different development model

But let’s imagine that it was possible to achieve a perfect separation between growth and all environmental consequences. This would still leave unaddressed a number of negative social effects that the current model of economic growth causes, from inequality to social stress and overworked people.

Unless the world develops social innovations and new governance models to radically alter how the economy operates, it may end up with traffic jams of electric cars, overworked assembly lines of PV panels and global conflicts to control the uranium fuelling the ever-increasing number of carbon-neutral nuclear plants.

Against this backdrop, the real focus of policy debate should be on the following question: Is the current approach to growth, which we are trying to ‘clean up’ through new technologies, really desirable in the first place?

The Sustainable Development Goals indeed demand change not only on climate policy but on a wide range of ecological and social issues, from inequality to social cohesion, from education to health care, from water to land, from fisheries to food. These are all issues that require a holistic approach. They can’t be fixed one at a time, as they are closely entangled and affect each other.

The good news

The good news is that, just as society has made technological advancements on clean energy, it has also developed new tools to build economies that increase human and ecosystem wellbeing while lowering material consumption.

As I show in my book, the world is replete with alternative business practices and socio-political innovations, which can help redesign our economies. They include cooperative banks, crowd-funding schemes and social benefit corporations.

The world is also seeing the emergence of community currencies, that is, forms of money that are controlled by the users themselves, either through local associations or through digital systems like the blockchain. And there is the continued rise of distributed renewable energy networks, open-source software and hardware as well as additive technologies (like 3D printing), which are revolutionising manufacturing.

All these processes are redefining the economy from the ground up, strengthening local economic production and supporting local businesses. They are not only creating good jobs, but they are reducing waste and other negative collateral effects by avoiding economies of scale and over production.

A truly green economy is a crucial step forward. But we can do better. Rather than holding on to a model of growth that wants us to maximise consumption at all costs, we need an economy that rewards optimisation. A balanced economy, centred on people and the planet.

Lorenzo Fioramonti, Full Professor of Political Economy, University of Pretoria

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Eight minutes on London Bridge: years of training led to lightning police response

Eight minutes. That is the length of time from the start of the London Bridge attack to the three terrorists being killed by armed police. The Metropolitan Police Service is rightly being heralded for the speed, courage and effectiveness of its members in ending a terrorist atrocity. But the success in their response which prevented more people from being injured and killed is, besides individual bravery, about learning from previous terrorist attacks, training and resources.

In the pre-9/11 era, the style of terrorist attacks frequently involved hostage takings in which terrorists sought to negotiate to achieve some set of aims, gain wider publicity and then try to get away with their lives. The most famous example of this was the attack at the Munich Olympics which stretched out for several days before ending with a botched rescue attempt at an airport and the killing of members of the Israeli Olympic team by Palestinian terrorists.

London has also witnessed hostage takings. In 1975, a six-day stand-off occurred on Balcombe Street in the city’s West End. Armed members of the Irish Republican Army, responsible for a series of bombings across London over previous months, took a couple hostage in their flat as they were being pursued by police. The hostage taking ended peacefully with the surrender of the terrorists.

More famously, in 1980 a group of six armed attackers stormed the Iranian Embassy in London taking 26 people hostage. After six days, they killed a hostage, prompting the Thatcher government to deploy the Special Air Service (SAS). The team of crack soldiers was famously caught on television going in to end the siege.

A new template for terrorism

The November 2008 attacks in Mumbai and the Paris attacks in December 2015 created a new template for the police to address. In both cases, teams of heavily armed and roving attackers attempted to kill as many people as possible while causing mayhem in the centres of major cities. Metropolitan Police specialists have been preparing for such a possibility for years now. Although, thankfully, Saturday night’s attack didn’t involve terrorists with firearms, those skills served them well in quickly dealing with the London Bridge attackers.
In 2010, a major police training exercise, also involving members of the SAS, took place in London with the aim of dealing with a Mumbai-style attack. A UK government spokeswoman noted at the time:

The police regularly train and exercise for a variety of scenarios with a variety of partners. It is right that we learn the lessons from previous incidents and that these inform and strengthen such procedures.

A helicopter prepares to land on London Bridge after the incident. PA

The 2015 Paris attacks only reinforced the need for police forces to be able to respond with speed and firepower. This approach was on display in London shortly after the Paris attacks, when officers carried out a training exercise involving a scenario in which armed terrorists attack a shopping mall, a scenario that occurred in Kenya in 2013. The emphasis was on the swiftness of the response and the need for officers to quickly engage the terrorists, even if that meant ignoring wounded civilians and putting themselves at greater risk.

A senior police officer made it clear that speed was of the essence: “We are asking them not to give first aid to the wounded. The most important thing is for them to get to the threat”.

But it’s also about having the resources to deploy against a threat. In January 2016, it was announced that 600 more armed officers would be deployed in London by the end of that year, boosting numbers to around 2,800 (or nearly 10% of the force). The number of armed police response vehicles was also doubled. More armed officers have been deployed in public places as well. These trends, in a country famously known for having unarmed police, will now only escalate.

The terrorism situation in the UK is clearly in flux. At the moment, the only pattern when it comes to terrorist attacks is that there is no pattern. The London attack appears to be in some ways a combination of the Westminster attack earlier in 2017 and the Lee Rigby murder of 2013. It differs greatly from the style of the May 22 Manchester attack. Nonetheless, members of the police will continue to prepare to deal with worst-case scenarios, based on previous attacks, that they hope will never materialise.
Published on The Conversation

Evictions turn violent in Newtown - Photos

The legality of the action initiated by Prasa under dispute in court

By Ihsaan Haffejee
2 June 2017

Red Ants carrying out the eviction at the Bekezela informal settlement in Newtown. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee

Update: Late on Friday, 2 June, the Gauteng High Court set aside Prasa’s Writ of Ejection, suspending the eviction. Justice Carlese ordered that insofar as the eviction had been carried out already, evictees were to be reinstated.

Hundreds of people from the Bekezela informal settlement in Newtown have been forced onto the streets after the Red Ant Security Relocation and Eviction Services (Red Ants) evicted them from their homes.

Residents say shortly after 8am, men carrying out the eviction descended on the informal settlement and began throwing people and their goods onto the street.

By mid-morning, Carr Street was filled with the household belongings of the residents.
Thando Hlatshwayo had just got ready to leave for work when he claims he was beaten and forced off the property without having the time to collect any of his documents or possessions.

“These people did not provide us with any warning. They just come with violence in the morning and chucked us out of our homes,” said Hlatshwayo.

Residents staged a protest. Rubber bullets were fired at them. A man whose car was stoned crashed into another vehicle.

Residents claim members of the Red Ants took their valuables, cash and cell phones.
After numerous complaints to the police, members of the Metro police searched the vehicles transporting the Red Ants and found various stolen items hidden in bags under the trucks. The items were confiscated, but no arrests were made.

The City of Johannesburg has gone to court to stop the eviction which was initiated by Prasa.
When GroundUp left the scene, people were still looking for their household items on the street. Many were unsure as to where they will sleep tonight.

Red ants carrying out the eviction at the Bekezela informal settlement in Newtown

Rethabile Tlaile, a migrant from Lesotho, feeds her seven-month-old baby on the side of the road after she was evicted. In the bag behind her are all the possessions she managed to salvage

Nelisiwe Simelane holds 11-month-old baby Zenande as she sits with some of the contents of her home on Carr Street after she was evicted

Residents attempt to find some of their belongings which were dumped in the street by the Red Ants

A woman searches for her belongings 

Thabani Mahlobo, who makes a living looking in rubbish bins for recyclable materials, tries to find his ID document. He returned home from work to find his residence trashed and contents missing

A resident with his cat which was killed during the evictions. 

Metro Police find items which were stolen from the residents on the trucks used by the Red Ants

Metro Police gather stolen goods recovered from the Red Ants 

Evicted residents on the street 

 

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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Will the Paris Agreement still be able to deliver after the US withdrawal?

The Arc de Triomphe Is illuminated in green to celebrate the Paris Agreement’s entry into force.

In the short term, the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will certainly have ripple effects globally. But rather than fatally undermine the Paris Agreement, it will likely cause other countries to reaffirm their firm commitment to the full implementation of the climate deal.

We are already seeing this effect in the forthcoming accord between the EU and China on climate and energy, focused on increasing ambition in the Paris Agreement.

In the White House Rose Garden, US President Donald Trump said he wanted to start to renegotiate to see “if there’s a better deal”.

“If we can, great. If we can’t, that’s fine,” he added.

Lessons not learnt from the Kyoto Protocol

Given the location of today’s announcement, some might be tempted to draw an analogy with the Kyoto Protocol, which President George W. Bush famously repudiated in the White House Rose Garden, following pressure from fossil-fuel interests, notably Exxon.

The lessons from this analogy do not flatter the United States. Although the Kyoto Protocol did not meet its full potential as a consequence of US non-participation, countries that engaged actively in its implementation not only succeeded in achieving the emission-reduction targets they set for themselves, but are much better positioned now to take advantage of the necessary transition to a low-carbon future.

As a result of the Kyoto engagement, the European Union’s legislative climate policy framework is now the most comprehensive and far-reaching in the world. The EU now has all the tools needed to deliver the greater ambition that will be needed.



Objectives and targets of EU environmental policies by sector and year
Source:European Environment Agency

Learning from the Kyoto experience, China, Korea, Mexico, Chile and other developing countries are now putting in place emissions-trading systems that will generate the cost-effective emission reductions of the future.

By choosing the Rose Garden for this second announcement, the Trump White House is only underscoring that the lessons from past mistakes may not have not been learnt.

The US could be left behind

The world of 2017 is a very different place from what it was in 2001. Back in 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, the US accounted for 19% of global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and 20% of the world economy (measured in GDP MER) whereas China accounted for only 12% and 7% respectively. By 2015, when the Paris Agreement was adopted, China had grown to become the largest emitter (23%) and the largest economy (17%), with the USA accounting for a proportionately lower share of global emissions (13%), and a smaller share of the world economy (16%).

India, a rising power of the 21st century, had nearly doubled its relative economic weight over this period (from 4% to 7% of the world economy). Both China and India are now seizing the future, working to bend their emissions pathways while growing their economies and creating thousands of green jobs through massive investments in renewable energy and plans to move towards electric vehicles by the end of the next decade.

Leadership and economic growth is now finding a new center of gravity – one in which the US risks being left further and further behind.

The scientific understanding of climate change and its effects on natural systems, human societies and economies has also progressed immensely since 1997 and engaged much larger communities including regions, cities and businesses.

Climate change is emerging as a geopolitical issue alongside more traditional geopolitical concerns and, depending on how a country deals with its role and the problem, its geopolitical standing is affected. China has begun to move into the space, tentatively, but nevertheless with effect.

In other words, the US is less important and less fundamental than it used to be in the sphere of climate policy action.

However, in some places, it may empower climate-change delialists to call for a slowdown on action, or even to support the deployment of so-called “clean coal”.

But, such risks appear limited at this stage. Russia, for example, has yet to ratify the Paris Agreement, but has recently signalled that it will continue to support the implementation of the Agreement.

Public opinion in many parts of the world may also be invigorated in favour of strong climate action, as a positive effect of the much-elevated attention for climate change as a global problem in the press and social media.

Employment in the renewable energy industry is growing

US emissions have been declining since 2015. Trump’s Executive Order aimed at rescinding US domestic measures will result in flatlining emissions at around present levels for the next 5 to 10 years.

Because of the decline in renewable energy and battery-storage prices, natural gas displacing coal, as well as ongoing actions in states such as California implementing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, methane controls and motor vehicle standards, it seems unlikely that US emissions would increase again before 2030.

It is also clear that Trump’s promises to the coal-industry workforce cannot be met. Coal use and mining is projected to continue declining because of changes in the energy markets, including lower natural-gas prices and overwhelming competition on price from renewables and storage.

On the other hand, employment in the renewable-energy industry is growing rapidly in the United States (and around the world), and far exceeds that in coal mining.

The latest review by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) shows rapid growth of employment in the US renewable energy sector, now employing approximately 800,000 people.

The increase in employment in solar energy alone over the past three years is more than twice the total number of jobs in the coal mining industry in the United States (which are declining). This remarkable development contains a lesson and a guide for the future: maintaining the growth of job opportunities requires a continued rollout and expansion of renewable energy. If this does not happen, job opportunities will be lost.

A goal more difficult to meet but more unity

President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, combined with the repeal of domestic actions resulting in halting the decline in US emissions, will likely make it more difficult and costly overall to meet the Paris Agreement temperature goal of holding warming well below 2°C, and limiting it to 1.5°C.

If sustained, the additional US emissions, above the levels that would have occurred with the full implementation of the Obama-era package of climate policies, could add an additional warming of about to 0.1 to 0.2°C by 2100. This will need to be compensated by larger and faster reductions by others than would otherwise be necessary.

In the longer term, the Paris Agreement temperature goals are likely not be able to be met unless the US rejoins global efforts within the next five to ten;years, so that globally aggregated CO₂ emissions can be reduced to zero by around mid-century.

Working against the fossil fuel–driven Trump agenda are profound market developments in renewable energy and battery storage, affecting demand for coal-fired power along with the oil demand depressing effects of the ramping up of electric vehicle production.

The effects of rapidly reducing prices of renewable energy technology and battery storage are far-reaching and some argue, may be unstoppable. Recent industry assessments show that the levelized cost of electricity from many renewable technologies is now lower than gas or coal in the USA. Last week in Arizona, for example, solar and battery storage beat gas power on price for peaking electricity, possibly for the first time anywhere. More broadly, the ongoing cancellation of planned coal-power plants in India, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other places is indicative of the market transformation that is beginning.

This dynamic of reducing renewable energy and storage technology prices driving displacement of fossil-fuel power sources will play a very large role in determining the ultimate positive or negative fallout of US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the negociations that Trump seems to want to impose.

In reaction to the uncertainty about US intentions, the EU and China are coming closer together on climate and energy, united around the implementation of the Paris Agreement.




Many more countries are also beginning to realise the great risks and costs that climate change will bring unless global warming is limited. In Marrakech, over forty-five countries belonging to the Climate Vulnerable Forum committed to 100% renewable energy goals and are beginning to work on how to achieve this.

Risks and negotiations ahead

Nevertheless, there will be countries, political parties, and fossil-fuel interests that will attempt to use US withdrawal to advance a climate-denialist agenda, or at the least seek ways to defend the market dominance of fossil-fuel industries.

It can be expected that a US withdrawal may lead a number of countries to lag in ramping up their climate pledges (NDCs or Nationally Determined Contributions) under the Paris Agreement or go slow on implementing policies.

Another risk that will be exacerbated by the US withdrawal relates to the large global pipeline of coal-plant proposals, which – if built and operated – would curtail any chance of holding warming well below 2°C and limiting to 1.5°C.

Coal is projected to grow rapidly in India, Southeast Asia, Turkey, parts of the Middle East and Africa. It will take concerted diplomatic leadership, as well as courageous domestic action to ensure that this does not come about. Such a task would be difficult even with the US in the Agreement, but a US withdrawal has made it a little harder.


One of the questions now is to know if the US president can find a way to engage any new negotiations.

The longer the US remains idle the harder it will be for all of us. So what are the prospects of the US rejoining the agreement?

Looking beyond the next 3 to 4 years, rising levels of public concern and anxiety over climate change, the accelerating employment from the renewable-energy industry give grounds for optimism.

If Trump doesn’t come back to the Agreement, we will have to wait 2020 to see what happens. A new president coud seek to reenter the climate deal quickly to catch up with the market leaders, likely China, the EU and India, and to recover its political, technological and economic leadership that will be squandered by the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

With this outlook in mind and with California taking a strong lead, many states, municipalities, companies and civic society are expected to move ahead with climate action over the next few years, and if successful the US may well be in a position to catch up quickly once the Trump period passes.

Bill Hare, Director, Climate Analytics, Berlin; Adjunct Professor, Murdoch University, Perth; Visiting scientist, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

This article was originally published on The Conversation.