This thesis entitled Self-help housing in South Africa: paradigms, policy and practice was
conducted as the first thorough evaluation of self-help housing policy in South Africa. Selfhelp
housing policy and practice in both South Africa and globally are evaluated by means of
Turnerâs concept of dweller control. The thesis starts off by analysing the origin and
development of low-income housing policies in developing countries, with specific reference
to self-help housing policy. It is pointed out that the discussion on the influence of Turnerâs
theory and the role of the World Bank are central to the analysis of the origin and
development of self-help housing policy in developing countries. Turnerâs theory played a
crucial role in the acceptance of self-help housing as an alternative housing-delivery
mechanism in the 1960s, while the World Bank provided the necessary funding for its
implementation through site-and-services schemes by governments in developing countries in
the early 1970s. Despite self-help housing commonly being associated with neo-liberal policy
trends, the thesis shows that self-help is practised in both capitalist and socialist countries.
The international theoretical background on self-help housing is followed by an assessment
of the development and application of various low-income housing policies in post-apartheid
South Africa, with specific reference to self-help housing. South African policy on self-help
is officially called the Peopleâs Housing Process (PHP) and is implemented through self-help
groups called housing support centres. It has been found that though Turnerâs ideas and
principles on self-help housing are entrenched in PHP policy, in practice this policy, to a
large extent, neither conforms to Turnerâs ideas particularly those on dweller control nor to
certain principles stipulated in the policy. Thus, a technocratic rather than a people-centred
approach (envisaged in policy documents) dominates the PHP programmes in South Africa.
The levels of the influence exerted by local people in project design, project implementation
and housing design remain low, and the housing outcomes do not differ much from the conventional project subsidy approach. This leads the author to conclude that self-help
housing in South Africa is, in effect, dominated by the state. However, despite state control of
the housing process, both the available South African literature on self-help housing and the
empirical findings seem to be in agreement that the houses in PHP projects are generally
much bigger than those provided by means of the conventional contractor-driven mechanism.
The comparison between the laissez-faire self-help project and the aided self-help project
using a contractor-driven approach confirms that better housing outcomes have resulted from
the laissez-faire self-help example (larger houses, more extension activity).
Against this background, the thesis proposes that government officials should become
facilitators rather than dominant role players in the application of self-help housing,
programmes on consumer education should be emphasised and used as means to enhance
community participation and empowerment, the emphasis on sweat equity in the self-help
mechanism should be reconsidered, the self-help mechanism inherently needs to accept a
certain degree of informality, government should ensure accountability and oversight without
necessarily controlling state-funded self-help housing projects, and, the emphasis in self-help
should be on embracing housing as a process rather than as a one-off activity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-11112011-113258 |
| Date | 11 November 2011 |
| Creators | Ntema, Lejone John |
| Contributors | Prof JGL Marais |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-11112011-113258/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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