1. HON. Members, by looking into Ethekwini’s housing backlog, we have over a thousand slums built but not the number of dwellers in each, or from where they from.
2. South African taxpayers cannot pay for low cost, mass housing with no conclusive data.
3. Furthermore, with the onset of bad weather, we need to constantly renovate existing government housing stock.
4. HON. Members, using the present housing delivery rates in Ethekwini for example, and if no substantial growth takes place, it would take more than 70 years to eliminate this backlog, as per a researcher Glen Robbins of DUT (Sept 2017), titled “Getting people into decent homes”.
5. These challenges have been attributed to the complex topography, weak inter-government coordination, lack of funding, statistics and land.
6. Of more concern is when private housing sector and development failure or backlogs start setting in, more research must be conducted to ascertain the factors influencing such uneven patterns of private sector development.
7. Under these circumstances, HON. Members, the HON. MEC R R Pillay performs his best as per the 2016/2017 report to re-energise housing delivery, but  PPPs would greatly influence housing delivery.
8. This Ethekwini scenario, HON. Members, is an indicator that diversifying housing stock in terms of affordability in well-located areas, and the solutions to high poverty and unemployment would house all South Africans comfortably.
9. Thank you.

Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi

Minority Front Leader (KZN Legislature)