At the centre of the housing problem is a drastic shortage of housing (Napier 1993:21). Housing shortage means that the total number of households exceeds the number of dwellings available (Malpass 1990:5). Harvey (2000:28) concurs in his statement that a housing shortage is present when there is insufficient housing to accommodate the population in an area, when the supply of houses cannot meet the demand. The housing shortage besetting so many countries is not a result of lack of effective demand but is often a direct result of macroeconomic policies and governments’ non-housing budgets claiming an ever-increasing share of a reducing pool of finance during a period of worldwide economic austerity (United Nations Habitat & ILO 1995:3). In EMM, new construction is not keeping pace with demand and as Bradley (2003:85) succinctly puts it, the lack of supply has created a housing shortage which is exacerbated by land-use competition where there may only be space to allow for either slum housing or industrial expansion, but not both. According to the City of Ekurhuleni Annual Report (2010/2011:25) and Baloyi (2007:3), the housing shortage arises as a result of limited land supply as the city cannot overcome physical barriers such as mountain ranges and mine dumps which hamper the construction of houses and also the strict government regulation on available housing-constructible land. While Van der Waldt and Du Toit (1997:380) concur with these assertions, they attribute the cause of housing shortage to population growth.

Most of the challenges that seemingly remained unresolved since 1994 were as a result of EMM amongst other municipalities chasing moving targets (Bonner et al. 2012:176). Jeffery (2010:353) attributes this to inter-provincial migration and the splitting of households into smaller entities. In the same vein, the City of Ekurhuleni Annual Report (2016/2017:83) states that the ever-increasing demand for housing caused by, amongst others, immigration and urbanisation, exacerbates the challenges of dealing with housing backlogs in the city. However, Napier (1993:23) and Poormohammadi (2006:48) argue that the rate of population growth is more a function of natural growth than other aspects such as in-migration to urban areas. Despite stringent influx control measures to curb African urbanisation, Ekurhuleni’s population grew steadily towards the end of 1994 (Bonner et al. 2012:150).

The influx of foreigners into Gauteng also compounded the problem, with the majority of them opting to move into EMM as it is the industrial hub of Gauteng with better job prospects. Eddy (2010:3) agrees that migration (the phenomenon of territorial human mobility) continued to place a greater strain on services which led to higher proportions of people living in informal settlements. Natural increase of the population as argued by Napier (1993:2) is another straining factor. The rate of natural increase is highest amongst the poorest communities, which means that the poor will constitute an ever-increasing proportion of the total urban population over the next several years (Napier 1993:22). According to Van der Waldt and Du Toit (1997:380), issues arising from population growth are related to the capacity of Ekurhuleni’s limited resources to provide for the peoples’ needs and that it (population growth) has a ripple effect on the provision of services including housing. From 1995 to 2005, for instance, the number of households rose by 45%, making it difficult for the municipality to keep pace with demand despite an impressive delivery of Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) homes (Jeffery 2010:353). Mhone and Edigheji (2003:60) concur that progress is being made on the housing front but admit that the backlog far outruns the construction and delivery of housing.

The shortage of housing in EMM is also attributed to the unavailability of land. Efficient assembly and release of appropriately located land for housing is critical to achieving the desired rate of delivery of housing (White Paper on Housing 1994:27). The provincial budgets and expenditure review (2010:71) points out that the National Housing Department attributes declining delivery years after 1994 to the slow release of land for housing by government and unsettling policy shifts, amongst other things. However, Dyantyi (2007:80) and A’bear (2012:5) argue that unavailability of land is the biggest housing delivery constraint in EMM because of dolomite and shallow undermining. This is confirmed by the City of Ekurhuleni Annual Report (2011/2012:189) which states that a total surface area of the EMM area of jurisdiction is underlain by dolomite land that needs to be managed, controlled and developed in accordance with current legislation to prevent the formation of sinkholes and substances that can have a detrimental impact on infrastructure and human life. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that a 28% customer growth (237 067 new customers) is expected up to 2025 (City of Ekurhuleni Annual Report 2010/2011:25). While the Housing Development Agency (HDA) is intended to help with the acquisition and release of land, as well as the provision of funding and the unblocking of delivery constraints, and it will also seek to make a wider range of housing choices available including affordable, well-located rental housing (Jeffery 2010:354), the unavailability of land poses a major, insurmountable challenge (City of Ekurhuleni Annual Report 2010/2011:25). Tissington (2011:7) concurs in her view that lack of availability of well-located land and release of public land for development by the government is a major impediment to housing delivery.

Housing distribution plays a major role in housing delivery (SA Yearbook 2009/2010:286). The manner in which it is being handled by EMM adversely affects the delivery of housing to a greater extent; there is unequal distribution of the available houses to people only aligned or affiliated to a particular political party (Bonner et al. 2012:145). It is the researcher’s view that corruption also severely affects housing distribution in that EMM officials get paid in cash or kind by people that are not on the housing waiting list to give them preference over legitimate candidates in the allocation of houses. Some of the people will be coming from areas outside the boundaries of Ekurhuleni. Others would be coming from even as far as outside the borders of South Africa. Such conduct contradicts Cloete’s (1997:69) assertion that every public official should display a sense of responsibility when performing official duties; in other words, the conduct should be above reproach. It is for this reason that Musewe (2012:9) emphasises that local government must promote fairness, reasonableness and impartiality and must have no bias. All citizens should be treated equally, with respect and no person, no matter what his or her status is in the community, should be given preferential treatment.

According to Cloete and Mokgoro (1995:137), corruption is a particularly viral form of organisational cancer which once it enters the lifestream of a public agency, quickly spreads to all parts – it is highly contagious, debilitating and costly to treat. Corruption also hinders delivery of affordable housing. The City of Ekurhuleni Annual Report (2016/2017:51) concurs in its statement that corruption breaks down societal norms, erodes good governance and obstructs service delivery. In 2008/2009, the South African Institute of Race Relations documented a litany of fraud offences that state employees committed against the housing department. In 2009, the Gauteng Provincial Government failed to take action against a construction company that had received a R58 million housing tender but had not delivered even a single completed housing unit (South Africa Survey 2008/9:582). According to Nathan (2013:12), because of the hierarchical character of the state and the related lack of accountability of high-level officials to their subordinates and the general public, ‘shady’ tender deals with private firms and outright theft of state funds and property is the norm.

In EMM, some staff members are involved in corrupt activities that lead to, amongst other variables, people not on housing waiting lists or people who do not qualify for government houses, like foreigners, being granted preference in the allocation of houses. Such conduct contradicts Cloete’s (1997:69) assertion that every public official should display a sense of responsibility when performing official duties; in other words, the conduct should be above reproach. Corruption has become widespread, particularly in the granting of housing subsidies, the selection of building contractors and allocation of completed RDP houses (Jeffery 2010:354). Between February 2010 and January 2012, 63 EMM officials had charges of fraud and corruption levelled against them, of which 28 were dismissed and no one was arrested (City of Ekurhuleni Annual Report 2011/2012:189–190).

In 2007, then Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe acknowledged that corruption in South Africa was far worse than most people realised (Jeffery 2010:30). It is the researcher’s view that the government exacerbates the situation by employing a policy of in the worst-case scenario, only suspending from work (or relieving of duties) public servants suspected or found guilty of corruption without initiating jail terms. Burger (2010:2) states that in April 2010, then Minister of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs, Mr Sicelo Shiceka admitted that municipalities are riddled with corruption and maladministration. However, despite the admission, no effective measures are put in place to eradicate corruption (Jeffery 2010:354). Ekurhuleni communities are suffering as a result of this.

Coupled to the other key contributory factors to housing delivery challenges in EMM is unaffordability by individuals (White Paper on Housing 1994:9). Low income, particularly amongst the R2500–R7500 income group (South Africa Survey 2008/9:582), is the contributing factor to unaffordability. Low incomes of large proportions of South Africa’s population imply that many people are unable to afford adequate housing using their own financial resources alone (White Paper on Housing 1994:9). It has become far more difficult for low-income earners to get onto the property ladder (Fife 2007:36). Innes, Kentridge and Perold (1992:181) propounded a view that socio-economic realities are such that even the most modest formal house is beyond the reach of the poor, most of whom live in informal shelters. Jeffery (2010:354) concedes in his statement that the minimum government housing subsidy has been eroded by building inflation and banks are not extending mortgage finance to the very poor, who cannot afford even the cheapest and most rudimentary formal dwelling. However, according to the White Paper on Housing (1994:3), an increased income to lower income groups could have a major impact on the housing sector by converting latent demand for housing into effective demand. The 2010 New Credit Act (NCA) that was apparently designed to protect particularly the poor from excessive indebtedness exacerbates this situation. In a few instances in EMM where there are sites available, once the sites have been chosen and the houses have been built, they need to be serviced with running water and electricity. This in itself is a major problem because if people cannot afford to buy or build the house, then they would almost certainly not be able to afford the cost of water and electricity (Bradley 2003:85). This defeats the object of adequate housing, which according to Mhone and Edigheji (2003:152) refers to a combination of land, services such as the provision of water, the removal of sewage and the financing of these including the building of the house (dwelling) itself. Bond (2002:198) agrees that a house must include sanitary facilities, storm water drainage, a household energy supply (whether linked to grid electricity supply or derived from other sources such as solar energy) and convenient access to clean water. Another predominant cause of unaffordability is poverty (Jeffery 2010:354).

South African society is largely characterised by extreme poverty (Steenekamp 2012:124), which is the leading social issue in the continuation of sprawling cities. The rate of natural increase is highest amongst the poorest communities, which means that the poor will constitute an ever-increasing proportion of the total urban population over the next many years (Napier 1993:22).

As Sokupa (2009:1) states, government has the responsibility to make policies and laws about the rights and responsibilities of citizens and the delivery of government services. It collects revenue (income) from taxes and is supposed to use this money to provide services and infrastructure that improve the lives of all the people in the country, particularly the poor. At present, millions of South Africans face severe problems in accessing even the most basic services and according to Sokupa (2009:1), many of these ultimately become matters of life and death, particularly with regard to issues of housing. More than one million families still live in shacks without power, often sharing a single tap and a mobile toilet amongst dozens of households (Steenekamp 2012:12).

In many areas of Ekurhuleni, the situation is worse with most of the shack dwellers being evicted by authorities and having their shacks and property destroyed. They are forced to move to new areas where they face even more evictions. The poor are ignored by policy makers only to become the focus of public concern when they threaten property interests or when shacks are demolished (Innes et al. 1992:165). It is thus at moments of stress that the existence of the poor or urban homeless penetrates the public consciousness. Burger (2010:1) points out that in 2009, the country experienced a wave of service delivery protest action across most municipalities including EMM. Lives were lost in the process.

To impact on poverty, a coordinated, multifaceted approach towards initiating and maintaining sustainable socio-economic development is necessary (May, Carter & Padayachee 2004:47) – housing interventions by government can at the most be seen as part of an integrated approach by government to resolve the problem of poverty (White Paper on Housing 1994).

In the light of the foregoing, it is clear that the government plays a contributory role in each of the aforementioned causes. For example, several authors (Baloyi 2007; Bond & Tait 1997; Jeffery 2010; Knight 2002; Hablemitoglu et al. 2010; Marais 2011) maintain that government regulation, in part, designed to improve quality increased the cost of housing and made it unaffordable. The costs imposed by land-use regulation are particularly pronounced for lesser units to be built. In the same vein, Bhorat and Cassim (2004), Bradley (2003), Burger (2010) and Dyantyi (2007) agree that the government has regulated land use in many ways, including restricting the types of housing built (e.g. apartments vs. single-family homes) as well as dictating the attributes of that housing (e.g. number of garages). While these regulations increased the quality of housing, they drastically reduced the availability of housing by, for example, limiting the total number of housing units produced in a community. While this article acknowledges the foregoing factors as causes of housing delivery challenges in EMM, it is of the view that the government in its individuality is the major contributor to housing delivery challenges encountered in EMM.

Drawing on the Freedom Charter, South Africa’s democratic government produced the RDP, a development policy with a socialist resonance (Bond 2002:196). It was aimed at redressing the imbalances of the apartheid legacy by providing decent housing to poor people who were victims of the land segregation policy of the apartheid government. The intention of this programme was to be met by building houses for all people who could not afford them (Bonner et al. 2012:198). The RDP’s approach was to ensure that essential service needs were met through vast increases in government subsidies when the market failed and through mobilising additional resources by forcefully topping capital markets and via off-budget methods (Bond 2002:197).

According to the SA Yearbook (2010/2011:296), the South African government made significant progress in meeting the goals of the RDP: providing housing, basic services, health care and land reform that in essence resulted in the lives of millions of people being improved. This view is criticised by Bonner et al. (2012:215) who maintain that the new housing projects are located either in or adjacent to existing African townships, thereby reinforcing apartheid’s racial geography. A further criticism of the state’s RDP houses is that they are very small, even in comparison to the houses provided by the apartheid government (Bond 2002:197); then minister of Housing and Human Settlement, Tokyo Sexwale, even called them ‘ugly little pondokkies’. Jeffery (2010:355) posited that how far the government’s housing programme has helped to liberate the poor remains a complex question and agrees that RDP houses (sometimes described by beneficiaries as ‘dog kennels’) are much smaller than the four-roomed township houses provided by the National Party Government and have often been poorly constructed and badly located.

Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality authorities have admitted that they have few social amenities required for the production of viable communities (Bonner et al. 2012:215). The quality of the RDP houses has often been substandard for various reasons, including the fact that developers were often seen to have come into the low-cost housing market purely to cash in. This is consistent with Marais’s (2011:29) criticism of government housing programmes for failing to provide quality, affordable and adequate housing units for the target population. The fact that government was concentrating on quantity of the houses rather than their quality (in the RDP programme) lent itself to a situation where developers would try to cut as many corners as possible (Bradley 2003:85). Thus, while the RDP offered hope for a decent residential existence far beyond what was on offer in existing site-and-service schemes, the actual deliverables were disastrous (Bond 2002:198).

Over the years, it emerged during government-initiated investigations and collapse of many houses that the housing system had been abused and not used for the direct purposes it was intended for. Many contractors had built shoddy houses and did not train people under the people’s housing programme (Setplan 2008:41). Knight (2002) contends that government awarded tenders in this programme to contractors who mismanaged them, who did not train people, but allowed them to build houses without proper training. As divulged in the investigation to determine the extent of the damages needed to be fixed by the Department of Housing in its rectification programme, people were not skilled to build houses; hence, all the defects in the houses occurred. Some were found to be unfit to house people and lay unoccupied for several years until they were demolished or collapsed (Jeffery 2010:360).

In discussing the shortcomings of the RDP, Balkin and Rhoden (2003:123) state that the RDP unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile the original Keynesian approach with a set of policy statements and recommendations that were inspired by the neo-liberal framework that had long been the alternative offered, even if in different variants, by big business, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and not least, the apartheid government in its twilight years in the form of the Normative Economic Model. Furthermore, in delivering RDP housing the government ignored a key principle of the RDP, namely to promote integrated development. The RDP housing rectification was an ineffective form of redress, having been implemented in a policy context where services were treated primarily as commodities rather than entitlements.

From the above, it can be deduced that the greatest challenge to South Africa’s housing crisis which continues to bedevil EMM is the systematic failure of government to effectively plan, construct and also to keep records of RDP beneficiaries.

According to Knight (2002), the ability of government to provide housing was restricted by its macroeconomic policy known as GEAR. Two important goals of this policy were to reduce inflation and reduce government expenditure to below 4% of GDP. This in effect limited the amount which government could spend on social needs including housing.

According to the SA Yearbook (2012/13:9), at its advent GEAR was the best macroeconomic long-term policy to achieve economic growth. However, GEAR was seen by many as being in direct conflict with the goals of the RDP, the reduction of poverty and a more unequal division of wealth (Streek 2001:1). Its impact on families was disastrous as there was little in the way of social security protection for the unemployed, particularly those who had lost their jobs, some of whom lost their houses to banks for failure to make required monthly payments, and others outrightly failed to buy houses as a result of unaffordability. This was a national challenge which also directly affected EMM.

According to the City of Ekurhuleni’s (2011:85) admission, GEAR’s stringent limits on expenditure limited the ability to meet social development goals of the RDP. As the South African National Housing Code notes:

Adopted in 2006, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (ASGI-SA) was a revamped framework for economic growth (Marais 2011:148). Balkin and Rhoden (2003:129) state that the ASGI-SA framework identified an important problem: slow and inequitable growth – and pointed to some key reasons rooted in the inherited economic structure. While many of the proposed solutions had considerable merit, they did not adequately reflect the overall aim of inclusive, shared growth and taken together seemed inadequate to achieve the desired aims, where housing delivery featured but not prominently. While the policy was seen as an improvement in some respects, it largely continued the existing ad hoc, inconsistent and sometimes contradictory approach to key strategic challenges. The absence of a coherent strategy to deal with the critical issues, particularly housing, bedevilled the good intentions of ASGI-SA (Marais 2011:26). As a key government plan for accelerating economic growth, ASGI-SA was too limited in scope, and therefore diverted attention away from the real obstacles to higher growth and also away from addressing issues related to basic needs of the country’s citizenry, particularly housing (Deedee 2011:52). According to Marais (2011:26), this was the reason why ASGI-SA was an impediment to housing delivery, as funds that were meant for housing were routed elsewhere.

While ASGI-SA objectives of addressing key economic growth constraints were laudable and correct, it had been launched in concept form only, without any proper implementation plans in place. It lacked ‘any compensatory measures to prevent it further exacerbating the country’s already alarming trade deficit’. Jeffery (2010:360) maintains that ASGI-SA faced the massive challenge of ensuring adequate support from both inside and outside the state. In terms of the state, a developmental state requires strong central coordination. That means ASGI-SA required a central institution with the capacity to evaluate progress and the power to guide departments, including human settlements, to achieve national aims. Cabinet as a collective lacked the necessary technical backup. Overall, the country needs a strong and united agency to drive economic policy.

Since 1994, there have been numerous shifts in South African housing policy, which attests both to the socio-economic importance and political imperative of housing provision in the country (Tissington 2011:8). According to Baloyi (2007:8), one key issue is that the housing policy adopted in 1994 has no ‘grandfather’ clause limiting the provision of housing to those who lived and suffered under the apartheid regime. Furthermore, there is no time limit to the Constitutional clause (Section 26) stating that ‘everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing’. South Africans born both before as well as after the end of apartheid thus take the view that ‘they have a right to a free house’ if their monthly income is below R3500 per month. Accordingly, households continually break themselves up into smaller units in the expectation that each new unit will become entitled to a housing subsidy. National, provincial and local government housing officials referred to this as the growth of an ‘entitlement syndrome’ and had it that it made the goal of eliminating the housing backlog simply unattainable. Moreover, according to Setplan (2008:39), it was the government itself which had fostered a culture of entitlement and raised ‘false expectations’. It was also the government that failed to ‘generate enough opportunities for young people’, who were often unskilled and unemployed and find it difficult to buy houses for themselves (Deedee 2011:53)

In her discussion about the systemic challenges which have hindered and continue to plague housing policy implementation and consequently the delivery of housing in South Africa and subsequently in EMM, Tissington (2011:8–10) lists the following as some of the government-led causes of housing delivery challenges:

While proponents of the government economic policies (ANC 2009; Department of Housing 2004; Eddy 2010; Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Integrated Development Plan & Service Delivery Budget Implementation Plan 2013/14; Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality Integrated Development Plan & Service Delivery Budget Implementation Plan 2015; The Housing Development Agency 2013) maintain that in devising and implementing the policies, the government had the best interests of its citizens, particularly the poor, at heart, critics (Bonner et al. 2012; Harrison 2013; Jeffery 2010; Storie 2011) argue that one reason why government contributed to the housing problem through the housing policy is largely because the government continued to see informal settlements ‘only in negative terms’ and had no real interest in their incremental upgrading. It also showed ‘very little support for low-income households to build their own homes’; hence, the government gave little space to the poor to participate in either the formulation or implementation of housing policy, while its overwhelming focus remained on the delivery of ‘formal’ housing at scale. In addition, the housing policy has become much more complicated over time and requires significant capacity to implement, which many local authorities lack. For local authorities to become housing developers, they must first be fully ‘accredited’ by national government (Provincial budgets and expenditure review 2010:66). To date, this has not occurred.