Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi will need more than just fighting words and empty promises to save Joburg from the spreading slum.
Dreams are crazy things. In a half-daze, you imagine scenarios that aren’t real and create plans you are sure will work.
When the daylight comes, you realise just how foolish they are.
This week, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi seems to have finally woken from his slumber on the province’s housing crisis, acknowledging that plans so far to stop illegal land grabs and mushrooming informal settlements have failed.
In the bright light of scrutiny from the Usindiso building fire report, it is clear that Lesufi’s government has imagined a city very different from the one millions try to survive in every day.
The premier finally acknowledged this week that Africa’s richest city “is being turned into a shanty province”.
It should not have taken a report detailing how the rise in hijacked buildings is “fundamentally driven by dire poverty and the severe lack of affordable housing options, compelling vulnerable individuals into deplorable living arrangements” for the premier to wake up to the issue.
The facts have been there for a long time. Several studies and censuses documenting the last three decades have found that hundreds of thousands of people stream into Gauteng every year, many of them living without food, water, electricity or adequate sanitation. Driving through the city’s streets reveals homes made for a family of four, divided into rooms, some of which house as many as eight families.
Shacks or backrooms are as common as rain in summer, and any empty spaces are quickly turned into squatter camps.
This puts a massive strain on infrastructure and public safety, collapsing basic services, and increasing crime and poverty. Unrest is common, with several water protests this week alone.
The hallmarks of a suburb have deteriorated into the curses of a slum.
Lesufi has been in the legislature for more than 11 years, the last three of those as premier. This is not the first time that he has promised to be “merciless” on the matter, but still, 400 new informal settlements have sprung up, and hundreds of inner-city buildings have been hijacked.
Empty promises
The lack of progress has spread across the city, with the state of Joburg’s pools remaining unchanged this spring compared to last.
The Citizen‘s recent article on the state of Joburg’s public pools showed that those that opened on time last year, made the deadline this year, and those that closed due to maintenance in 2024 are still struggling to open their gates.
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The state of our ‘state bank’
Lesufi’s empty, or at best delayed, promises are mirrored by the government’s attitude towards Postbank.
Two years ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a bill that paved the way for Postbank to be a state-owned bank. It argued that its roots with the SA Post Office left it with a footprint that could help underserved, rural, and remote communities.
On paper, the idea seems a good one, but it ignores post office branches closing en masse due to a lack of funding and, most importantly, that Postbank does not have a banking licence. The troubled and corruption crippled VBS Bank collapsed without a banking licence, and the omens are not good for Postbank.
In the time since the grand plan, Postbank has lost an agreement with the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), and now seems in a bigger hole than before.
As a crisis evolves, Ramaphosa finally woke from his own coma on the issue, and said government was working with Postbank to make it compliant.
And, because the bank appears in a worse state than before, Ramaphosa has now thrown another kitchen sink at it, suggesting it merge with African Bank.
At this point, the ANC is likely to completely lose power before its state bank is ever realised.
None of this bodes well for other state-grab projects, including the controversial National Health Insurance scheme.
All we can hope is that government officials finally stop dreaming and realise reality is far scarier than their nightmares.
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