DA to table questions to MEC Tasneem Motara on Montrose project as Themba Godi says officials know nothing will happen to them.
Despite millions being spent, indigent families in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, remain without homes as the Hospital View Housing Project was abandoned and has been vandalised. Picture: Nigel Sibanda
The Gauteng government has been accused of failing to take action against officials and companies involved in abandoned housing projects which have seen hundreds of millions of rands wasted.
Projects to accommodate indigent families have been abandoned without proper explanation.
Projects abandoned without explanation
In almost all the projects, government claims it needs more funds to finalise the work.
One example is the Hospital View Housing Project in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, initiated in 2020.
So far, R87 million has been spent, but the proposed 500 housing units have not been completed. The site has been abandoned and vandalised.
Three years ago, the provincial legislature said the project was vandalised in 2021, and the Ekurhuleni department of human settlement said R60 million was needed to renovate the buildings. But nothing happened.
Themba Godi, the leader of the African People’s Convention and a former parliamentary standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) chair, said during his tenure at Scopa he realised that government officials and the construction companies were abandoning projects and engaging in corrupt activities, “simply because they knew that nothing would happen to them”.
Officials know nothing will happen to them – Godi
He said he had seen many instances where official annual financial reports of departments and entities spoke about their plans for building hundreds of houses, only to discover later that “the budget has been exhausted, but the projects are not finished”.
Godi said that kind of failure highlights inefficiencies in project management as well as deliberate corrupt practices by officials. He said in practice, there were no consequences for officials and the companies involved.
“We know that in urban areas, housing is a major problem and yet that is where you get a lot of corruption happening,” he said.
Recently, the DA exposed the abandonment of the Montrose Mega City Project.
“Years of neglect, inaction and poor oversight by the Gauteng government have allowed public infrastructure to deteriorate while the housing crisis deepens,” said DA Rand West mayoral candidate Jacques Julius.
DA warns sites become magnets for theft and destruction
Julius said the DA will table questions to the Gauteng MEC for human settlements, Tasneem Motara, on why this project has been abandoned; how much has been spent; who has been held accountable; and when the rehabilitation and completion of the project will finally take place.
“The Montrose Mega City Project was launched in 2017 by former Gauteng premier David Makhura and then MEC for human settlements Paul Mashatile as a flagship R11 billion development aimed at dismantling apartheid-era spatial segregation,” he said.
“It promised to deliver an integrated, high-density, mixed-income city that would expand access to quality housing and economic opportunities.”
He said nearly a decade later, that promise has been reduced to rubble.
“This is despite the DA repeatedly warning that abandoned construction sites become magnets for vandalism, theft and the destruction of public assets, and calls for accountability, forensic investigations into failed housing projects such as Montrose and the appointment of reputable contractors to restore and complete these developments.”
Gauteng department concedes struggling to complete projects
Gauteng department of human settlement spokesperson Tahir Sema conceded it was struggling to complete the projects.
Sema said there were several reasons for project failures, including contractor and developer problems.
“The most common driver is a developer who cannot deliver, either through poor workmanship, weak financial management, or cash flow collapse partway through a multiyear build.”
He said when that happens, government is left with a half-built site and the difficult choice of terminating and procuring again, which takes time.
He said budgets were allocated annually against approved projects but on long projects, construction costs escalate and funds not spent in a given year are reprioritised to active sites, so restarting a stalled project requires the funding to be resecured.
More than 200 projects stalled
There are more than 200 stalled housing projects across South Africa, according to Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane.
When responding to questions in the National Council of Provinces recently, Simelane said in the 2025-26 financial year, the department of human settlements targeted attending to some 212 abandoned projects.
“The abandoned projects across the country were estimated to be R37 billion,” said Simelane.
She said the Free State had 154 abandoned projects and Gauteng 12, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo each had four projects, Mpumalanga had two, Northern Cape had three, North West had 21, while Western Cape had seven.
