Mabaso forges ahead amid 100 days in office

Mabaso spoke to the COURIER about his 100 days in office and the challenges, successes and plans for his department.

He also touched on challenges he identified in old age homes around the City and how he intends to resolve those tenants’ education drive, informal settlements and issuing of the long-awaited title deeds to deserving beneficiaries.

He was first appointed by the previous administration, the Government of Local Unity (GLU) under the leadership of late Mayor Geoffrey Makhubu in December 2019.

“I was the only returnee in the office under the same department. In human settlement, challenges are the same and the rules do not change, regardless of the political administration. Though there will be strategic and mayoral priorities, which will speak about how we should attend to issues of human settlement. But the programmes, like funding models, remain the same.

“In this case of a multi-party coalition government, what I’ve noticed is that the new mayor is interested in the collection of the revenue to invest. In all our rental units, we must make sure we collect so we have money to maintain and invest in future development. Second, she wants us to involve the private investments because the funding we receive from government institutions is not enough to address issues of human settlement in the City,” explained Mabaso.

He mentioned this financial year, they pushed more for informal settlement upgrades.

“There are a lot of informal settlements in the City and no services that are being provided for people. We looked at occupant audit where we count households within the informal settlement.

“We also do the pegging of stands where realignment of the stands and allocation people within those stands are made. We then put services, like electricity, standpipes, integration facilities like access to roads. We then do township establishment and then title deeds allocation will follow.

“We are also doing an occupancy audit in our old age homes, as there are a lot of illegal occupants there and a lot of illegal activities happening. Some people are selling drugs and alcohol and there is no access control. That is why we have built boundary walls in most of them, but the problem is that the wall is there but at the gate, there is no access control. The security there from the public safety department is not effective.

“We are now trying to install a biometric system to control who comes in and goes out. But it is something that is not budgeted for. Also, the occupancy audit is to issue the eviction orders for people who live there illegally. We have given them mercy to voluntary vacate; however, if they don’t, we have plans in place to remove them.

Other programmes

Mabaso said they are doing tenants engagements.

“As in Joshco now, the collection rate is at 56%, and the occupational rate is at 98%. Tenants owed JOSHCO more than R200-million. You can’t expect them to maintain or continuously invest when people are not paying.

We are educating people about paying rent, also to make payment arrangements and also seeing that there are any maintenance and repair issues that they have not attended to. Furthermore, to look at the issues of security on the premises.

There are payments breaks, discounts that are offered, but this will come to an end once everything has been in order. There will be eviction orders in the future for people who are failing to pay, hence we are engaging with them now.

“Joshco is a company, although it is not making a profit. However, it must be able to sustain itself on the operation and invest in future development and not rely on funding from the City.

“On title deeds, we are continuing issuing them although we have disputes within families, especially on properties that are owned by the deceased. We advise them to go to court so they can know who is the beneficiary or the rightful owner.

On informal settlements and way forward

“We introduced two types of service stands: one for informal settlement upgrade and the other for people who have the financial muscle to build houses for themselves. We have launched the former and the next one will follow soon and will run concurrently.

“We have megaprojects with Southern Sun, which will be launched. We are also continuing with hostels’ refurbishment. But for now, there are political engagements for hostel redevelopment.

“When the province developed the hostels 10 years ago, they did not obtain approval from the City. When we came in as a City, trying to refurbish the vandalised units, we discovered there are no approvals at all.

“We can’t even do sewer connections. We need to start with the drawings, invite Johannesburg Water onsite, submit them to the planning department and wait for the approval. Once we get that, we will start with the connections and do allocations on those units,” explained Mabaso.

Reflecting on 100 days of service delivery, Mabaso said the good thing is that he was already in the office.

“For me, it was to continue with the projects and programmes already on the ground, also with the engagements I started previously. We had to push hard in some of the stuff because the period between October and December (election period) we were not in the office, officials were not working and we had to come and push and close that gap and try to expedite most of the things that were not happening. We used our 100 days to push on the projects that were already started,” he said.

Message for residents

“Everything we do must be done within the ambit of the law. People must not illegally occupy units, whether uncompleted units or in old age homes. We are a caring government and we are human beings. We don’t want to find ourselves when we send law enforcement agents to respond on our behalf just because people don’t follow the law. Please wait for the government to give you spaces to stay.

“There are channels to follow, like going to housing offices, using official media pages of the City. The government will never ask you for money for allocation. We don’t use WhatsApp as government to communicate, we use our offices or direct calls. I will never ask you to send banking details on WhatsApp. Do not use our personal social accounts for government stuff, we use official pages. So don’t be scammed. Stay vigilant,” he said.