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From Africa Recovery, Vol.14#4 (January 2001), page 12 (Special Feature: Country in Focus)

South Africa tackles social inequities

Some gains, but still a long way to go in overcoming apartheid's legacy

Six years after the election of South Africa's first democratic government, significant progress has been made in bringing better education, health care, housing and other social amenities to the deprived black majority. Yet poverty is still widespread and income disparities remain enormous, as economic liberalization and tight budgetary policies complicate efforts to improve living conditions and expand opportunities for the poor. Meanwhile, AIDS is spreading at an alarming rate.

By Ernest Harsch

From its name, Mandela Village might sound like a pleasant, relaxed South African neighbourhood. In reality, it is a dilapidated shantytown, originally built in 1990 from wood and corrugated iron sheeting salvaged from a former bus station in the surrounding township of Soweto. In the decade since then, South Africa has seen dramatic political changes, with the end of the segregationist apartheid regime and the installation of the first democratically elected government, a shift that brought high social expectations.

Some of the 7,000 residents of Mandela Village are beginning to lose hope that the end of apartheid actually will improve their daily lives. Their shacks are tiny, the pathways between them narrow and lined with open gutters. There is no electricity and the entire settlement has only five water taps. Perhaps because the community is well organized and run by activists of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), its representatives were able to persuade the municipal authorities to provide 90 portable toilets around its perimeter. Virtually all inhabitants are unemployed, according to Eric, who served as a guide during an October 1999 visit. What little income residents have, he said, comes from the pension cheques of the settlement's seniors, from petty trading, and from automobiles stolen in nearby Johannesburg and sold to a "chop shop" just across the road from Mandela Village.

By contrast, much of Johannesburg, South Africa's biggest commercial centre, remains largely white and quite well-to-do. The exclusive neighbourhood of Sandton boasts everything that Mandela Village lacks: large and spacious houses, parks, shopping malls, corporate headquarters, hotels and a high tax base to support ample amenities and services. The residents -- whites and a few better-off blacks -- are protected by walls, electrified fencing and private security firms constantly on patrol.

The laws may now be formally colour-blind or even speak of "affirmative action" in favour of blacks, but South Africa remains an inequitable society. Although disparities have narrowed somewhat, the country's income distribution is still among the most unequal in the world. Alongside displays of prosperity rarely seen anywhere in Africa, millions of South Africans live below the poverty line, many of them seething with anger and frustration. Although political violence has subsided considerably, high levels of poverty and unemployment, combined with the easy availability of blackmarket firearms, have contributed to an upsurge in crime and other forms of social conflict. Minister for Social Development Zola Skweyiya acknowledged in September that South Africa is sitting on a social "time bomb."

Many officials blame the limited changes so far on the enormity of the problems inherited from the apartheid era: poor health and low education caused by the previous discriminatory policies, a huge backlog in urban housing because many had not been permitted to settle permanently in the cities, and very high levels of structural unemployment. To these old problems have been added new ones, most alarmingly the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS, which has given South Africa one of the highest prevalence rates anywhere in the world (see "South Africa's mounting AIDS toll").

Under the circumstances, "it is going to take decades to correct many of the wrongs," says Rev. Motlalepula Chabaku, an elected legislator in Free State province. In the enthusiasm of the 1994 elections, ANC leaders compounded problems by making promises they simply could not keep, she told Africa Recovery. Among ordinary people that initial enthusiasm has now waned, reflected in lower voter turnouts in the 1999 national elections, "because some have not had personal benefit from the changes that came in our country." Many others have benefited, she adds, pointing to the numerous new schools, health clinics, housing projects, water facilities, training programmes and other amenities.

Some critics, while acknowledging the heavy legacy of the past, also cite more current factors to explain the persistence of poverty and unemployment. The 1.8 million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), although politically allied with the ANC, criticizes the government's economic policy emphasis on market liberalization and tight government spending. "Society as a whole, particularly the working class and the poor, bear the cost of conservative economic policy," the union federation said of the government's budget for fiscal year 2000/01.

Reconstruction and development

Some of the current bitterness stems from the very high hopes generated by the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). Originally launched in 1994 as the ANC's election programme, it then became the centre of the new government's mandate for reform. As defined by then President Nelson Mandela, the RDP encompassed not only socio-economic programmes designed to redress imbalances in living conditions, but also institutional reform, educational and cultural programmes, employment generation and human resources development. The programme, Mr. Mandela said, would be "an all-encompassing process of transforming society in its totality to ensure a better life for all."

At first, the RDP had a dual aspect. As a policy framework, its priorities influenced the targeting of donor aid and guided the government's normal budgetary process, leading to significant shifts in how government revenues were spent. Less went to the military, for example, and substantially more was allocated to education, health, housing and other social spending.

At the same time, the RDP had its own distinct presence. A special RDP Fund, of several billion rands annually, financed high-profile "presidential projects," such as free medical care for under-six children and pregnant mothers, a school feeding programme, electrification of poor homes and public works projects for unemployed youths. A separate RDP office also was set up, headed by Minister without Portfolio Jay Naidoo (a former Cosatu union leader), to administer the fund and coordinate the different facets of the programme in the various ministries.

In 1996, however, the RDP lost its most visible public face when Mr. Naidoo was reassigned to other ministerial duties. The RDP office was eliminated as a separate entity, with its coordinating functions subsumed into the office of then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, now president, who remains directly responsible for the RDP programme.

Despite the RDP's lower profile, the programme has continued to register significant progress. Some of its achievements over the past six years, such as the rapid expansion of housing and access to clean water, surpass anything accomplished in such a short period of time elsewhere in Africa -- and even in some European countries (see table, page 14). A recent survey conducted by the National Economic Development and Labour Council, a statutory body that mediates most labour negotiations, found that a majority of those questioned felt their lives had improved due to the RDP.

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Pg 14 table:

RDP achievements, 1994-2000

Water: 4 million more people given access to clean running water

Housing: 900,000 units completed,1.1 mn housing subsidies allocated

Electrification: 1.5 mn new connections

Telephones: 4.2 mn new connections

Poverty relief: R3 bn allocated

Health: 600 new clinics, free health care for pregnant women and children under 6

Public works: 1,500 kilometres of roads built

Land: 68,000 families resettled on farming land

Source: RDP Development Monitor

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Shifting GEAR

Meanwhile, the government's overall economic policy approach began to undergo some notable shifts in the mid-1990s, in ways that Cosatu and other critics believe have compromised the RDP's long-term aims. Even before the 1994 election, the ANC had dropped some of its earlier, controversial policy planks, such as nationalization of large-scale industry and sweeping government redistribution of wealth from whites to blacks. A year after its election, and under pressure from both domestic business and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the ANC came to accept privatization in principle and dropped talk of regulating foreign investment. The government gradually eliminated measures to protect the currency and implemented some facets of trade liberalization even faster than required by its commitments to the World Trade Organization.

In June 1996 -- the same year the separate RDP office was disbanded -- the government adopted a new macroeconomic policy framework, called the Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy. The main focus of GEAR, as it is known, is to develop a "competitive, fast-growing economy" through tight fiscal and monetary discipline, significantly increased foreign and domestic investment, further steps to open the economy to international competition and a "reprioritizing" of public expenditures. The Washington-based international financial institutions have praised this approach.

Responding to critics who detected an overall shift in focus from aggressively tackling social concerns to relying on orthodox macroeconomic remedies, Mr. Pundy Pillay, who heads the RDP policy unit within the president's office, insists that the RDP remains an important component of government policy. "It is not at all incompatible with GEAR," he maintains. "The two policies require each other to work." The GEAR strategy document does acknowledge the need for "redistribution of income and opportunities in favour of the poor." However, it places the main emphasis on achieving this through high economic growth, to generate more jobs and higher incomes.

Although the initial GEAR strategy avowed that its market liberalization policies would "catapult" the South African economy to new levels of high growth, the results so far have remained disappointing. During 1996-99, South Africa's gross domestic product (GDP) grew in real terms by an average of only 2.1 per cent annually, below the population growth rate and well short of the 3.8 per cent average that GEAR deemed essential. In early November, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel revised downward the growth projections for 2000, from 3.6 per cent to 2.6 per cent -- less than half the 6 per cent target GEAR had originally set for the year. Factors have included a disappointing growth in investment (both foreign and domestic) and the slide in the world price of gold, one of South Africa's chief exports. So instead of many new jobs being created, slow growth has worsened unemployment, contributing to urban poverty in particular.

Trapped in poverty

A Finance Ministry budget review document, released along with the 2000/01 budget in February, was quite frank about poverty's continued persistence. "South Africa," it acknowledged, "remains one of the most unequal countries in the world, with the poorest 40 per cent of households still living below the minimum household subsistence level."

Using more recent data and an alternative measure of poverty, a government report on social development released in May found that 65 per cent of South Africans live below the poverty datum line. Almost all are black -- Africans, Coloureds and Indians, as they were categorized in the apartheid era, racial designations that still are in common use (see table, page 13). Of these poor, 19 million people (46 per cent of the total population) appear "trapped in poverty," living at or below R353 ($55) per month.

The continuing racial gap comes despite a modest redistribution of income between whites and blacks. Between 1991 and 1996, Africans' share of total income rose from 29.9 per cent to 35.7 per cent, while that of whites declined from 59.5 per cent to 51.9 per cent. The shares of Indians and Coloureds rose marginally. A Pretoria economic consulting firm, Wefa Southern Africa, has reported that while whites on average earned 15 times more than blacks in 1970, the gap had declined to 9 times by 1996.

Some gaps widen

This reduction has come in conjunction with a striking widening of the social gap within the races, however. Much of the decline in the white share of total income was the result of a loss of tens of thousands of jobs, with the scrapping of the previous government's job protection policy toward whites. But many blacks also have lost jobs as numerous established industries have retrenched or shut down.

In contrast, skilled black workers saw their average earnings increase, with those of Africans rising by 8 per cent between 1991 and 1996, according to the government's budget review. But it was the middle and upper classes -- those earning more than R72,000 a year -- who benefited the most. The number of such African households grew by a remarkable 78 per cent, with their share of total income rising from 9 per cent to 14 per cent. The number of Coloured middle and upper class households increased by 36 per cent, and of Indians, by 35 per cent.

Such sharply widening inequalities among blacks "is not the kind of redistributive path the country wants to continue on," observed the Wefa Southern Africa report. "The poor did not enjoy any benefits of the redistributed wealth. In fact they are even worse off."

A gender gap also exists. There has been some notable progress in advancing women in public life, with a number holding senior government positions and women comprising more than a quarter of elected parliamentary representatives. Less has changed in the economic and social conditions confronting poor women, however. According to the government's May social development report, 48.2 per cent of adult women are poor, compared with 43.7 per cent of adult men.

Some wonder whether such social disparities are in part reinforced by the government's economic liberalization programme. "I worry about GEAR," says Ms. Felicity Gibbs, national manager of Operation Hunger, a non-governmental organization that works extensively in poor communities. "On one hand, we need to be economically viable. We need to have a good economic policy, we need to sell our goods," she acknowledged during an interview with Africa Recovery at the group's Johannesburg headquarters. "On the other hand, it appears to enrich the already rich. The way it is being implemented possibly, the poor people are remaining where they are, and in fact are getting worse."

Unemployment and 'labour flexibility'

For the residents of Mandela Village and other urban areas, the greatest problem is the lack of secure, regular employment. Estimates of private sector job losses between 1994 and 1999 range around 500,000. The government judges that during the 1990s, an average of 50 per cent of the potential labour force was unable to secure a formal sector job, with employment in manufacturing stagnant overall and job cuts hitting mining and agriculture especially severely.

Some of those losses now are being reversed through the creation of new jobs, Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin told Africa Recovery. In 1994, the survival of automobile assembly was very much in doubt, he recalled, but now employment is rising again, with about 3-4,000 new jobs created in recent years. Similarly in clothing and textiles, each of which lost 20-30,000 jobs, employment also is picking up following "deep restructuring."

Some of this new job creation is of "extremely high quality," Mr. Erwin adds, with decent wages and high skill levels, in companies and sectors that appear to have a secure future. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that it may take another 10 years before overall unemployment can be brought down considerably.

In addition to wage levels, which in some industries remain relatively low, employment has been a central concern of the labour movement over the past few years, with more strikes around job issues. In 1998, nearly half of the 323,000 workers involved in strike actions were in manufacturing, one of the sectors hardest hit by closures and retrenchments. Most recently, in May 2000, Cosatu organized a nationwide strike and public demonstrations by tens of thousands of workers to protest job losses.

Private employers often complain that labour laws -- won by the unions after years of struggle against the repressive apartheid regime -- give workers too many rights and make it harder for businesses to survive in increasingly competitive international markets. About 400 businesses, employing 400,000 workers, already have applied for exemptions from the provisions of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, which regulates labour standards. Some government officials echo arguments that such regulation is too rigid, while the GEAR strategy document itself urges "greater labour market flexibility."

This has stirred alarm among unionists that the further implementation of GEAR may lead to big job losses in the public sector as well, especially as large state enterprises move toward privatization. Their fears were heightened when the Department of Public Service and Administration drafted plans in April calling for the elimination of 125,000 unskilled "auxiliary personnel" in the public sector, some by "outsourcing" services to private companies and some by outright retrenchment.

Subsequently, the government proposed reforming labour laws to make it easier for private employers to retrench workers, lift ceilings on overtime and eliminate premiums for working on Sundays. Union leaders currently are negotiating with the government to try to limit the scope of the proposed changes.

Economic 'empowerment'

With the contraction of regular salaried employment, South Africa's informal sector has grown considerably. There are no accurate estimates of its true size, but the proliferation of petty trading in the poor townships and even along the streets of downtown Johannesburg is very visible. Thousands of small-scale businesses, from service enterprises to crafts manufacturers, also have sprung up. Some of those involved are retrenched workers trying to make a living any way they can.

More than a simple survival mechanism, however, the informal and small-business sector also is providing new opportunities for some blacks to operate businesses of their own -- an opportunity that was denied to most under the old apartheid system. Now licences and credit are much easier to obtain.

While some blacks have emerged as prominent shareholders and executives in large, mostly white-owned corporations, development experts argue that the growth of small local businesses probably will have a greater impact on advancing "black economic empowerment." Mr. Erwin stresses that 30-40 per cent of his ministry's spending on industrial programmes is devoted specifically to small and medium-scale business. "And there the target is on black people."

Even taking into account the many small enterprises that fail, the net increase in the number of registered businesses is about 18-20 per cent each year. And this does not include all those who never register (usually to avoid taxes and regulation). Nevertheless, Mr. Erwin acknowledges, black entrepreneurs still are at a serious disadvantage. Whites, because they have more skills and capital to begin with, have been in a better position to set up viable businesses. They also have easier access to credit at reasonable interest rates. "It's been much more difficult for black people," says Mr. Erwin. "But it's happening, it's certainly happening."

One problem, argues Mr. Alistair Ruiters, director-general of the Department of Trade and Industry, is that small businesspeople do not have a strong voice to make their concerns heard. "At present only big business has the ear of government in an organized form," he said in an interview with the RDP Development Monitor, an independent watchdog publication.

Slow land redistribution

Rural folk are not well organized either. Nor is their poverty as visible as that of urban residents. But much of South Africa's countryside remains highly impoverished. According to government estimates, 72 per cent of the poor live in rural areas, where the poverty rate reaches 71 per cent. Few jobs are available in the countryside, and the best agricultural land was long ago taken by white farmers.

Although the RDP programme has helped extend access to clean water to 4 million more people, many others still are waiting. Minister of Water Affairs Ronnie Kasrils estimates that more than 8 million rural people still do not have access to safe water. "People, mainly women, have to trek every day in search of a few buckets of water and carry it home on their heads," he told parliament in June. He also expressed alarm that at the current pace, it would take 20 more years to bring clean water to all South Africans, instead of by the target year of 2007.

Under apartheid, 87 per cent of South Africa's total land area was legally available only to whites or owned by the government, with only the remaining 13 per cent -- often the poorest and most desolate land -- designated as African "homelands." After 1960, more than 3.5 million rural people were forcibly uprooted from their homes as part of the apartheid regime's policy of removing rural "black spots."

To redress this historic injustice, the ANC places a major emphasis on land reform, with the RDP identifying land as "the most basic need for rural dwellers." It pledged to redistribute about 30 per cent of farmland to blacks through a variety of methods.

Redistribution got off to a slow start, however. At the urging of the World Bank and other donor institutions, the ANC declared it would not expropriate land for redistribution. Instead it would enable individuals and communities to buy land from the current owners. However, state subsidies and other assistance were so limited that even groups of people had difficulty raising enough money to acquire a viable piece of land. By the end of 1997 the number of households benefiting from redistribution reached 25,000, and the number now stands at around 68,000.

Another process is "restitution," that is, the return of land to individuals and communities from which it had been forcibly seized by the apartheid authorities. As of January 2000, a total of some 63,455 land-restitution claims had been filed. But the underfunded and understaffed land claims court had been able to settle only 785 of those cases, returning 14,900 families to their traditional lands.

One of the best-known cases was Mogopa, where residents were expelled from their homes in 1984, but returned in 1989 in open defiance of the authorities. In 1996 they at last secured legal deeds to their old land. But like other rural blacks who have succeeded in acquiring land, they needed more than just title and ownership to secure their futures. They also needed better housing, water, farming implements, seeds, livestock, agricultural extension services and credit, all of which have been coming at a painfully slow pace, if at all.

Health and education

Responding to the need to extend essential social services to sectors of the population that previously had been excluded, the ANC government has drastically altered the old patterns of budgetary spending. Between 1994 and 1997, central government expenditures on social services increased by 34 per cent. Since then, there have been further annual increases in nominal terms.

In the 2000/01 budget, combined national and provincial spending on education, health and other social services reached R109 bn ($17.8 bn), or more than 44 per cent of total government expenditure. However, a trade-union review of the budget noted that recent spending increases actually have been quite modest after inflation is factored in. Thus real health spending rose by an annual average of only 0.9 per cent from 1997 through 2000, while education spending in fact declined by 1.3 per cent per year.

Only part of this social spending is targeted toward basic needs, even though more resources have been directed toward the poorer provinces and poorest sectors of the population. South Africa currently allocates 14.8 per cent of its total spending to basic social services -- primary health, education and nutrition. The government nevertheless subscribes to the 20 per cent goal adopted at the 1995 UN World Summit on Social Development. Finance Minister Manuel estimates that if current (somewhat optimistic) growth projections bear out, an additional R21 bn can be budgeted for social expenditures over the next three years.

One of the largest single allocations in the current budget, R50.7 bn, is for education, from pre-primary to university levels. By 1997, the net enrolment ratio in primary school had reached 87.1 per cent, one of the higher rates in Africa, with only a small gap between boys and girls (87.9 per cent and 86.3 per cent, respectively). Since formal enrolment was relatively high even before the change in government, the increases in crude numbers have not been very dramatic, rising from 7.7 million primary school students in 1994 to 8 mn in 1997. With the introduction of a policy of compulsory education for all children between the ages of 7 and 15, the goal is to reach full enrolment.

The greatest change in education has been in reducing the fragmentation and disparities fostered by the apartheid regime, which kept the quality of education in black schools very low. The Schools Act of 1996 created the first national school system in the country's history, eliminating the separate systems for whites, Indians, Coloureds and the different African language groups. Racial divisions have been prohibited, and all education institutions are now legally open to everyone. Expensive private schools generally remain predominantly white, but they can no longer bar someone on the basis of his or her race. Provincial government funds are allocated to schools on the basis of poverty and need, helping ensure that the quality of education for black youth gradually improves.

In the health sector, there still are glaring disparities. Nearly two-thirds of South African doctors are in private practice, serving some 9 million people, while the remaining third work in public hospitals and clinics, serving 25 million people. About 19 million South Africans, nearly half the population, have no health insurance. For the poor, therefore, government health services are crucial, with spending reaching R32.3 bn in 2000/01, up from R24.8 bn four years earlier.

As in education, there is an effort to focus more on basic services, such as primary and preventive health care, including the Ministry of Health's widely praised immunization campaigns. Yet conditions in many facilities, especially in the countryside, remain poor. Nearly a third of rural hospitals have no access to clean water. One in five have no electricity or emergency oxygen supply. A quarter have no medicines for tuberculosis, which has reached epidemic levels. Only 35 per cent of rural clinics and 77 per cent of urban clinics are able to test for HIV.

Currently, much funding for social services passes through the provincial governments, with about 95 per cent of their revenue coming from the central government. In future, there will likely be more pressure on the provinces to raise more of their own revenues, from various fees and levies. Some officials have floated the idea of higher school fees and health service charges. Parliamentary deputies, worried that such user charges could place an undue burden on the poor, adopted legislation in 1998 stipulating that any family with a total income less than 30 times the cost of its school fees would receive partial exemption, while those with incomes less than 10 times would be fully exempt.

Social safety nets

Before President Mandela took office in 1994, millions of South Africans did not receive social benefits of any kind. In line with the new constitution's provision that all citizens are entitled to social security, the government soon established a very extensive welfare system, catering for the aged, disabled, children in need, foster parents and many others too poor to meet their basic social requirements. Among developing countries, it is unique, in that it is "non-contributory," with grants, allowances and other support based on need, not recipients' prior contributions.

Social security payments are made to about 5 million South Africans annually, including 70 per cent of the aged, half of those with disabilities and 15 per cent of children under the age of 7 (the target is 30 per cent). But many in need still are not covered by these programmes, and even those who are sometimes experience difficulties. In 2000, pensioners in Transkei staged raucous protests after they were dropped from the provincial welfare rolls, and the Eastern Cape administration was obliged to restore grants to 30,000 disabled people it had previously stricken. The former Department of Welfare (now renamed Social Development) was rocked by scandal over its failure, three years in a row, to actually spend more than a third of its budgetary allocation.

A committee of inquiry set up by the cabinet is currently investigating ways to make the social security system even more comprehensive. The aim is to fill the gaps in the existing system and to reach AIDS orphans, children older than 7 and workers not covered by unemployment insurance (currently 60 per cent of the workforce). The committee's work is particularly important, says its chair, Ms. Vivienne Taylor, because it takes place "in the context of globalization, with increasing job losses . . . and the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS and deepening poverty."

One proposal under the committee's consideration is to allocate an "income grant" of about R100 per month to everyone who is unemployed, an idea originally raised by the Cosatu union federation. Other groups, such as the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (Naledi), have made similar recommendations for some form of "social wage." Such a wage, noted a Naledi report, would not only make it possible for the poor to ensure their basic necessities, but would also improve South Africa's prospects for stability by providing "a central mechanism to maintain social cohesion during the consolidation of democracy and the vagaries of globalization."

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BOX 1:

From shacks to new houses

After decades of apartheid-enforced evictions and residential constraints, millions of black South African families live in shacks and other sub-standard housing, making them particularly keen to secure a home of their own. Since 1994, the provincial governments have provided more than 1 mn grants of R16,000 each to help poor communities and families build new houses. According to Minister of Housing Sankie Mathembi-Mahanyele, some 900,000 units had been completed by mid-2000. This fell somewhat short of the original target under the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of 1 mn new houses by the end of 1999, but nevertheless has been "outstanding in international terms," notes Ms. Mathembi-Mahanyele. Another 2 million families, or about 12 million people, still need access to livable housing.

Given the sheer scale of the problem, the RDP, during its first few years, tended to emphasize quantity over quality. Many of these "RDP houses" were poorly built, in part because of inadequate monitoring of the developers contracted to implement the schemes. Many houses also are tiny, spawning countless jokes: "The RDP houses are so small that if you lie down to sleep, your feet stick out the front door." "They are so small that you have to go outside to change your mind."

More recently, legislation has been passed to ensure minimum standards for RDP houses, and a new housing strategy currently in preparation will direct more of the subsidies to individual families, rather than to developers. Beyond the RDP programme, a number of other schemes for low-cost housing also are under way, some with support from non-governmental organizations and donor agencies. So far, however, "the banks are still not playing their role fully," complains Ms. Mathembi-Mahanyele, reflecting a broader problem poor blacks have in securing credit from the banking system.

Through organization, hard work and some outside assistance, a number of communities are overcoming such obstacles through their own initiative. On a hillside in Newlands, just outside the port city of Durban, dozens of families are building their own houses. Members of the nationwide South African Homeless People's Federation, they are developing some 155 houses. Although they receive technical assistance from the People's Housing Partnership Trust (funded by the UN Development Programme, US Agency for International Development and South Africa's Ministry of Housing), most of the labour and financing is their own.

Almost all the families, overwhelmingly headed by women, were previously evicted from various other shantytowns and settlement sites. Thanks to a request by the UN Development Programme, the Durban authorities agreed they could settle on municipal land in Newlands, with the city installing water taps. Then a few families at a time began putting up houses, financed largely by their own savings. After choosing the floor plan they prefer and purchasing building supplies in bulk, groups of women then work with each other to mix and pour the cement foundations. They then pay three construction workers R50 each to put up the walls and roofs, a process that usually takes three days per house.

Compared with the RDP houses, the Newlands buildings are both larger (four and a half rooms each) and cheaper (R12,500 instead of R16,000). The key ingredient, community leader Thembelihle Mkhize told a group of UN visitors in October 1999, is the women's ability to mobilize their "sweat equity." Their success, she said, could help inspire homeless people elsewhere in South Africa. "Why should we live in backyards, or under bridges?" she asked. "Let us stand up and also be counted."

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