By Neil Fraser
August 22, 2005
AS ONE would expect, the official opening of the Johannesburg Housing Company's Brickfields project in Newtown on Friday, 12 August was a swell affair.
That President Thabo Mbeki officiated highlighted the importance of the occasion. Brickfields was, in fact, one of the projects that came out of the Presidential Jobs Summit agreed back in 1998.
I thought that the president's speech was extremely pertinent and perceptive and, as one has come to expect, poetic. I am going to quote widely from it, as one hopes the message sent out by the head of the country will not only be heard, but also be acted upon.
Mbeki started by reminding all present of the colonial and apartheid history of the area, which led to it becoming "a wasteland as both the apartheid government and the mining bosses refused to regard as their responsibility the provision of proper housing and security and comfort to their workers".
Wasteland
His "wasteland" allegory was backed by a quotation from TS Eliot's poem of the same name:
"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
"Only there is shadow under the red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either.
"Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
"Indeed," Mbeki said, "as the dream of a non-racial community died under the load of colonial and apartheid laws, it seemed as if Brickfields would forever represent 'the heap of broken images, where the sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter' and where 'the cricket', or any sporting activity, offered 'no relief'.
"Today, we are here to transform the dust and the wasteland of Fordsburg Spruit and to exorcise the apartheid ghosts of the slums of the Brickfields Estate. No longer shall the spectre of the shadows of apartheid, colonial subjugation, forced removals of vibrant communities and bulldozers haunt us.
New, safe spaces
"For the Fordsburg Spruit has come alive as the eternal fountain and spring of hope and prosperity, as the golden roots and branches of new families creating new, safe spaces and new opportunities amidst the sturdy rock and clay.
"No longer do we see dusty streets or a cloud of a handful of dust. For in the hidden splendour of the golden dust, arises something different - a new city of prosperity, of healthy communities, of decent housing, of security and comfort.
"The Brickfields housing project is a tangible expression of how the worldwide phenomenon of decaying inner cities, can, through sustainable urbanisation, be transformed into peaceful, better havens and friendly neighbourhoods."
Certainly a poetic epitaph for what once was.
The second issue the president raised was the entrenchment of apartheid planning and the rich-poor divide versus the regeneration of communities.
Housing for the rich
"We have, among others, an urgent challenge of bringing to a stop the pro-rich housing development strategies that ensure that the best located land that is close to all the best facilities is always available to the rich; a situation where the best land is allocated especially to create gated communities and golf estates, while the poor can only access dusty, semi-developed land far away from modern infrastructure.
"All of us have a duty to use housing development to create vibrant communities for all our people; to build communities that have adequate recreational facilities; that have crèches, clinics and schools like the Brickfields development; communities that have active sports instructors for the young people and have sufficient number of trained professionals that assist with career guidance for learners and students.
"We need those communities that have social workers who are ready and able to help our people with whatever challenges they face. Together we should create communities where teachers, priests and other community leaders are not afraid to lead our people into a better future.
"Indeed, I would like all of us, as we engage in these important programmes of housing developments, to see these as part of the larger national agenda of the regeneration of our communities and accordingly use these processes to help build vibrant, viable and lively communities which have internalised the ethos of ubuntu and are able to utilise the age-old values of letsema and vuk'zenzele."
Business Report of Wednesday, 17 August challenged these comments as "mystifying". Pointing out that the most conveniently located land "has been and always will be likely to cost more", and that "it stands to reason that the rich will be most able to buy in the better located areas" the reporter lauded the "vision, persistence and financial commitment" of developers that had made these estates successful.
It is a pity they don't provide some of their getting-obscenely-rich genius towards helping us solve the problems of how to house the 30-plus percent of people who are unemployed and have no income at all.
But the fact of the matter is that we need to be focusing on regenerating communities and we will not achieve that if we persist in apartheid planning. That is why Newtown is such a special opportunity, right on the edge of the city with projects such as Brickfields merely a few streets away from proposed high-income residential buildings.
Slum lords
Thirdly, the president touched on my major
inner city nightmare of the moment - slumlording, hijacking of buildings and reprehensible criminal behaviour. He charged the mayor and police with the responsibility of dealing with the issue. Yes!
"This development demonstrates that it is possible to regenerate the inner cities and avoid the resort to unscrupulous, fly-by-night operations similar to some of those that we have seen in this city where our people are placed in derelict buildings that have no lights, no water and no proper sewerage," Mbeki said.
"This is done by people who are only interested in making as much money as possible out of the desperation of our people for shelter. We should increase our efforts to bring to book those responsible for this unacceptable behaviour.
"I understand that some of these criminals are brazen in their criminal activities to the extent that they even resort to murder so as to hijack buildings in order to extort money from our people. I would like the city mayor, working with the police, to attend urgently to this matter."
Watch this space.
Regards, Neil
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