Access to adequate housing, including water, sanitation and secure tenure is an integral part of Government's commitment to reducing poverty and to improving the quality of people's lives.

Meeting this commitment requires a sustainable housing development process, which will progressively provide adequate housing for all South Africans, as required by the Constitution.

The Department of Housing aims to ensure that every South African has access to a permanent residential structure within a sustainable human settlement, which guarantees privacy and protection. Housing assistance to the poor is therefore the sole focus of the development.

The IFP agrees with the Department's broad policies, priorities and strategic goals as stated above. This year our Country is celebrating 10 years of democracy, freedom and human dignity. The defeat of apartheid and its legacy in the housing sector is still a huge challenge, as indicated in your strategic document and backlog in housing delivery what we must deal with.

One of the dirtiest apartheid legislations was influx control, which gave birth to the inhuman and humiliating living conditions for so-called migrant labour in urban areas, called hostels.

Hostels remain apartheid monuments in our communities. The 250 000 plus South Africans in Gauteng hostels are still trapped in these living conditions.

The IFP welcomes and encourages the Department and the new Minister with their new thinking, in order to deal with the hostels issue in a more realistic and suitable manner:

1. To integrate the hostels into the broader communities
2. Not to upgrade or renovate completely, but to create new habitable dwellings without communal facilities
3. Give security of tenure to hostels that have converted into family units and provide facilities that support family life e.g. schools, clinics etc.

In this instance I want to highlight two hostels: Meadowlands Hostel and Diepkloof Hostel.

• Meadowlands Hostel - now Zone 11 has, since 1977, 3150 families. The upgrading started in 1996 but it is not yet complete. It has no facilities to support family life and there are budget problems.
  
• Diepkloof Hostel - no development has taken place. There is no running water, no electricity or sanitation. There are more than 2000 families living here and they have agreed to convert into family units, and be integrated into the broader community of Diepkloof and Soweto. Please speed up.

These two hostels are victims of the present policy-linked subsidy scheme. It is cheaper to build a new RDP house than to convert or upgrade an existing structure into habitable dwellings.

We therefore we urge and support the new thinking and acknowledgement by the Department and the new Minister, that the exercise to give dignity and reintegrate our fellow South African in the hostels into the broader community is not going to come cheaply.

These people did not choose to be there. They were forced to live in hostels by the previous regime. We need to seriously and speedily deal with their plight.