POLITICALLY AWEH: What each party says about SA’s housing crisis

Joining Politically Aweh for this housing crisis discussion are Eddie Andrews (DA), Cameron Dugmore (ANC), Dereleen James (ActionSA), Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng (EFF), Dr Corné Mulder (FF+) and Songezo Zibi of Rise Mzansi, which is contesting this election alongside Good. We invited MK too, but they blue-ticked us.

How do we build more homes?

Andrews, who is the current deputy mayor of Cape Town, said the City faced a shortfall of about 30,000 homes a year. The government shouldn’t be the only provider for housing opportunities, he argued, but could enable the environment for affordable housing.

“We see the private sector as our partners,” Andrews says, emphasising the importance of “investment-led growth”.

Dugmore said that, unlike the DA, the ANC would stop selling municipal land “to foreigners”, and rezone the inner city so buildings could go up 20 floors.

“The higher the buildings can go, the cheaper the units,” he said. He also said they would audit all state land within 100 days. James promised the same, plus an audit in 99 days, and offering title deeds instead of leases.

Zibi of Rise Mzansi wants metros to buy up land, invest in infrastructure, and give people serviced plots to build their own homes on, with the state building for those who can’t afford to. 

Mulder argued that no municipality could afford to build a house for everyone. He advocated for giving people serviced plots to build their own homes on, as well as looking into social housing: many South Africans don’t want to live in flats.  

Interestingly, Mulder and Zibi agreed on giving serviced plots to people who need them, despite the fact that Rise and the FF+ are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. 

Mofokeng, the EFF’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate, said the EFF would set time-bound plans to clear existing housing backlogs, publish transparent waiting lists, and formalise informal settlements so the City could provide water, electricity and sewerage.

Is spatial apartheid real?

Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has called the term “propaganda language”. His deputy, interestingly, didn’t say the same: Andrews told us apartheid pushed people to the edges of the city, and that workers commuting into town could spend about 40% of their disposable income on transport and lose roughly three hours a day. Someone forward that to the mayor’s office.

James linked spatial apartheid directly to the killings on the Cape Flats, calling it a social justice issue. Her response to the mayor: “What does he mean [spatial apartheid] doesn’t exist? Can he not see the gang violence?”

For Zibi, the problem starts with distance: people live too far from where they work. Rise’s answer is mixed-income neighbourhoods, where people on different incomes live side by side. That had real economic benefits for those people, he said, and for the industries around them.

Mofokeng also spoke about the importance of mixed housing and integrated spaces, including dignified housing that allowed people access to economic hubs and infrastructure. 

In July, the Constitutional Court ruled in the Tafelberg case that the City and the Western Cape government had failed to deliver affordable housing in the inner city, after the province tried to sell the Sea Point site to a private school. Dugmore said homes in the R500,000 to R700,000 bracket simply weren’t being built in well-located areas. 

James said she’d prioritise middle- and low-income earners – people earning roughly between R3,500 and R20,000 a month – and cap prices on developments where a two-bedroom flat cost R5 million.

“People working in the city need to be able to live closer to the city,” she said.  

The Airbnb question

We asked all parties whether short-term rentals were making things worse. Almost all parties said yes, other than the DA.

Zibi said yes, pointing to digital nomads: locals were competing with renters who would pay in one month what a resident pays in three. Dugmore agreed, saying Airbnb was “not regulated at all” in Cape Town.

The City’s draft short-term letting bylaw, which closed for public comment on 5 October, would require listings to register and charge commercial rates on homes let out short-term for more than half the year. However, this is not law yet, and critics say it doesn’t go far enough.

Andrews didn’t think short-term rentals were the problem.

“Market goes where market goes,” he said. For context, the DA’s former head of policy, Gwen Ngwenya, left the party in March 2023 to become Airbnb’s head of policy for the Middle East and Africa. 

And rent control? Andrews said there was “no chance” of it in Cape Town.

What went wrong?

Why exactly did Cape Town become so expensive?

James said it happened because the City now caters to tourists over residents.

“Why aren’t we good enough to participate in the economy? Why are we only good enough to sweep the streets?” she asked.

Zibi went further.

“What Cape Town has allowed is basically rampant capitalism,” he said, with stronger currencies distorting the property market and pricing locals out. Rise wanted limits on how much property non-South Africans could buy, which Zibi said would bring the market back into balance. When the former editor of Business Day is concerned about “rampant capitalism”, it’s worth paying attention to.

“Regulation is not anti-market,” Zibi said. Without it, he warned, you get big crashes and “a lot of misery later”.

“We believe the developers, and not people who need the housing, are dictating the agenda,” said Dugmore. It’s worth noting that Cape Town’s inclusionary housing policy has been in limbo since 2018, while the DA-run Stellenbosch municipality has implemented one.

Can the DA hold Cape Town?

Mulder joked that he was tempted to solve the housing crisis by getting rid of the DA, before saying that would be “undemocratic”. Spicy words coming from the DA’s coalition partner in George!

But it’s possible that the DA will lose their stronghold in Cape Town, with housing being one of the many possible reasons contributing to it: Dugmore says the DA isn’t “sitting very comfortably” this time. Ipsos has the DA on 46% in Cape Town and the ANC on 26%, so the DA still leads, but the gap is something to watch on 4 November.

Andrews, for his part, promised less red tape and more support for residents building affordable rental units on their own properties if the DA gets another term. 

Meanwhile, Mofokeng’s case against the DA was that it wanted municipal services and land privatised. She said it used rates and tariffs to entrench a new spatial apartheid in Cape Town, and that Helen Zille would bring the same approach to Johannesburg. DM

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