Informal settlements in South Africa: THE TRUTH

is one of south africa's fastest growing cities with tens of thousands of people moving to the region annually in search of opportunities for a great number of people without financial means this then means that living in informal settlements the number of informal settlements increases every year and i feel how do you feel when you are a disabled person we need a right place not like this one i'm here now to fight for the right of the people like many other countries during the past century urbanization took place at an aggressive scale 25 percent of people were living in urban areas in 1921 and this doubled to 50 percent in 1980 for south africa many projections indicate urbanization will reach 80 percent in the near future many rural to urban migrants come from impoverished and underdeveloped rural communities they come to the city and search for better economic opportunities and education this said urbanization comes with various consequences we will explore by 2014 23 of the urban population in south africa were living in informal housing settlements or shacks these are generally built poorly out of tin and other materials living in informal settlements in south africa is dangerous and uncomfortable there is often no sanitation or plumbing no running water and no electricity furthermore urbanization in the last 10 years has increased the number of south africans relying on informal accommodations [Music] it's time to wake up and do this thing the borgin project interviewed imran bukis a senior research associate at the orwell socioeconomic research institute in south africa and political analysts for various durban news stations and papers he identifies urbanization and unemployment as key drivers of poor access to housing in the country from 2007 to 2017 the percentage of south african residents living in urban areas had risen from 60 to 65 percent bucus believes that the cities tend to represent hope for a large portion of the impoverished and unemployed population unfortunately though recent migration has caused overcrowding in urban areas and the national and municipal authorities have been overwhelmed by the influx another issue faced is that the informal settlements in south africa are unregulated and therefore often built in dangerous locations city bylaws mandate that these checks be removed for public safety reasons the reconstruction and development program rdp introduced by the anc government in 1994 set up a government-funded housing program to house low-income residents [Music] okay so right now it's still morning i've got a bit of bed head uh but we're gonna be investigating the informal settlements of south africa or just the informal settlements around this area we're also going to be talking a bit about informal settlements today so tune in and join me on this hike with my dad [Music] so oh between 1994 and 2005 the government had built 1.8 million brand new basic government houses as a part of the program [Music] we're not starting the hike we haven't even started it we just started the hike now jeez since the program was introduced in 1994 around 4 million houses have been built and allocated to needy families and individuals sadly the progress has slowed down in recent years and the government is unable to keep up with the demand for rdp housing in some areas housing backlogs have led to extensive waiting periods for free government housing this issue has perpetuated the existence of informal housing settlements or slums in and around south african cities and townships over the past several decades informal settlements in south africa have grown in size and population wow some issues related to urbanization and this links up with your geography section on it are lack of planning housing shortages overcrowding traffic congestion and problems with service provision but let's talk about the growth of informal settlements and associated issues well it's a major problem in african cities not just south africa it's the inability of the government to provide adequate and affordable housing most people don't have access to formal housing and live in unplanned and formal settlements which lack and services there's a lack of infrastructure a lack of social amenities lack of clean water lack of proper roads lack of electricity and it requires management but these are the informal settlements it's quite lively here as you can see lots of noise kids playing and there seems to be electricity even though it doesn't seem like there's infrastructure for that here [Music] [Music] blow up [Music] foreign there seems to be a makeshift electric line here power as you can see line you if you look at all of this from afar so one solution to the problem is creating new towns or planned sites and these are built to ease the housing shortage and provide work all aspects of development are determined before construction begins so it's sustainable development oh we've got a bit of a garden happening here so this is an on-site visit of this formal settlement we're going to make more observations and speak about it more once we get home but for now i'm going to keep on capturing more content of this area new towns aim to decentralize urban functions and populations stimulate economic growth so create jobs provide housing and community services for the growing population this is not the first time you come here now you i call it the reality check like the reality check height human survive true true i know you've always wanted to bring me and my sister on these hikes so now i'm gonna film this and bring it to the world and they have a little bit of a feel for soccer and some sport here that seems to be some sort of toilet or disposal area that they've made it looks like some of the people here are migrant workers that actually might have a better place to live back in their home towns maybe in a maybe in like places like lomboko or something which is a rural area why do you think that yeah most of these people are economic migrants economic migrants are coming to holding for better opportunities for jobs so we failed to create job opportunities in the rural areas so everybody will flog to the cities that's what creates the problem look how the electricity infrastructure is set up and there's still cables they come and use them here this is a live wire wow just look at that hope you guys can see that one thing i will say though that is that behind the informal settlement the mountains the nature is actually really really beautiful and it's almost a call back or reminiscent of a time when these informal settlements were not so rampant [Music] uh [Music] there you go shows you the sort of recreational activities people do when the mountain is when the mountain isn't occupied by these informal settlements [Music] and they have the following planning goals creating open spaces and green areas making proper roads suburbs parks and land uses planned from the start physical economic and social aspects are all integrated and some have no function other than residential we just got blocked because there are wires stopping us from moving through because it looks like people have just come and plotted arbitrarily just plot their land here it seems so [Music] these [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] i'm at the mercy [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] i think most of the people that are in this informal settlement are economic migrants because of them yeah most of them will leave the rural communities to try to seek better opportunities in the cities okay so i think as as a as a country we fail to industrialize the rural communities and create job opportunities there so everybody will eventually flock to the cities there's not only a pictorial issue or whatever whatever the structure is people will flow there that because people are impatient and you know want to survive want to put the food on their tables and the government is playing catch up so that's why you will find there is no infrastructure because it was not land earmarked for development yes so we we are fully shot we're playing catch up with that playing ketchup yeah that's a problem and this is not going to be sorted out until we sort out the economy unfortunately it's going to continue this type of rural settlements are just popping out everywhere in the cities everywhere jobeck pretoria devon cape town everybody where there's like a bit of economic activity people like economic hubs formal settlements tend to crop off [Music] you

Channel: Tee

Views: 2,498

Keywords: Agglomeration, Geography, Climate, Economic Sector, Planning, Informal settlements, South Africa Informal Settlements, Slums in South Africa, Slums

Id: e1_1wW7Q0Uw

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 06 2021