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The Department of Housing released a new Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme in 2004 that makes in situ upgrading of informal settlements possible with minimal disruption to residents' lives. To date, the new programme is not necessarily the municipalities' choice when intervening in an informal settlement. This paper reflects on the treatment of informal settlements in current urban discourse and practice in South Africa. It presents the case of three informal settlement communities in Gauteng Province that have struggled for recognition of basic principles of the informal settlement upgrading programme. Their requests have been met with great reluctance by local government. Through these cases, the paper points to some of the critical re-skilling and capacity-building areas that are needed before local government can roll out the informal settlement upgrading programme at scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanisation in the South has contributed to the growth of informal housing on a large scale. South Africa’s experience is somewhat unusual in that the growth of informality appears to have taken the form of backyard shacks in established townships rather than free-standing shacks in squatter settlements. This is potentially important for household well-being (e.g. better access to services) and for the efficient functioning of urban areas. The paper develops a framework for assessing the impacts and applies it to the country’s leading metropolitan region, Gauteng. It finds that people are slightly better-off in backyards than in shacks elsewhere, although the wider benefits for urban areas are equivocal. In some respects backyard shacks are a stopgap for poor households desperate for somewhere to live. In other respects they represent a kind of prototype solution to the urban housing crisis. The government could do more to improve basic dwelling conditions and to relieve the extra pressure on local services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The housing delivery plans of the South African province of Gauteng and two of its metropolitan municipalities broadly respond to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for improving the lives of slum dwellers and eradicating poverty. This paper evaluates some South African responses to the MDGs by considering the housing delivery and settlement upgrading plans of the provincial and local authorities for two major cities in Gauteng. In the face of pressure to demonstrate progress in meeting the MDGs, public servants have resorted to devising strategies that will present a positive picture. These include semantic changes such as subscribing to a narrow definition of informality as illegality and shifting responsibility away from particular organs of the state and onto residents, the private sector and other spheres of state. These strategies are unlikely to bring significant improvement to the lives of poor people living in informal settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]