The extent to which government provided housing compared to self-help housing empower or further disempower poor communities

Abstract

The Reconstruction and Development Programme and the People's Housing Process were both introduced in an effort to address the existing challenge of providing housing for low income earners in South Africa. Both these programmes had intended to empower its beneficiaries in the process. However, there is a lack of evidence to demonstrate whether this was achieved. The aim of this research was to determine the extent to which government provided housing compared to selfhelp housing empowered or further disempowered poor communities. The objectives of this research were as follows: to develop an understanding of what empowerment is; to identify determinants associated with empowerment definitions; to develop indicators that can be used to evaluate empowerment; to use the indicators to evaluate the presence, decrease or absence of empowerment in relation to the two selected study areas in the field investigation; and to compare the results yielded from the field investigation in order to draw a conclusion and respond to the main aim if the study. A field investigation was conducted between two study areas namely, the Lebone Development Trust (PHP project) and the Botshabelo 900 Pamper Construction Project (RDP project). Both these projects are located in Botshabelo, a township situated in Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality in the Free State Province. The data was collected from a total sample of 50 households in two phases. The intention of the first phase was to gain the beneficiaries' views concerning what empowerment means and from their understanding, confirm the determinants that can be used to evaluate empowerment in this study. These determinants, together with those identified in the literature review, were used to evaluate empowerment in the follow-up interview. The results of the study revealed that there were weaknesses and strengths in both the projects when comparing them with each other. Though there were no beneficiaries that were disempowered, the beneficiaries of the PHP project appeared to have been more empowered in some determinants than the beneficiaries of the RDP project.