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South African – Danish Environmental Co-operation

Progress through patience

Attempts to promote energy-saving and environmentally-friendly housing in South Africa’s townships usually hits a common barrier: Savings demand an investment that the poor can’t afford. Danced tries to motivate by way of examples

When Monwabisi Booi applied for a position as consultant for one of Danced’s most challenging projects, he held a university degree in development studies. But he soon realised that his most important qualification was the higher degree in patience you only learn through growing up in Africa.

Booi himself lives in a shack in Cape Town’s largest black township, Khayelitsha, where he works for SEED (Sustainable Energy, Environment & Development Programme), a Danced-funded project that promotes environmental consciousness among the poorest in South Africa.

"The Danes are always very eager to see results," says Booi, as he takes me on a tour through an area with 2 309 new houses, built as part of the government’s election promise that it would build one million low-cost dwellings.

Half-way up the walls of the tiny houses is one of Booi’s most visible achievements to date: ventilation holes meant to contribute to a better and more healthy environment in often over-crowded homes.

The houses also demonstrate an example of the massive challenges facing SEED. Booi points out the abandoned attempts to install insulating ceilings under the corrugated iron roofs. SEED advocates these insulated ceilings because they attenuate the heat of summer and also preserve warmth in winter. It was thus hoped that consumption of wood and paraffin might be reduced. They are the fuels of choice for creating warmth in Khayelitsha, and the resulting pollution has contributed to Cape Town’s status as one of the tuberculosis capitals of the world.

But the future occupants of the houses could not be convinced. The budget was so small that it became a choice between the ceilings and three extra square metres of living space. With houses of just over 30 square metres, people went for the extra space.

"Their next priority will be a mat on the floor. After that comes curtains. Only then will they consider the ceiling – and that will be to make the house look nicer," says Booi.

The example drives home the point: energy awareness is difficult to promote among the needy. The ceilings will pay for themselves over some years when the bill for paraffin and firewood drops. But investments meant to create long-term profit is a luxury reserved for the rich.

Booi hopes to make greater inroads when people embark upon the inevitable extensions of the small houses. In SEED’s demonstration house in Khayelitsha, they can find examples of fireproof and insulating materials at relatively low prices.

By way of examples

"To get people to buy into environmental issues, it is good to link it to their needs," says Booi.

To this end, SEED has arranged a competition to fight one of Khayelitsha’s most visible environmental problems: sand drift. The township is largely built on dunes which are constantly shifted around by Cape Town’s strong summer winds.

Booi will reward the house owner who fights sand drift most efficiently through planting. The award is an insulated ceiling which the winner must promise to market by allowing residents of the area to come and have a look.

From his office in a newly-opened energy centre, Booi and the municipality are marketing low-energy bulbs and water-saving shower heads.

Eskom, South Africa’s national electricity provider, has promised to donate 200 bulbs and 10 ceilings in a new, cheaper material which SEED has tested in Johannesburg townships. But the rest of Khayelitsha’s population, of close to a million people, will still have to invest before they can save.

Expensive savings

"We offer an environmental agenda to the poorest which they can seldom afford," concedes SEED’s chief technical advisor, René Karottki.

SEED’s NGO-partner in Cape Town, Development Action Group (DAG), is considering a money-lending programme to overcome this problem. A sort of green finance for the poor.

Another of SEED’s ambitions is to make solar power fashionable among the emerging black middle class and then hope that the concept will become popular with others. South Africa has sun in abundance yet surprisingly few solar panels.

Absurdly enough, simple use of solar power has been known for generations in the rural areas in the eastern Cape, where most of Cape Town’s Xhosa-speaking population originates, says Mfundo Ngcaphe of DAG. But since people moved to the townships, they haven’t cared much about energy consumption. During apartheid, the residents of the townships boycotted electricity and water payments.

"In the cities people have got used to rely on the government for things like electricity. So the lack of environmental consciousness is part of our history," says Ngcaphe.

Information counts

SEED is active in Khayelitsha, in townships around Johannesburg and in two rural areas. The programme has been most successful where it has managed to combine environmental efforts with initiatives that have an immediate financial pay-back. One example is rural energy centres where farmers in co-operatives work with environmental issues.

The co-operatives advise on energy saving and alternative energy and sell firewood and solar-driven equipment in areas where huge distances and few suppliers have driven up the prices of bottled gas and paraffin.

All the activities of SEED are covered in the project’s own newsletter, mailed to politicians and other decision-makers. Karottki regards this long-term policy work as one of the major aims of the project.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ncguka, Minister of Energy and Minerals, is among the people whom SEED has managed to interest in the lessons learnt from the programme. Her constituency is Guguletu township in Cape Town which was hit by a tornado in August 1999. SEED has advised on the rebuilding of the area and attempted to make the new houses as energy-efficient as possible.

A local development organization assisted by SEED has established an energy centre in Guguletu which advises on lower energy and water consumption. It also sells recycled and second-hand building materials and solar-powered stoves.

Spokesman for the poor

Back in Khayelitsha, Booi has added an important portfolio to his job. He has become a sort of ombudsman for owners of the many new houses erected by busy contractors.

Local developers and South Africa’s government face the same obstacles as SEED. Their clients have no money. The developers are therefore often forced to build houses which can be financed by the government’s small housing grant alone. The result is small houses, often of poor quality. But their owners seldom have the expertise and knowledge to demand compensation or repairs. For this reason, Booi has become an unofficial spokesman for the house owners.

In the new development of 2 309 houses he is trying to help owners who have been unlucky enough to get a corner site on a slope in the dunes. The urban planning happened long before anyone was interested in the environment and erosion is already so rampant that some foundations are sliding away.

"It’s quantity, not quality, that counts for the developers. That is a huge impediment," says Booi.

He has long realised that better housing and respect for the environment will only happen through very patient lobbying of politicians to get them to demand better quality from contractors. And politicians will only react when their voters become conscious enough to apply the necessary pressure.

In economically poor Khayelitsha, this kind of strategic, long-term thinking is only viable when it’s backed by foreign donors and visible examples.

"To just speak doesn’t make a difference here. It’s only when you demonstrate things that they’ll begin to understand," says Booi.

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