THENEWSOUTHAFRICA
tions for welfare services and some progress was made. Least successful
was the RDP'S lavish promise to 'return land to the more than one million
Africans who had been forcibly removed. Of 63,000 claims for restitu-
tion, by June 1.999 only 231 had been granted, and another 215 house-
holds had shared ten million rand as compensation.f-'
After a slow start,
the RDP commitment
to provide a million state-subsidized
houses was
within reach. By March 1999, 747,717 had been built, amounting to 75
percent of the target, but many of them were very rudimentary
build-
ings.s" Likewise, by late 1997, 82 percent of urban households and 32
percent of rural households had electricity, but 4 I percent of all South
African households still had no electricity; and 3.5 million people were
supplied with water between 1994 and 1999, which still left 12 million
people without piped water in their homes.s-' There was also a substantial
increase in the supply of telephones.v" Even so, according to the govern-
ment's
1998 Report
on Social and Economic
Development
in South
Africa, about 19 million people (just under half of the population)
lived
below the official poverty line of 353 rand (U.S. $60) per month; 72 per-