International Charity Boosts Development in South Africa | Voice of America - English
An international charity working in South Africa has become the largest non-governmental provider of housing for the poor in that country. The Niall Mellon Township Trust has built tens of thousands of low-cost homes in South Africa since 2002. The organization takes its name from an Irish property developer who, after a visit to Cape Town, was saddened by the poor living conditions for people in the city?s townships. Mellon established the Trust to replace the shacks with low-cost, high-quality housing.
Theorganization?s mission is daunting: to eradicate urban poverty in South Africa. Thecountry is the most developed and prosperous on the continent, yet it?s also aplace where millions continue to suffer extreme economic hardship. The Trust estimates that at least 10million people still live in shacks, and the government recently announced that2.1 million South African families are living in the hazardous dwellings. ?Povertydivisions still exist. You?ve got a first world economy running in South Africaside by side with essentially a third world economy. There?ve been hugeimprovements in many, many ways, but for many poor people, since the end ofapartheid things haven?t changed that much,? says Paddy Maguinness, thecharity?s CEO. Andnowhere is that clearer than in the sprawling, smoky and crime-riddenshantytowns of modern-day South Africa. ?Ashack could be something like 15 feet by 15 feet, made of cardboard, plastic,bits of tin, bits of wood ? anything that people can get. There could be twofamilies or maybe even two generations of the same family living in some ofthese shacks,? Maguinness says. Butthis year, as they did in 2007, the Trust?s employees and volunteers areconstructing more than 5,000 houses in Cape Town, with plans well underway toexpand the initiative to other South African cities and towns. Maguinness,who?s worked in developing nations across the globe, credits the South Africangovernment with building more than two million homes for the poor since 1994but says the country?s housing shortage continues to deepen. This, he says, hasbeen exacerbated by a ?huge influx? of foreign nationals, mostly from theneighboring countries of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. ?SouthAfrica opened its doors at the end of apartheid and people came flooding in?.On top of this, there?s a lot of internal migration, with people from theEastern Cape (province) coming to the Western Cape (province) and going toGauteng (province). So the cities are really under pressure and the shantytownsare really, really growing. The people are living in appalling conditions,? hestates. Thissituation resulted in an explosion of violence earlier this year, when someSouth Africans in the townships began attacking foreigners, accusing them of?stealing? housing and jobs. ?Someof that was simply due to pressure on scarce resources, people feelingfrustrated because they haven?t got a house; they?re living in deplorableconditions and then they?re also having to share that space with a lot ofpeople from other neighboring countries,? Maguinness explains. He feels that South Africa now has an undeserved reputation for beingparticularly hostile to foreigners. ?(Most)South Africans have been extremely generous to refugees from the region, andpart of their housing pressure has come from those refugees.? TheTrust says it?s especially important to improve people?s living conditions inSouth Africa because the international community regards the nation as a?beacon of hope? in Africa. ?Wewill do what we can do help people in South Africa because this is a countrythat needs to be stable. Working in South Africa is important for the rest ofsouthern Africa and indeed the whole of the continent,? states Maguinness. TheTrust wants to relegate South Africa?s shack-lands, home to endless rows offlimsy, fire-prone structures, to the country?s apartheid past. ?Weare constructing concrete houses. The size of the houses we?re building is 400square feet. They?re two bedrooms, with a bathroom and a small kitchen, with atiled roof,? Maguinness says. Inaddition to the thousands of homes his organization is building, it also plansto build a factory in Cape Town next year, which, he says, will ?introduce anew technology to built prefabricated (housing) units with a timber-frame,cement structure. The South African government has agreed to provide us with 50per cent of the finance for this, and we?ve got the rest from privatephilanthropists. That will increase our production from 5,000 units to 10,000units a year, so this is very exciting. We?re doing this as a prototype, and ifthis factory is really successful we can maybe replicate it in other provincesin South Africa.? Accordingto Maguinness, the factory will also boost the Trust?s permanent staff in thecountry from 2,000 to 4,000. ?Mostof these people are coming from the townships themselves. We?re creatingemployment as we?re building the homes as well, and we?re creating trainingopportunities for young people in particular.? Andthen there?s the Trust?s world-renowned ?Building Blitz? project?. Every yearsince 2002, the organization has led thousands of volunteers ? mainly fromIreland but also from other parts of the world, including the United States ?to South Africa to build houses. They are willing to use their free time totravel thousands of miles to work under the blazing African sun, and theywillingly shell out $8,000 of their own money to help their fellow human beingsachieve their dreams of owning their own homes. Maguinness says the fee covers thevolunteers? travel expenses, accommodation, meals and even the cost of thebuilding materials. ?Lastyear we had 1,500 volunteers from Ireland who arrived in one week, and thisyear (in November) it?ll be 2,100. We actually believe it?s the world?s biggestmovement of volunteers, ever. We?re going into Khayelitsha, one of the mostdifficult areas in Cape Town, and they will build about 250 ? possibly even 300houses ? in the week.? Maguinnesssays while the volunteers include ?chief executives of (international)companies, leaders of banks, chairmen of industry and women who are nurses anddoctors? who experience the novelty of getting their hands dirty, most of thevolunteers are not rich ? at least in financial terms: ?They?re plasterers, plumbers,bricklayers? who want to ?stand in solidarity? with South Africa?s poor. ?Peoplecare?. When they hear there?s something positive going on, they want toparticipate,? Maguinness says. ?It?squite an emotional experience. It gives people a sense of: I want to dosomething. And the good will with which they?re received by the people in thetownships ? it?s actually hard to describe the emotion.? Headds, ?There?s an awful lot of negativity in the world about people not caring.I think our organization is running contrary to that.? SouthAfrica, though, has one of the highest crime rates in the world, with murdersand robberies especially rife in the townships. Maguinness acknowledges thatthe volunteers often express reservations about visiting the country. ?Securityis the major concern,? he says. ?Webuilt last year in Freedom Park in (Cape Town), which is notoriously a veryviolent area with gang warfare, all of those things. We brought 1,500 peopledown there. We had one single security incident. (But) The good will (of) thecommunity, the people ? particularly the women ? (won through). They realizedthat these people are here to help, and basically (told the troublemakers),?Back off. Maguinnesssays while there?s never any real ?sense of (impending) violence? amongst thevolunteer builders, ?when you bring that large number of people (into a poortownship), there?s always the possibility that someone strays into an areawhere they shouldn?t be.? Headds that the Trust works very closely with the South African police. ?Whereverwe?re building, the South African police commissioner treats it as aninternational event, almost similar to an international football match. Infact, they erect police stations near to where we build so that we?re in closeproximity to the forces of law and order.? Maguinessis quick to add that while his organization and its volunteers are involved in?serious work? in South Africa, their presence there is ?not all doom and gloom. Afterthey?ve spent their day building houses, they often go out for a meal and ?most being Irish ? a few drinks of course!? Thefun and labor aside, Maguinness says the greatest reward for the Trust and thevolunteers lies in witnessing the extent to which the lives of previouslyhomeless people are transformed for the better once they have houses of theirown. ?Thebiggest thing that keeps coming back to us is dignity. People feel that theirwhole self-worth has increased (when they have a house of their own). Peoplefeel: ?I exist; I?m a human being; I?ve got an address; somebody can send me aletter. Maguinnessrecalls speaking with a woman who shortly before had moved into a Trust-builthouse in Cape Town. ?Shesaid to me: ?I?ve spent 30 years of my life whispering. I?ve always been insomeone else?s house, and I?ve always had to keep my voice down because I neverwanted to be thrown out, so I always kept very quiet.? She said: ?Now I can sitin my own house and I can sing. Accordingto assessments completed by the Trust, attendance rates at schools in areaswhere its built houses have increased dramatically. Maguinnessexplains: ?The kids have somewhere to go and come home to and study in theevenings, and there?s a sense of pride because when you live in a shack, kidscan sometimes be very cruel, and say: ?Here are the shack people.? And so somekids just stop going to school to avoid being insulted.? Hesays people?s health also improves when they move out of their shacks, wherethey?re highly susceptible to respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis andasthma. Thesecorresponding improvements in health and education, states Maguinness, offerevidence that ?housing has been neglected as an area of international aid anddevelopment. We want to see more resources internationally going into this,because if you?ve got a decent home, it?s a foundation, it?s a stepping stone,it?s a springboard into getting a job, into getting education.? Notcontent with improving lives only in South Africa, Maguinness says the Trustplans to work in other African countries in the near future. ?We?re looking at soon going into Lesotho andTanzania.?