Infrastructure
With regard to this announcement in his budget speech: “The province currently has 958 informal settlements with 527 of those falling in the City of Cape Town region. All of the remaining 431 settlements across the province have been assessed, categorised, ranked and prioritised per municipality via the Department’s Informal Settlements Database.”
(1)(a) What is the (i) number of the population of the province who lives in informal settlements and (ii) breakdown per informal settlement and (b) what are the (i) names, (ii) demographics, (iii) geographical locations and (iv) details of the services delivered to each of these informal settlements;
(2) whether any of the residents of these informal settlements are on the housing database; if not, why not; if so, (a) what are the relevant details and (b) what is the (i) number and (ii) details of the persons in the housing database?
[1][a)[i][ii] The Department has endeavoured to regularly maintain, track, and update informal settlement-related data on its Informal Settlement Database.
The process for updating the Department’s Database relies on municipalities providing the Department with accurate settlement-level data. The data captured mostly includes informal settlements’ names, locations, boundaries, structure count, and may include levels of service provision [including sanitation, water, electricity and waste collection]. The capturing and provision of this type of information by municipalities does not rely on the need for physical door-to-door enumerations, which are usually costly and lengthy.
According to the Department’s 2021 Database, there are approximately 98 914 structures located across 431 informal settlements within non-metro municipalities. According to data provided to the Department by the City of Cape Town [CoCT], there are currently 269 811 structures located across 806 informal settlements within the metro area.
However, the database does not include the number of persons per structure. The reason being that each informal settlement is different in size and heavily influenced by its context, meaning that densities per settlement vary greatly from one to another. Therefore, an accurate inhabitant count per structure cannot be extrapolated by utilizing an average figure per structure, without conducting physical door-to-door enumerations.
[b][i] The names of all the informal settlements within the province are captured on the database, as provided to the Department by municipalities.
[b][ii] Details related to the demographics of each informal settlements are not captured on the Department’s database, since physical door-to-door enumerations will have to be conducted in order to obtain demographic details of the inhabitants of each informal settlement. Enumerations such as these are costly and lengthy to conduct.
[b][iii] Geographical locations of informal settlements within the province are captured on the database [spatially referenced and mapped] and cross-referenced against Municipal lists.
[b][iv] Most informal settlements in the non-metro municipalities and the metro have access to basic services [including sanitation, water, electricity, and waste collection]. However, these services are predominantly below the minimum services ratio stipulated by the National Department of Human Settlements, due to organic growth and the continued influx of residents to informal settlements. The Department therefore engages with all municipalities on a regular basis to ensure the adequate provision of basic services to all informal settlement residents.
[2][a] Yes, residents who reside in informal settlements can and have registered on the Western Cape’s Housing Demand Database. The Department and all Western Cape Municipalities actively and continuously encourage all Western Cape citizens to register themselves on the database, irrespective of where they live.
[2][b][i][ii) According to the Western Cape Housing Demand Database, there are currently 229 166 residents listed in the non-metro municipalities, and 348 881 residents listed in the City of Cape Town [as at May 2022]. However, due to the provisions and requirements of the Protection of Personal Information [POPI] Act, the relevant details of those individuals on the Western Cape’s Housing Demand Database – including their current place of residence - cannot be shared without the necessary consent.
