Home and away

Everyone wanted a piece of the action when our employer, 11,500-home north east housing provider Isos Housing Group, set up an exchange programme with a South African social landlord last year (see box: Swap shop). It meant two lucky staff members would get to travel the 6,000-odd miles to the Rainbow Nation to see how they do things at the Johannesburg Housing Company, which rents out almost 3,000 homes in the city to low and middle-income households. So many people wanted to go that we ended up drawing lots - and we got lucky.

Today the football World Cup kicks off in JHC’s hometown and the world’s gaze will be trained on South Africa for the next month. But it’s the housing activity that goes on daily, all year round, that caught our eyes during our two-week exchange last month. We kept a diary of our stay so that we could share our experience - here are the highlights.

Friday 14 May

Simon (pictured above, far left) writes: The day begins with a walk around the Ekhaya precinct in Hillbrow, which has often been considered a ‘no go’ area of Jo’burg. There’s no baptism of fire quite like getting out of the car on your first day and being told security staff will accompany you on your walkabout. Add to that the fact that a photographer is shooting away in front of us - we feel more than a bit conspicuous.

The Ekhaya project is a partnership set up and managed by JHC involving three blocks, (totalling several hundred units) along with other privately owned blocks in the area. The idea is that by subscribing to this neighbourhood renewal scheme, local landlords and property managers can ‘manage out’ the crime and violence that have plagued the area. Security guards in high-visibility jackets patrol within the precinct boundaries.

Small alleyways, previously used as a dumping ground for rubbish (even bodies occasionally, we are told) and a location for often violent crime have been cleaned up and closed off. Children’s play areas have been provided (we manage a brief game of football with some of the local children) and community events take place to help to solidify the scheme. As a development and regeneration manager I find it particularly interesting.

Garry writes:

It’s amazing to think that this area had been over-run with crime, including drug dealing, rape and hijacking. Now it’s a bustling local community with play areas for the kids, regular events for local residents and education centres.

We hear how most of the tenants leave for work at 7am and often don’t return until after 7pm, so onsite security and JHC staff are always on hand to keep an eye on children while their parents are at work. JHC staff are on first name terms with all of the kids - it’s great to see them interacting.

Tenants are generally more tolerant than we’re used to at home, where I am a safer neighbourhoods officer; there’s loud music coming from some units during the day which is seen as acceptable and the norm. You get a real sense of community.

I wish I could fly some of our regular complainants out here - it might put things into perspective and make them more realistic about life.

The flats within the buildings are small in comparison to what we are used to, but the tenants seem proud of their units and proud to be tenants of JHC. Everybody wants to greet you and shake your hand.

I heard horror stories about personal safety before coming out here and although you have to have your wits about you, I have felt more afraid wandering about some parts of London.

Saturday 15 May

Simon writes:

An eye-opening trip to Soweto today accompanied by staff from JHC. We see Kliptown, an informal settlement, where we visit a youth project funded by the money tourists pay for local tours. Local companies have donated three or four large sheds, including one made into a library and one which houses the project’s main office.

Later we get to see Nelson Mandela’s old house, where the man later to become South Africa’s first black president lived from the 1940s until his imprisonment in 1962. It’s just a little house with a tin roof, a small bungalow really, but this is where history was made. We got a feeling of what it might have felt like when Mandela was arrested. We saw where a partition wall stood, which the family ducked behind to avoid gun fire that day.

Garry writes:

En route to Soweto, we stop off at the stunningly revamped World Cup venue known locally as the Calabash (Soccer City) Stadium, and pass through an estate of private property worth millions of rands. Then, no more than 100 yards further on, comes a stark contrast with a large development of tiny, brightly coloured council-owned properties.

Each of these terraced units is just about big enough to park your average family car inside. They are such small properties. You stand back and think how you moan about things at home, when the people here are happy to have homes we would consider massively overcrowded.

At another spot in Soweto, Diepkloof, we are shown the one stand-pipe shared by as many as 800 people for their water supply. As I stand there I begin to appreciate what my family has. Cabling that supplies the units with electricity dangles just above our heads. We are told the local residents have connected the cabling themselves, illegally. Children walk about barefoot. A brightly coloured shipping container is the local school, packed out with kids during the weekdays, we hear.

Soweto’s Kliptown is a prime example of the stereotypical shanty town you see on TV news reports. Tin huts no bigger than a garden shed from B&Q house up to eight family members. Thulani, a resident and a director of a local youth project, shows us his shack which is part of a group of four or five others with a shared mobile toliet. It’s not uncommon for these toilets to remain unemptied for more than two weeks, he says.

A few men from this part of town invite us to their shebeen (drinking house). Simon and I sample a drink from the calabash - a ceramic bowl used to sip the local beer and the name of the circular football stadium where South Africa hopes to defeat Mexico in the first game of the 2010 World Cup. The beer is like cloudy water and quite weak. You have to grab the bowl, swill it around, then take a sip.

The whole experience of seeing Soweto has been pretty humbling, sometimes shocking. It has helped us appreciate all the more the work JHC has done in Johannesburg.

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