Election year means politicians dangling houses as carrots

South Africa has a housing crisis, but more than that, South Africa has a service delivery problem.

Those elected tend to over promise and under deliver. There are RDP houses, with waiting lists from as far back as the 1990s.

This is a ticking time bomb which threatens to explode.

But the people who stand to have their dreams shattered are the ones who, in the end, can retaliate by withholding their vote.

The disconnect in housing and jobs is most apparent in our society.

The truth is that government does not create jobs, but it can incentivise business to create them.

But government should be held accountable for the promises on houses, the hype and over expectation that they have created to garner votes, the tender system riddled with corruption, looting and kickbacks.

The allocation lists for houses – that stand between a roof over one’s head and a continuous life of backroom dwelling or homelessness – is where the seediest of behaviour thrives.

It is in allowing someone to jump the queue when others have been in it for decades, simply by accepting a brown envelope. It is the ability to sell away someone’s only plan, to use it as a pawn in one’s own get-rich-quick scheme that is cause for concern.

We see this is lately in the illegal occupation of RDP houses by people not on allocation lists, leaving others with stand numbers with no plan, no home – and no idea who to turn to.

And the wheels of justice turn at a snail’s pace to have the problem sorted out. This nasty ghost of housing allocation has reared its ugly head in the Olievenhoutbosch once again, with incomplete RDP houses being illegally occupied.

How has such an occupation gone on, unnoticed? How in Olievenhoutbosch, people from as far as Tembisa and Alexandra have infiltrated unnoticed?

There is a sinister hand at play – a government one at that!

Going into the next elections, politicians will dangle houses as carrots before the masses. Don’t buy those promises … we’ve heard them all before.

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