Cape Town's one hell of a building site

political haste, bad administration and crime have combined to cost cape town millions of rands in damage to low-cost housing projects.

numerous quality and apparent structural problems among hundreds of low-cost houses on the cape flats have led to evictions, rent and repayment boycotts by residents, and a looming court battle.

shocking statistics gathered at the various construction sites reveal large numbers of armed robberies, gangster-style intimidation, thefts of building material, hijackings and even the murder of an electrician.

construction workers and sub-contractors were held up by armed robbers, had their vehicles, equipment and materials stolen and were often assaulted.

'the toughest conditions on earth in which to build houses'
whole houses were ripped apart at night shortly after completion, stripped of fittings such as doors, windows and bathroom items, and sometimes even broken down to slab level to retrieve the building blocks.

but while contractors and their staff had to contend with what they described as the toughest conditions on earth in which to build houses, officialdom appeared to have made a shambles of the bureaucratic process.

at the heart of the bureaucratic argument are the city of cape town and the cape town community housing company, in which the council has a 50 percent stake.

council officials claim that seven projects already completed in philippi, hanover park, newfields, woodridge, luyoloville, heideveld and town centre in mitchell's plain have never had approved plans.

a report by independent consulting engineers liebenberg and stander, as well as a visit to sites by former deputy city planner jock schoeman, showed that houses were poorly constructed.

'looking for reasons to withhold payment'
in a letter to archbishop njongonkulu ndungane, the chairman of the housing company's board, city manager robert maydon said there had been inadequate construction-quality monitoring, poor design detail in the plans, a lack of attention to technical details, misleading or inadequate marketing, unaffordable repayments and community dissatisfaction with dealings with the housing company in attempting to resolve issues.

but housing company chief executive mervyn bregman has hit back, saying that plans were drawn according to sabs standards, which were exactly the same as those for other low-cost housing projects, including the national project first started under the now defunct reconstruction and development programme.

he said the housing company was told to go ahead with construction after an executive committee set up by the city to oversee projects had inspected them.

political leaders were impatient with the slow progress of the programme and wanted to see the housing company's plans come to fruition.

former city manager andrew boraine had told him to go ahead and that the approval of plans would be sorted out later, bregman said.

but that had never happened and, according to cape town's interim housing manager hans smit, the lack of plan approval had meant that no municipal building inspector ever visited the sites.

despite this, the city had provided services and metered water consumption at each house after they had been handed over to their new owners.

residents, who have formed what they call a community forum, now refuse to pay rents and down payments, are resisting eviction and have appointed legal counsel to take action on their behalf in a class action suit.

advocate morne basson, instructed by attorney carl bothman, confirmed residents' cases would be taken further.

bregman and council officials, however, said many residents who did not have serious problems with their houses were using their neighbours' problems as an excuse not to pay for their homes.

this was supported in a report by city official charles croeser, who said that