R87m spent, but no homes as Tembisa project lies abandoned

The Gauteng government has been accused of failing to take action against officials and companies involved in abandoned housing projects which have seen hundreds of millions of rands wasted. Projects to accommodate indigent families have been abandoned without proper explanation. Projects abandoned without explanation In almost all the projects, government claims it needs more funds to finalise the work.

One example is the Hospital View Housing Project in Tembisa, Ekurhuleni, initiated in 2020. So far, R87 million has been spent, but the proposed 500 housing units have not been completed. The site has been abandoned and vandalised.

Three years ago, the provincial legislature said the project was vandalised in 2021, and the Ekurhuleni department of human settlement said R60 million was needed to renovate the buildings. Themba Godi, the leader of the African People’s Convention and a former parliamentary standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) chair, said during his tenure at Scopa he realised that government officials and the construction companies were abandoning projects and engaging in corrupt activities, “simply because they knew that nothing would happen to them”. Officials know nothing will happen to them – Godi He said he had seen many instances where official annual financial reports of departments and entities spoke about their plans for building hundreds of houses, only to discover later that “the budget has been exhausted, but the projects are not finished”.

Godi said that kind of failure highlights inefficiencies in project management as well as deliberate corrupt practices by officials. He said in practice, there were no consequences for officials and the companies involved. “We know that in urban areas, housing is a major problem and yet that is where you get a lot of corruption happening,” he said.

Recently, the DA exposed the abandonment of the Montrose Mega City Project. “Years of neglect, inaction and poor oversight by the Gauteng government have allowed public infrastructure to deteriorate while the housing crisis deepens,” said DA Rand West mayoral candidate Jacques Julius. DA warns sites become magnets for theft and destruction Julius said the DA will table questions to the Gauteng MEC for human settlements, Tasneem Motara, on why this project has been abandoned; how much has been spent; who has been held acco…