Revisiting the Self-Help Housing debate: Perception of Self-Help Housing by the beneficiaries of South African low-cost housing

3.3 The strengths and weaknesses of SHH

3.3.1 The strengths

The main strength of SHH practice is that beneficiaries are not excluded from the housing project. Instead, they are among the actors, even the main actors of the housing project^21(*). Before discussing the strengths of SHH, it seems important to acknowledge that, in most forms, SHH is a project that requires a group of individuals or a community^22(*).

Some advantages of SHH are widely discussed in the literature review such as: SHH has the «ability to provide access for thousands of families where conventional housing could only reach hundreds» (Rodell and Skinner, 1983: 3). According to Turner, when the community is in control of their housing process, the environment produced stimulates individual and social well-being. In addition, in South Africa, the empirical evidence shows that the houses built by the community itself through SHH Programmes are bigger and cheaper than those delivered by government through mass housing (Marais et al, 2003). These advantages focus on the economic aspect. However, there are also social and cultural aspects in community self-building projects.

One of the recommendations of the UN Habitat II (1996) is to promote solidarity among people living in the city. SHH is one of the ways which facilitates the promotion of solidarity among people through engaging in the construction of their own houses. People working together develop among themselves attitudes such as «mutual trust». The community engaged in a SHH project works as a mutual scheme. Every member of the co-operative receives from it and in turn must do his best in order to allow the co-operative to work adequately. This relationship between the co-operative, comprised as an ensemble of community members, and the individual belonging to the community gives rise to the «mutual trust», a necessary element for the promotion of solidarity. This trust obtained while working in a housing project may be exploited for other projects regarding development in other sectors. This means that housing activities may be a useful tool for putting people together. In sum, a community engaged in a SHH project has also social advantage such as the development of networks.

In that sense, community SHH contributes, to some extent, to reinforcing social linkages between people working together. Alongside the social aspect, the community SHH project reinforces cultural linkages as well.

Diversity of cultures is one of the characteristics of our communities living in urban areas (UN Habitat II, 1996). Spiegel et al (1996) go further in arguing that recognizing diversity should be the main concern of policy makers and planners. SHH projects have the merit of associating in the same site, people from different cultures and background. This may have the advantage of consolidating their cultures, to complement each other, to collaborate and also to accept differences existing among them. As Friedman (1988) asserts, the failure to recognize the difference existing among human beings, especially those living in the same community, may produce fatal consequences such as civil war, genocide, apartheid, etc. This is to say that the failure to recognize that we are different with respect to our background, cultures, education, income, etc, may create an authoritarian attitude and disharmony in our society. However, once people accept that they are different, they become able to work together and to complement each other for the good of the entire community: SHH projects can facilitate this process.

SHH projects do not only present advantages. This approach is also challenged by some scholars, especially by the advocates of Marxism.

* ²¹ For this assumption, see the second form of SHH named State supported SHH in this research. Indeed, this form of SHH presented the beneficiaries as the main actors of SHH insofar as they have started to solve their housing need themselves and the State legalizes their efforts.

* ²² Community which may be understood as «a geographically defined set of people who are enough in number for direct democracy...» (SANCO, 1994 quoted in Chipkin, 1996: 218) is one of the ambiguous and contested concepts in the literature review. For Chipkin (1996) who has written «Contesting community. The limits of Democratic Development», the difficulties related to this concept occur when the representatives of community need to be chosen .