Afesis
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Update: February 2023 – Afesis-corplan together with the SERI, Isandla, Dag and Water Aid submitted a joint submission (click here for a copy) to the Dept. of Water and Sanitation in response to the Draft Water and Sanitation Services Policy on Privately Owned Land 2022. In the joint submission, we call on the Department to expand its definition of private land so that basic services can be provided to people living in informal settlements, backyard shacks, occupied buildings and other precarious conditions (over and above farm dwellers for whom the policy is mainly targeted).
The South African Department of Water and Sanitation has indicated (in October 2022) that they will be publishing their new draft norms and standards for domestic water and sanitation very soon. This announcement provides a valuable opportunity for all of us who are interested in water and sanitation issues to help inform the content of the final norms and standards that get approved for the country.
The purpose of the programme is to ensure that citizens have multiple avenues (in planning, decision-making, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation) for engaging with the state on issues that are of interest to them, and continue to hold elected representatives to account. It seeks to ensure that governance systems provide for public participation and accountability and that municipalities are listening to the views of their citizens and appreciate the experiences of local people.
Encourage the National Department of Water and Sanitation to publish the draft norms and standards for domestic water and sanitation.
Outcome:
Solicit public comments and inputs into the draft so that the guideline responds to the needs of informal settlements and municipalities alike.
Previous
Incremental settlement is a pro-poor approach to settlement development that is being promoted and advocated for by Afesis-corplan and others.
Incremental settlement is the process by which legally recognised settlements are created over time in an incremental manner through the involvement and actions of a range of role-players including government, communities and the private sector. It includes the development of such settlements from:
- an in-situ context where people have already occupied the land in an illegal manner and the area is then formalised and upgraded over time (This is called Upgrading of Informal Settlements UIS); as well as
- a greenfield context where the land is undeveloped and the area is prepared for future settlement and upgraded over time (this is called Managed Land Settlement – MLS).
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Afesis-corplan has produced numerous resource materials over the years on Integrated Development Planning.
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A co-operative is where a group of people (homeless, consumers, unemployed) come together to address a common need (houses, cheap food, jobs) through a jointly owned and democratically controlled organisation (housing co-op, consumer co-op, worker co-op) that follows the cooperative principles (voluntary, democratic, econ participation, independent, training, cooperation between co-ops, concern for community).
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