The level of participation of the end-users in the construction of the RDP houses: the case study of Manguang municipality

Abstract

The South Africa government in the 1990’s started the construction of social housing for the previously disadvantaged citizens who earn below R3,500 monthly. The extent of participation of the people who are the end-users of the government RDP housing scheme has been given scant attention. The study thus sought to scrutinize the End-user’s level of participation in the construction of the RDP housing programme in Mangaung Municipality. A quantitative survey method was used to collect data from 1893 households. Descriptive statistics and R statistical software were used to analyze the data collected. The findings show that most of the end-users of the Government RDP housing units were not consulted by the policy implementers throughout the construction phases. These have led to the unpleasantness and overcrowding in most of the units as the beneficiaries’ family sizes do not correspond to the size of the housing units allocated to them. The implications from the findings are that the government spends a lot of money to construct houses that mostly do not meet the needs of the beneficiaries thereby curtailing the government's aim of enhancing the lives of the less privileged individuals through the provision of housing units. The Government should, therefore, institute changes in the construction of the RDP housing units by involving the end-users throughout the project implementation phases.

Keywords:

• End-users
• housing programme
• participation
• RDP houses
• stakeholder

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks to the Central Research Fund (CRF) of the University of the Free State for funding this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.