The eradication of slums and the provision of decent housing in urban areas will promote improved quality of life and raise the education levels of impoverished urban communities.
This was said by national Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu at the opening ceremony of the Cities Alliance Conference in Durban on Monday. She emphasised the importance of building integrated neighbourhoods in urban areas, saying her department's housing plan for the next 10 years would eradicate the exclusion of one section of the population by another in housing development.
Sisulu told delegates: "We are convinced that the clearance of slums and the provision of decent housing is a necessary precondition to create a quality of life which would raise educational levels of our people, to enable them to play a meaningful role in both the economy and society."
Urbanisation in Africa had failed to translate to sustainable growth and this had led to African cities becoming islands of urbanisation, deprivation and squalor.
Sisulu's department is regarded as the architect of the government's controversial programme of building low-cost houses in established suburbs with the objective of promoting integrated residential areas and give African people more economic opportunities.
She added that people living in informal settlements exhibited higher fears about crime and were more vulnerable to HIV/Aids infections than their counterparts living in the suburbs.
This trend was attributed to the general lack of services and infrastructure which increases the risk of victimisation in an environment lacking in basic policing.
According to Sisulu, sub-Saharan Africa has the world's largest population of urban residents living in slums, making slums home to 72 percent of the continent's urban population.
Sisulu also described the department's shack clearance programme, which was spearheaded in the province by late KwaZulu-Natal housing minister Dumisani Makhaye, as critical to improving the conditions of poor urban residents.
"We have committed ourselves to the eradication of slums and we have laid targets for this goal amid a great deal of scepticism. We have deliberately laid targets because they are an important indicator of whether we are succeeding in our objectives. We recognise that on the face of it they are very ambitious, but we have a plan that we are carefully weaving through the three spheres of government," said Sisulu.
She also announced the government's plan to upgrade the tenure rights of people living in informal settlements.
"Local economic development and the formation of viable communities are to be integral to the settlement process," Sisulu said.