Housing cooperative movement comes together in South Africa

At the end of May a very important event took place in South 
Africa. It was the formation of the South African Housing Co-
operatives Association (SAHCA). The launch brought together 
housing co-operatives from different parts of the country to form 
a single national voice and organisation to represent the 
interests of co-operatives involved in the housing sector.

This historic event passed without any press coverage whatsoever 
or the presence of big names normally associated with so-called 
"black economic empowerment" capitalist deals, said Blade 
Nzimande General Secretary of the South African Communist Party.

If this were white capitalist corporations giving shares to 
emerging black capitalists, we would have had screaming headlines 
in many newspapers, and on television and radio stations — 
"Historic black economic empowerment in the housing sector", he 
said.

The SAHCA aims "to provide advice, education and training to 
primary co-operatives, to represent them at a national level, to 
assist in accessing capital, to speak on their behalf, to unite 
housing co-operatives in order to increase the level of 
networking and co-operation, and to create programs for the 
support of members at regional level".

Their activities include joint co-operative purchase (using the 
government's housing subsidy for the poor) of flats in the cities 
to provide accommodation next to areas of work and accessible to 
public transport. Some of the housing co-operatives are involved 
in construction activities, whereby members build each other's 
houses to maximise the government's subsidy by reducing building 
costs.

The formation of the SAHCA brought home the reality that at the 
centre of "broad-based black economic empowerment" must be the 
creation of institutions collectively owned and run by and for 
the benefit of the workers and the poor, said Blade Nzimande.

He criticised many of the existing co-operatives which have 
transformed themselves into medium and large-scale capitalist 
enterprises, benefiting an Afrikaaner elite at the expense of 
even the white Afrikaaner working class and the poor, in addition 
to the hundreds of thousands of black workers who work for these 
enterprises.

He said it was time to reclaim their co-operative traditions, 
both black and white, to build a viable and progressive co-
operative movement to serve the interests of the overwhelming 
majority of the workers and the poor of our country.

The advantage of co-operatives is that they benefit a larger pool 
of ordinary people through common and equal ownership.

Blade Nzimande said that to build a cooperative movement serving 
the people, they needed to first mobilise the people to build co-
operatives around the provision of their basic needs, savings and 
affordable credit. This is the most critical pillar in building a 
co-operative movement and empowerment of the overwhelming 
majority of the workers and poor of our country.

Secondly, they needed to ensure that the state is supportive of 
the co-operative movement, through appropriate legislation, 
policies and support.

Thirdly, global experience with co-operative movements points to 
the need for a party political champion to help build a 
progressive co-operative movement. The SACP has led the way in 
struggling for the appropriate legislative and policy framework 
for a progressive co-operative movement. It intends to be the 
party political champions of a progressive co-operative movement 
in our country, said the SACP General Secretary.

The SACP is intensifying its financial sector campaign to ensure 
that the banks and insurance companies serve the interests of the 
workers and the poor as they are the owners of the funds in these 
institutions.

"Let us build a co-operative movement for a genuinely broad-based 
black (and particularly working class) economic empowerment", 
concluded Blade Nzimande.

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Acknowledgement to Umsebenzi