How does South African politics shape real estate?

It’s hard to think of a time when politics didn’t influence land and how people lived on it in South Africa. People were forced to travel around the country to find adequate grazing land, or they moved around to find safety from aggression.

Land in South Africa has been mined, farmed, fought over, made more secure, and laws have been created to remove people from land that was rightfully theirs to begin with.

Now land is still a focus in politics as the government makes attempts to set past wrongs right again. However, land reform and land redistribution is an emotive and politically fraught subject. There’s no lack of motivation or initiatives to try and set things right, but despite many attempts to do so, the South African government has yet to make land reform a success.

But strife about land has not always been between individuals and the government. Developers and the government haven’t always seen eye to eye either. So how could this be addressed and what are the property industry’s views on the matter? What does the future hold?

Here we ask a few quick-fire questions of Rahla Schaffer, head of development at Blok, about how our views about land are slowly starting to change – particularly when it comes to size. She also gives her views on how developers and government could come to a possible understanding.

How much has politics influenced the way we live now?

Rahla Schaffer (RS): I wanted to go down into a discussion on micros and historically being segregated … but I don’t think we should go that deep. What I can say is that maybe, historically, people have seen large space as a luxury, especially after our history.

However, with micro and compact living, we’re turning this on its head by still providing people with access to an incredible city lifestyle with myriad economic, social and environmental amenities.

What does the future look like in terms of government involvement?

RS: In an ideal world, the government would reconsider the onerous planning process to get any project off the ground and use this as a way to cut down on timelines and project running costs in order to incentivise developers accordingly.

Or they may consider a way to give additional development rights to a developer in the manner we attempted with our 80:20 model many years ago. Any form of subsidy usually gets passed on to some form of end user, meaning someone ends up paying.

What can the property industry do to ensure and forge positive relationships with the government so that everyone can win?

RS: The biggest split in the sector is the difference in timelines between the government and the private sector. If they could somehow align here, it would put us in a better position to come up with real solutions.

What are some of the major issues that property developers would like to see change in South Africa that politicians could help with?

RS: Excessive development charges being passed on to developers, longterm planning processes that are inefficient and ineffective – often costing developers hundreds of thousands of rands in interest and hold costs – and a willingness to try new models to develop appropriate policies instead of building policies with no real-life experience to back up the policies.