cities

A number of other projects have taken place in Helenvale, including training people in business skills, life skills
and issues relating to HIV/AIDS, a street soccer programme (in collaboration with the SAPS), a training
programme for 20 child and youth workers, and a youth training camp for leaders. The Helenvale Cleaning
Cooperative (HEMCO), which is fully Helenvale-owned, was awarded a tender to clean out all the illegal
dumping sites in Helenvale, to be followed by weekly servicing of the sites for a further two months. This
created employment for approximately 150 people, and the MBDA also entered into discussions with the
Northern Areas People’s Development Initiative (NAPDI) on their Helenvale Recycling Initiative (HERI).
If we can provide people with skills at the same time so that they are able to find employment
afterwards that will be a significant achievement and mean that the renewal project will have a lasting
legacy. We want to avoid implementing a renewal project that still leaves the majority of people living
in poverty and unemployed.
(MBDA CEO)
The MBDA engages with communities using a “C2C” approach (from concept to completion). A Programme
Advisory Committee, elected by the community, was set up as a non-partisan entity to work with the MBDA.
This committee consists of five people from each of the four voting districts in Helenvale (i.e. 20 community
members), as well as the councillor, officials from MBDA and GIZ (German development agency) and two ward
committee members. The community members forming the core component of this committee have been
capacitated through formal training in community leadership, project management and specific themes. The
committee meets twice a month and the chair is rotated monthly i.e. co-leadership. The MBDA also established
a process of “dialogues” consisting of youth and women caucuses (SPUU Helenvale).
An economic impact assessment of the MBDA investment projects found that the redevelopment generated
the following benefits (MBDA, 2014a):
• R170.3-million in new business sales (constant 2011 prices)
• 312 new job opportunities
• R 55.8-million in additional regional gross domestic product
In addition, in 2012, the South African Police Service (SAPS) indicated that crime had massively reduced in the
Helenvale area since the advent of the various HURP programmes.
Reflections
Various strategies have been developed in different South African cities since 1994 to develop townships
and integrate them more effectively into the economic and social fabric of the city, trying to undo apartheid’s
strategies of spatial marginalisation. The MBDA’s work in Helenvale provides some lessons for township
renewal:
• Community involvement and engagement must go beyond merely informing to ensuring ongoing
“feedback loops” with the community, involving them as equal participants. In this way, communities
become owners of both the process and the infrastructure. However, communities have seldom taken
ownership as hoped.
• Party politics must not become bigger voices than those of the community. This links to the quality of
leadership that communities have to depend on and the need to build better structures in communities.
• Such projects provide an opportunity to empower youth at a community level, which is desperately
needed.
372 State of South African Cities Report 2016