“What about us? Not once did Zuma come and offer his condolences to us.”

Those were the words of Samantha Daniels, 32, to the Daily Voice last week. Daniels lost her 14-year-old son in March when he was killed in gang crossfire while walking home from school in Hanover Park.

Daniels’ questions were echoed by Shaakirah Hardien, whose 5-year-old son was murdered 13 years ago in Mitchell’s Plain.

“I also need justice, I also need closure,” Hardien told the newspaper. “If it’s given to one, it should be given to all the victims who lost a child.”

Daniels and Hardien were responding to the news that when President Zuma visited the family of murdered Elsie’s River three-year-old Courtney Pieters recently, he gave them R10,000 in cash and promised a house would be donated to them by his foundation.

These were not empty words. It was reported this weekend that the Pieters family will be moving in shortly. According to the Daily Voice, “an administrator from the president’s office worked with the family to ensure a home was found in any area deemed secure and suitable for the family”. With such a property located, the family spokesperson said that they would be moving “as soon as the paperwork is done”.

The blowback on President Zuma’s charitable gesture from the community, however, is evidence that such actions can badly misfire. In a country as violent as South Africa, singling out certain families for special compensation for crime, and not others, is risky business. At the least, it creates the impression that certain tragedies are more worthy of reparations than others. In the (hopefully outlandish) worst case scenario, it could create perverse incentives to be a family which has undergone terrible loss.

President Zuma’s gesture was not isolated. Last month, a Coligny teenager died, allegedly after being assaulted for the theft of sunflowers. The incident sparked violent protests. It has since been announced that the bereaved parents of 16-year-old Matlhomola Mosweu will be gifted a house by the Department of Human Settlements, in collaboration with aid group Gift of the Givers.

President Zuma also promised a house and a car to progeria sufferer Ontlametse Phalatse in April, and when she died shortly afterwards, he pledged that the car and the house would go to Phalatse’s mother.

In one of the most extreme cases of this phenomenon, 2010 saw erstwhile Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma hand over a house to the family of a KwaZulu-Natal man who committed suicide after his ID application was botched by Home Affairs officials.

Using housing as a form of political currency is nothing new. It is routine to see well-publicised handovers of houses pick up steam as elections approach, and for South African politicians to make promises of houses while on the campaign trail. Before the 2014 elections, President Zuma even handed over 110 homes to poor white people – inevitably sparking fury from similarly impoverished black squatters.

When it comes to housing, however, even as powerful a person as the president has not always been able to make good on his word. In October 2016, it was reported that an Eastern Cape resident refused to move from a shack which was obstructing electricity to 20 homes, because she said President Zuma owed her a house he had allegedly promised her while campaigning.

All too often, in fact, politicians make promises of houses that they cannot follow through on. In the wake of protests in south Johannesburg earlier this month, the Department of Human Settlements warned that government officials were pledging houses to residents of Eldorado that could not actually be delivered. The department said that these empty promises were fuelling the violence of the protests.

For a while, the President’s home district of Nkandla became the epicentre of political wars via housing. In order to make a fairly obvious political point, the Economic Freedom Fighters built and handed over a home to one of the President’s impoverished Nkandla neighbours in January 2014. The EFF pledged that it was a sign of what the party would do to change the lives of locals if voted into power.

All too soon, however, the house the EFF built was beset with structural problems. The roof collapsed, among other issues. By the time journalists paid inhabitant Sthandiwe Hlongwane a visit in February 2016, the EFF had sent contractors to fix things up.

But Hlongwane told News24: “I am just tired of talking about the house. I never want to talk about the house ever again, case closed.”

She had previously said that she had been victimised by the ANC-supporting Nkandla community as a result of being singled out by the EFF. It’s another reminder that politicians make grand gestures amid great fanfare of their charity, but ordinary people are left to deal with the consequences.

The major danger of gifting houses in this individual way, however, may be that it contributes to the perception that the allocation of government houses is undertaken in an arbitrary and unsystematic manner. If it is within the power and resources of a politician to spontaneously gift a house to one person, why not to another? Why not to everybody?

As well-intentioned as such gestures may be, the Socio-Economic Rights Institute’s research and advocacy officer Edward Molopi says that they “give further credence to the idea that there is no [housing] waiting list”.

Molopi says that this is unhelpful in the context of a housing allocation terrain that is already “very opaque” and “dominated by myths, misinformation and confusion”.

The next time a politician wishes to make a life-changing gesture to a family in need, they may want to think about the wider implications of the move. To President Zuma’s credit, he is returning to Pieters’ community in Elsie’s River on Tuesday to hear concerns about law enforcement in the area. Putting in place mechanisms to prevent a repeat of what happened to Courtney Pieters may well prove a more meaningful long-term gesture to a community in pain than the gift of a house to one family. DM

Photo: President Jacob Zuma visits Vulindlela, 23 Jun 2016 (GCIS)

Read more:

• Waiting for a house that never comes, on Daily Maverick