Ramaphosa says he never promised a million homes to Alex – but the evidence differs

EFF leader Julius Malema has had a torrid few weeks, and looked appropriately morose in Parliament on Thursday, 29 August 2024. But if Malema is searching for distractions from the loss of his wingman, he may take consolation in having seemingly caught out President Cyril Ramaphosa.

In the written question Malema had posed to Ramaphosa ahead of the first presidential Q&A on Thursday, he had asked the President for an update regarding “the promise [Ramaphosa] made to the people of Alexandra in [2019] that the government would build one million houses in that township”.

This pledge has long been a source of scepticism, with journalist Terry Bell pointing out shortly after that the population of Alex was “anything up to 500,000 people living on 800 hectares of land, which, government admits, has the infrastructure to only cater for 70,000 residents”.

In the years since, as it became clear that nothing like a million houses was being built in Alex, various officials have at points tried to roll the claim back.

Gauteng MEC for human settlements at the time, Dikgang Moiloa, insisted in 2019 that the media reports on the matter had misrepresented Ramaphosa. 

In 2021, ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said in a TV interview that the million house figure was a “figment” of the imagination, explaining: 

“The President never said government will build one million house units in Alexandra. He said he was with the minister of human settlements who has a nationwide programme to build one million house units in the country.”

On Thursday, Ramaphosa repeated this claim. The million houses was “for the whole of South Africa”, he said: “There is simply not enough space in Alexandra”.

But Malema would not be budged: “You said you are going to build one million houses for the people of Alexandra,” he stated.

“We took care to go back to that recording and listen to it,” Ramaphosa insisted.

“What I really meant was that we would build a million houses for the whole country,” he repeated, adding candidly: “And as it turned out, we never even reached that target”.

As the President spoke, EFF members of the National Assembly were vocal in disagreement.

On social media, it did not take long for the relevant Ramaphosa clip to surface – and it appears to back Malema’s version.

In it, speaking in isiZulu, Ramaphosa says: “Listen up, one million houses will be built here in Alexandra”.

Back in Parliament, Malema was not giving an inch.

“I think it’s the correct thing to say, ‘I am sorry, I made a miscalculation’,” the EFF leader told Ramaphosa – who, as ever, chose the diplomatic way out.

“To the extent that it created that impression, yes, I apologise for having made people believe that I meant for Alexandra,” Ramaphosa said.

Sovereign wealth fund, privatisation and foreign relations

It was overall a pretty soft landing for Ramaphosa in the seventh Parliament, with the President for the most part being granted an obedient hearing.

Questions focused on the creation of a hypothetical sovereign wealth fund for South Africa, public-private partnerships as a way to revitalise failing state infrastructure, and the country’s foreign policy.

Accused by the official leader of the opposition – MK’s John Hlophe – of having aligned South Africa more “with Western interests than with the needs of the African continent”, Ramaphosa rattled off a list of recent pan-African projects, including overseeing a “continent-wide Covid strategy”.

Ramaphosa also revealed that South Africa will, “in the next few weeks”, return to the International Court of Justice to submit “the real meat of our argument” regarding alleged Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In a slip of the tongue, Ramaphosa referred to the disbarred Hlophe as “honourable judge” by mistake, as he acknowledged – and was subsequently accused by MK’s Mzwanele Manyi of “continuing to mock” Hlophe after participating in his “unfair” impeachment process.

For this, too, an unflappable Ramaphosa apologised. 

Arguably, the President’s moment of greatest animation in the sitting was when he accidentally called Mmusi Maimane “honourable Malema” and then laughed so hard he had to briefly sit down.

Ramaphosa was resolute on the topic of seeking private sector investment into South Africa’s malfunctioning ports and railways, but also clear that “this is not a process of privatisation; it is a process of concessioning”.

All these infrastructure elements will remain in public ownership, the President said.

Accused by the EFF of believing that state-owned entities require “white supervision”, Ramaphosa repeated: “The process of the reforms we have embarked upon are not about handing over state assets”.

The motivation was simple, said Ramaphosa: “The private sector has money”.

ActionSA chief whip Lerato Ngobeni reflected a well of current public concern when she told Parliament: “It is a fact that foreign criminals and foreign syndicates continue to thrive in South Africa, exploiting our porous borders and weak security”.

For Ramaphosa, she had a message: “The time for fluff is over!”

Ramaphosa said that both police and the Border Management Agency were currently making significant inroads into criminal “nodes”.

He promised Ngobeni: “Move beyond fluff and get more action: that’s exactly what you are going to see!”

The nation waits with bated breath. DM