Revisiting the incremental housing process as a policy implementation tool for accelerating housing delivery: a study of selected rural areas in South Africa

Thesis (MTech. degree in Public Management.)--Tshwane University of Technology, 2012.This study has examined the implementation of the incremental housing process, or as the researcher has termed it, self-driven housing, in rural South Africa. Self-driven housing is the type of housing where individual households drive the processes of addressing their own housing issues, with government playing a supporter role. The purpose of the study was to obtain a thorough understanding of how this process has been implemented internationally and in South Africa to improve the lives and living spaces of the rural poor. Most importantly, this study was aimed at investigating whether this process can be considered a viable alternative to the provision of free low-cost government houses in the quest for reducing the housing backlog, in South Africa in general, and urban areas in particular. In other words, "Can the self-driven housing approach be a solution to the housing crisis in South Africa?