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12 July 2007

Master of Ceremonies,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen

I would like to thank Martha and the girls for allowing us the privilege to use Eric's name to grace our initiative. In our culture we name children or initiatives after those attributes we most admire and would like taken on by the object named. In this case we hope that this concept will live up to all those noble qualities that are so abundant in Eric. We wish for this place to become a place of enlightenment, of vision, creativity. A place where men and women of integrity will seek to show us a new way.

When Eric passed away in June last year, many a tribute were bestowed on him from all those who knew him. They extolled his virtues, his commitment to the poorest of the poor. He was a servant of his people, he had fought for their rights and was only too happy to give five years of his life on Robben Island in this pursuit because he so firmly believed in freedom.

Further, as we re-launch and name the Innovation Hub after him we do so in order that his work, the commitment to the poor he represented, is forever etched in our memories and a constant reminder to all who come to this place that we once had a giant who walked this land and left this mark. He was one of the first amongst ourselves to have understood the nuts and bolts of development, that this lay in a sound economy buttressed by sound financial management.

In an exemplary manner he led the Kagiso Trust, a fund established with European Union funding in 1985, to support and achieve the development of communities. He founded Kagiso Trust Investments in 1993, which operated as a social investor in the Kagiso Trust. Combining these activities with the capacity of being chairperson of the National Housing Forum during the negotiations for the democratic dispensation we now enjoy he guided the development of a new housing environment which changed the emphasis of government housing policy from one which explicitly excluded the poor, to one which was firmly based on their needs. As a result of his efforts the capital housing subsidy was introduced and became the founding basis for our delivery to date of 2,4 million houses since the achievement of democracy in 1994.

Thus, when in 1996 the government established the first housing parastatal, Eric was the most natural choice for Chair of such an entity, pioneering on behalf of government, innovation in housing finance that would provide access to finance to those who had so long been disadvantaged. Some of the milestones he led the National Housing Finance Corporation to achieve include supporting and facilitating the establishment of the Social Housing Foundation that was needed to create, for the first time, a viable affordable rental housing sector, the establishment of Gateway Homeloans as a subsidiary to provide housing finance for those that earned between R25 000 and R60 000 per annum including the establishment of the Rural Housing Loan Fund for focusing on the low and medium income households in rural areas.

All of these were innovations that Eric Molobi led, championed and facilitated to radically change the lives of the people of South Africa. Yet, as a development activist, as a visionary, he remained extraordinarily humble and modest.

The very idea of this Hub came about after Eric challenged us to develop a project that he could support and sponsor. He had some funding from the European Union and was keen that it should be utilised for something through which the dreams and aspirations of everyone could be realised. An avid believer in standards, he insisted that the project had to be thoroughly conceptualised, along the highest standards of diligence and accountability because, you see, he reminded me, his reputation would be tied up with it. And for him his reputation was more important than his colonial name.

So as we take on this name we take on the mantle of responsibility. No half-baked shoddy work will be allowed here!

Thus was born the idea of the Housing Innovation Hub that sadly he has not lived to see become real. He so much wanted to banish to the past, images of shacks where people who had been longing for freedom for so long resided. He wanted to have these replaced with decent, secure and comfortable homes.

It has occurred to us that because of his achievements we needed within the housing sector to inspire everyone to follow the example he laid. Housing was after all close to his heart, this, even as he was also involved in other community activities of, for example, the Mvula Trust which worked to provide water to communities. Housing was his love, his passion. Hence the indelible imprint he made in it through focusing on innovation.

When I came into housing after the general elections in 2004 he was also active on the board of the Johannesburg Housing Company from where he helped the launching of some other innovations. In partnership with the Gauteng Government he provided funding for what now stands as undoubtedly yet another milestone in our reversal of apartheid spatial planning, the Brickfields housing project in Johannesburg. Based on the success of that project, the Johannesburg Housing Company, which was the recipient of the 2006 United Nations (UN) Habitat Award for innovative and sustainable housing solutions, has now embarked on another major project in Bertrams for inclusionary housing. Among other things, the project will show how environmental sustainability works within the framework of the inclusionary housing. I am therefore extremely proud of the achievements Eric Molobi made and of his legacy. He was an invaluable asset in housing.

Again, I must stress, we are following his example, aiming to inspire in the same way as he did all stakeholders. We are after all continually seeking innovations not only in housing finance but also in the products that we deliver for our people.

Our age has become one of innovation. In other words, innovation has become synonymous with progress. Those who fail to innovate are consistently left behind. We know, for example, that through continuous innovation countries in East Asia leapt forward in their development at the turn of the 1960s. This helped drive productivity growth which greatly assisted the countries to meet their developmental needs.

And so as the construction industry is in our case poised to become one of the main drivers of economic growth, it is opportune and timely that we enhance the capacity of both the public and the private sector in construction to deliver. We must ensure that new products whether it is in terms of size, technology or both are developed and that this Hub becomes the spring from which new ideas about housing development can flourish. It will be at the heart of new developments whose purpose would be to seek the consolidation and the strengthening of all that has been achieved to date. Above all, we are hoping, it will lead us to significantly increase our delivery rates.

As we face crippling building material costs, competing against grander projects like the Gautrain and the 2010 soccer World Cup, we wonder why we did not do this earlier. For we really are at a point where we needed to have had sound alternatives to conventional methods.

This is where we will marshal public and private sector resources to innovate in design and construction, manpower, materials and finances. This is also where we would conduct training to enlarge the pool of the skills we have.

There will be a Training and Testing Centre established here. It will have infrastructure to among other things support the training of historically disadvantaged homebuilders. The performance of Breaking New Ground (BNG) houses will be tested here including the viability of imported building materials to our own conditions.

There will also be a Conference Hall that is currently being built to facilitate trainings, seminars and conferences. I am informed that work on it is at an advanced stage to allow completion by November this year.

The Technical Support Infrastructure the Hub is being geared for has the involvement and direct support of the Agrément Board, the South African Bureau of Standards, the National Homebuilders Registration Council, the laboratory infrastructure of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's Built Environment Unit and the laboratory infrastructure at some Universities and Universities of Technology. This underlines the fact that common challenges for both the public and the private sector prevail in the building and construction industry. The loss of skills has, for example, plagued all sectors of the construction industry and therefore we are desperately short of skilled regulatory and testing staff and resources in our key institutions.

This will be a permanent show village where the public can come to see a new way of doing things. Where we can educate them that there is a world without brick and mortar, that in fact that world is as good as, and in some cases far better than the world they inhabit.

I am excited about the support that Absa has already learnt to the project. I would also like to thank the bank and its CEO, Steven Booysen in particular, for capturing for themselves a niche in the most important area of our countries development, namely housing. I am also grateful to members to the civil society and other industry players for having made themselves available for the consultations the National Homebuilders Registration Council (NHBRC) led in creating a Regulatory Framework that will guide acceptable behaviour and quality standards in the home building industry.

I would like too to thank the National Homebuilders Registration Council for a sterling work done to put together this concept. This includes the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC) which when the project started helped by providing a social assessment tool to check the acceptability with communities of the different technologies on site. Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi of the Royal Bafokeng, also helped in the adjudication bid together with this team during the first phase of the project. For that I am very grateful.

I would like to thank too the City of Tshwane for making the land available for us to innovate and reach in this regard new heights.

To the developers who already have responded to the concept with the products standing here, I would also like to say, what we promised you will indeed materialise. Housing is a better place to be in today, and you will attest to the confidence we have. At the same time I would like to invite those that have as yet to respond to do so. This includes those who would want to exhibit household products such as furniture or appliances. The future of the Hub is such that it will make these exhibitions, which will be held annually, possible.

The promise that the Hub has can also be seen in the employment it created for people living around its locations, in its gardens. And I have been informed that a building technology procured from outside the county will also soon be in exhibition here. Let us therefore continue the walk together and strengthen the efforts to usher in a new and secure future for everyone.

I thank you

Issued by: Ministry of Housing
12 July 2007