The Built Environment Support Group (BESG) was established in 1983 by the senior staff of the then University of Natal Department of Architecture and Allied Disciplines, as a support group that defended communities against eviction from informal settlements in urban areas, largely as a result of inter-political party violence. In the early 1990s, BESG became a key player in shaping a new generation of urban planning and housing policies from local to national level. Since 1995, BESG has been a leader in enabling vulnerable communities to access resources for development, and advocating pro-poor development policy through research and learning from practical interventions.
BESG was registered as a not-for-profit Section 21 Company in 1999. It is also registered with the Department of Social Development and the South African Revenue Services (SARS) as a nonprofit and public benefit organisation respectively, and has Section 18A (charitable) status for fundraising purposes. In 2009, the organisation established a separate nonprofit company, BESG Development Services, to undertake commercial work and generate income to support public benefit activities that do not have dedicated donor funding.
BESG envisions a future in which all people in South Africa will live in a participatory democracy with equal access to sustainable living environments and livelihood security. Its mission is to support the poor and vulnerable to access resources and increasingly gain control over their lives and destinies, through the promotion of sustainable livelihoods and habitable environments, achieving basic socio-economic rights and capacitating local government, with added emphasis on small rural towns.
BESG’s two core programmes are building sustainable human settlements and promoting good governance and deepening democracy. The programmes are inter-linked by the premise that service delivery to the poor can best be realised by the demonstration of innovative solutions to development needs – both human and physical – and government embracing the challenges of development in a transparent and participatory manner.
Its work in the 10 years following the new dispensation was dominated by low-income housing project development. Many communities who were involved in the defence campaigns of the 1980s saw the national housing subsidy scheme as a means of leveraging development and access to secure tenure. BESG has provided capacity-building and project management services, either directly to those communities, or to local government in order to maximise community participation in the development of their areas.
Over the years, this led BESG to develop a range of spin-off projects, including:
- The promotion of access to well-located land for poor communities, and defence work to prevent arbitrary evictions;
- Support and training to enable community-based organisations (CBOs) to use set-aside land for food security projects;
- Design and development of community halls and other facilities;
- Establishment of housing stokvels, to enable poor households to save and support each other in extending their government starter house;
- Community-based infrastructure maintenance;
- Capacity-building to reduce the incidence of poverty and vulnerability in households headed by single women and orphaned children – training in tenure and asset security, nutrition, water management and conservation, health and safety in the home, and housing consumer education;
- The provision of special needs housing for vulnerable groups, and alternatives to institutional care for orphaned children; and
- A three-year programme on environmental management and climate change adaptation in poor rural communities, Greener Pastures, was launched on World Habitat Day in October 2011.
BESG has a long history of policy engagement with national government to create conditions that support pro-poor development and community participation, including membership of the National Housing Forum, Special Needs Housing Forum, and Enhanced People’s Housing Process (EPHP) Reference Group.
Promoting good governance and deepening democracy
This programme aims to strengthen the ability of civil society and government to work together in addressing the challenges of basic service delivery. It works on two levels:
- Capacity-building of communities and officials to enable more effective engagement between government and civil society; and
- Action research, advocacy work, and mentorship programmes to guide and refine pro-poor enabling policy and its implementation through Integrated Development Planning (IDP) and budget processes.
The programme was re-branded the Deepening Democracy Project and launched in May 2009 in the presence of the French Ambassador, as a strategic partnership between BESG and the uMgungundlovu District Municipality. The latter covers seven local municipalities in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands including the provincial capital of Msunduzi. The training and mentorship support BESG offers through the project includes:
- Introduction to housing for local and provincial government officials;
- Housing consumer education;
- Housing literacy training and cadre development for staff of intermediary non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and leaders of civic and social movements;
- Community leadership development skills programme;
- Understanding local government and development legislation for CBOs;
- Constitutional rights and access to basic services;
- Community-based planning; and
- Participatory budgeting.
Challenges and opportunities
BESG faces two principal challenges in fulfilling its mandate:
The inherently political nature of engaging in development:
Local government was given a legislative mandate to be the development arm of government through the Municipal Structures and Municipal Systems Acts. However, the country has seen service delivery protests become an ongoing feature of civic life since 2006. BESG plays an intermediary role in this paradigm, which is not always welcomed by organs of state but is true to the organisation’s mandate of supporting the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of our society.
Vulnerability to staff turnover
BESG’s reputation as a leading NGO that can straddle both the technical and social aspects of development is its own enemy. Younger staff in particular, who did not grow up in ‘struggle culture’, find that the knowledge and skills they acquire here is highly valued in the job market, and invariably BESG loses many of them to both the government and private sector.
For the same reason, there are immense opportunities for BESG to support communities in accessing development in two emerging national delivery programmes – the Enhanced People’s Housing Process and the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme.
Impact and contribution to society:
As the underlying theme to all BESG’s work is development through empowerment, the broadest impact of the organisation’s work is in knowledge and skills transfer. Communities and participating households are more resilient and equipped to manage challenges to their livelihoods and physical well-being, and are able to address their basic needs effectively and efficiently through maximising the value of resources they are able to leverage. BESG’s training programmes reach an average of 900 households per year.
In 15 years, BESG leveraged R92 million of government grants to provide security of tenure, services, and housing for over 6 000 households in KwaZulu-Natal. BESG’s policy advocacy work, in conjunction with two national networks of NGOs, has had an indirect impact in creating pro-poor enabling policy that potentially can address service delivery backlogs affecting hundreds of thousands of households.
To view the Built Environment Support Group in the Prodder NGO Directory, click here.
