Mary Harris Jones said it better... "We must stand together; if we don't, there will be no victory for any one of us."
Since the beginning, Umnotho has been working on the power of "together" to achieve the results that we see today. The results include the 60 hectares of land that we bought, the banking license we achieved from the Reserve Bank, and starting Leruo Co-operative, which will soon open its first filling station. "Together" has been our magic formula to success.
Today, those who don't know our background, find it difficult to believe that Umnotho was started by low-income families contributing R150 per month towards an idea of buying their own land. We must admit, it is a moving story. And, in many people's eyes, poor families living in the informal settlements, with limited recourses and skills, stood no change to even dream about achieve formal housing through their own means and efforts.
Yes, we did it. We have the land, we achieved environmental authorizations, our town planning was approved, some of the families completed building and are now living in their beautiful houses. Amazing progress indeed... but we are not done yet.
In the next phase of our development, again, we need to bring the magic and the full power of "together". Since it is time to build our houses, we need to stand together, to pull together and build together.
On our Test Village (pilot project) we allowed families to build their own houses, and each family ran with their own building project, but there was not much collaboration. This became a frustrating and expensive project for most families that were building. Each family bought their own building material, paid for their own delivery costs, and secured their own labour. To finance the building, some families took personal loans with interest rates as high as 28%.
This individualistic approach is very expensive and it is not in line with what Umnotho stands for. We are collaborators, we are partners, we stand together, and we must build together.
"Together" is the same principle that brings the Housing Stokvel. The objective of the Stokvel is to come together, to build together, and to take full advantage of our collective power in negotiating for low prices in building material, labour, and finance. This is also a platform where we first finance each other rather than taking expensive loans that will cost us a lot of money.
At the end of the day each family must achieve a decent quality house at a low cost.
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