Some people might have a lot to say about our ten years since democracy. Meanwhile the pessimists and the voluntary blind choose to see nothing good that has come out of our young democracy, optimists like me look back and say, we have survived and progressed as a country.

The journey to better people's lives, even where there is no apartheid legacy to deal with has never been an easy one, in our context the challenges that come with this inevitable endeavor are indescribable, but I want to maintain, not insurmountable.

We have witnessed government's tireless efforts indeed improve quality of life for our people. Satisfactorily or not, we have seen this government giving a whole new meaning to what it is to be a poorest of the poor South African citizen, in the past it meant living your whole life in an unimaginable informal settlement situation. It meant you were born and would die exactly that way without anything to your name, and more so, without a house.

Those who managed to get roofs over their heads, the system made sure they would be as far away from the cities and work places as possible, thus the effort of working made no economic sense because they would spend their meager wages on transport costs.

My concern as the minister of housing in this province is that, housing development is to a large degree still similar to the apartheid scenario, the difference this time around is that it is not intentional but rather forced by the peculiar combination of circumstances, one of which is the scarcity of suitable land for housing development.

I would like this summit to pay particular attention to the fact that our people still travel long distances to go to work, just the way the Verwoeds and the Malaans of this world wanted it. This does not only put financial constrains on the poor but also deprive them of the quality time with their families as they have to leave early in the morning and come very late at night.

I am also appealing to this summit that it pays particular attention to how can housing together with other sister departments deal with the land question. Even so, our experience has shown that the state land alone is way too limited and insufficient to address the housing needs of our people, which brings me to my next point.

We also need to start forming meaningful partnerships with private landowners and talk about how they can dispose off their land at reasonable costs so that we can begin to make meaningful inroads to housing backlog, which I am afraid is escalating on a daily basis.

This summit should also look at how we can build capacity at the municipal level so that they are better equipped to deal with the migration patterns which are getting more vigorous as the result of political sanity brought about by ANC-NNP working together arrangement.

People who left this province because it was so racially hostile to them are now coming back. People are now starting to view this province as their home and a place where they can live without any fear of being racially prejudiced. This is why we are saying ' this Cape is growing' Ikapa Elihlumayo.

The way things are at the moment look like we are losing the battle against the housing backlog. As a result of Ikapa Elihlumayo our housing backlog has increased to approximately 400 000. Our strategies are not coping. We need innovative and creative ways to deal with housing challenges.

Because of the complex nature of housing delivery, we too need to adopt a multifold approach. We could seriously look at transferring land to municipalities for property development, they will in turn make that part of their IDPs.

My department has already started with this process. To date, my department has transferred a total of 972 properties to municipalities in the past three years. I sincerely appeal to all departments to do the same.

We could also look at alternative ways of creating housing opportunities. From where I stand, Social Housing could go a long successful way in addressing our problems. In fact some provinces are now advanced with Social Housing. I suggest we look at those success cases, see if we can't borrow some ideas that would be applicable in our province. Medium density housing would come in handy in addressing our land predicament. Or we could also explore the Inner City Development approach.

NB: We can have the best legislative framework in place, in the absence of the will to implement resolutions taken at conferences and summits like this, I am afraid non of those resolutions make any sense.

I hope this summit won't be reduced to senseless series of noble ideas that end up only on paper.