The concept of government reconstruction development programme (RDP) social housing in South Africa was rolled out in 1994 after the African National Congress Government came to power when the apartheid rule was abolished. The main aim of the government was to enhance the lifestyles of the poor in society through the provision of houses that they could not afford in the open market. However, many concerns have been reported about the social housing project in terms of poor project implementation and the delivery of deliverables that do not befit the need of the end-users. This study aims to assess the flaws in the application of project management (PM) principles in the construction of these social houses.,A quantitative approach was adopted for the study by making use of closed- and open-ended questionnaires to collect data from 1,893 social housing inhabitants in Bloemfontein, Free State. Descriptive statistics and R programming language software were used to analyse the data collected.,The findings reveal that there was a profound failure in the application of PM principles in the construction of the social houses leading to the provision of deliverables that do not meet the needs of the beneficiaries. There are also poor project deliverables and lack of consultations that could have probably been prevented had proper PM systems been put in place by the government throughout the project lifecycle. This lack of proper PM philosophies has generated dissatisfaction among the beneficiaries leading to numerous complaints about the social housing programme.,The survey was done in only RDP housing communities in Bloemfontein in the Free State Province of South Africa; however, the result may be applicable in other RDP housing programmes.,The empirical results indicate that the government has been providing houses with disregard to project objectives by not instituting an appropriate PM systems; hence, the main objective of providing befitting houses to the less privileged to enhance their living conditions has woefully failed, as the inhabitants do not see any improvement of their social standings after receiving the houses. This means the government might have wasted resources as a result of ineffective PM throughout the project implementation.,This study has identified PM flaws in the construction of the RDP houses, which have led to poor project deliverables. This study thus gives recommendations with regard to proper PM strategies for the implementation of the same or similar project in the future to achieve project objectives.

中文翻译：

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南非社会住房项目建设中项目管理失败的经验现实

1994年，当种族隔离规则废除后，非洲人大代表政府上台后，南非政府重建发展计划（RDP）的社会住房概念便得以推广。政府的主要目的是通过提供在公开市场上买不起的住房来改善社会穷人的生活方式。然而，关于社会住房项目的报道很多，涉及项目执行不力和交付的交付物不符合最终用户的需求。本研究旨在评估项目管理原则在这些社会房屋建设中的缺陷。采用封闭式和开放式问卷调查的定量方法，从1 ，自由州布隆方丹893名社会住房居民。使用描述性统计数据和R编程语言软件分析了收集到的数据。研究结果表明，在构建社会房屋时，在应用PM原理方面存在严重失败，导致无法提供满足需求的可交付成果受益人。如果政府在整个项目生命周期中建立了适当的PM系统，那么项目可交付成果也很差，缺乏协商可能可以避免。缺乏正确的PM理念导致受益人之间的不满，导致对社会住房计划的众多抱怨。这项调查仅在南非自由州省布隆方丹的RDP住房社区中进行；然而，实证结果表明，政府通过不建立适当的PM系统而无视项目目标而向房屋提供住房；因此，为弱势群体提供适居住房以改善其生活条件的主要目标不幸地失败了，因为居民在获得住房后并没有看到社会地位的任何改善。这意味着在整个项目实施过程中，由于PM效率低下，政府可能浪费了资源。这项研究发现了RDP房屋建设中的PM缺陷，这些缺陷导致了可交付的项目。