Explanation:

The Reconstruction and Development Programme and the People's Housing Processwere both introduced in an effort to address the existing challenge of providinghousing for low income earners in South Africa. Both these programmes hadintended to empower its beneficiaries in the process. However, there is a lack ofevidence to demonstrate whether this was achieved. The aim of this research wasto determine the extent to which GOVERNMENT provided housing compared to selfhelphousing empowered or further disempowered poor communities. Theobjectives of this research were as follows:to develop an understanding of what empowerment is;to IDENTIFY determinants associated with empowerment definitions; todevelop indicators that can be used to evaluate empowerment;to USE the indicators to evaluate the presence, decrease or absence ofempowerment in relation to the two selected study areas in the fieldinvestigation; andto compare the results yielded from the field investigation in order to draw aconclusion and respond to the main aim if the study.A field investigation was conducted between two study areas namely, the LeboneDevelopment Trust (PHP project) and the Botshabelo 900 Pamper ConstructionProject (RDP project). Both these projects are located in Botshabelo, a townshipsituated in Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality in the Free State Province. Thedata was collected from a total sample of 50 households in two phases. Theintention of the first phase was to gain the beneficiaries' views concerning whatempowerment means and from their understanding, confirm the determinants thatcan be used to evaluate empowerment in this study. These determinants, togetherwith those identified in the literature review, were used to evaluate empowermentin the follow-up interview. The results of the study revealed that there wereweaknesses and strengths in both the projects when COMPARING them with eachother. THOUGH there were no beneficiaries that were disempowered, thebeneficiaries of the PHP project appeared to have been more empowered in somedeterminants than the beneficiaries of the RDP project.