Cape Town - With the sheriff of the Western Cape High Court missing from the scene of an illegal housing invasion in District Six yesterday, tensions rose between the occupants and the complex’s permanent residents.
Residents accused the invaders of being “queue-jumpers”, while the families who have taken over units in the development in Aspelling Street have rubbished the process by which those residents received houses.
Sixteen beneficiaries were to have received keys to the vacant units this week, said District Six Beneficiary and Redevelopment Trust chairman Anwar Nagia.
One of the beneficiaries who claims to be on the list for this second phase of key handovers is Oesman Begg, whose family were removed from nearby Muir Street in the mid-1970s.
Begg, 63, said he put in a claim with the trust in 2003. He said Rural Development Minister Gugile Nkwinti had told him at a recent meeting that he would not have to pay for the unit.
“I saw the news of this occupation in the press and had to drive here from Mitchells Plain to see for myself. It is heartbreaking,” he said.
“They did not tell me which unit would be mine, so it could be any one of those now being occupied. I have waited patiently and long, now I hear that I will have to wait even longer.
“My dying wish is to return to District Six. These people are trying to jump the queue.”
The group of about 60 invaders claim ancestry from the original Khoisan inhabitants of Table Bay. Some say they were evicted from District Six during apartheid.
They occupied seven units on Saturday and have refused to move - prompting the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform and the trust to petition the high court to bring an application for an interim court eviction order. The order was granted on Monday, and the families were told to move out by 10am yesterday, but by late on Tuesday the sheriff had not arrived to enforce the order.
Throughout the day, members of the Institute for Restoration of the Aborigines of SA performed rituals, sang songs in a Khoisan dialect, and explained their status as descendents of “South Africa’s first peoples” to reporters.
The group claimed the Cochoqua were the first inhabitants of the Cape Flats, but Keith Gottschalk, a University of the Western Cape political scientist, said it was the Gorochoqua and the Goringhaiqua clans who had inhabited the area. Because there were no written documents or birth certificates from that time, it would be interesting to know how the group were going to prove they were who they claimed to be, Gottschalk said.
The occupants are to file opposing papers on Thursday.
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