THE brutal eviction of shack dwellers in Lwandle last week has highlighted the dire housing problem in Cape Town, a city that has experienced rapid population growth. Mayor Patricia de Lille has called again on the national government to speed up housing provision.
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), tackled the topic in her weekly newsletter on Monday.
A shack dwellers’ movement says housing is a ticking time bomb, and land invasions — and therefore evictions — will become the order of the day until the government comes up with a lasting solution.
Hundreds of families were evicted last week from land owned by the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) in Lwandle, near Strand in the Western Cape. There were reports of petrol bombs and burning tyres as shack dwellers and the police clashed, and the eviction drew outrage as it took place in winter and left people out in the cold. The land was designated for the rerouting of the N2.
Vuyiswa Swentu, a community leader in the informal settlement, says most of the families evicted are from the Eastern Cape. "There are no jobs there so that is why we decided to come to Cape Town."
Most of the people rely on government grants and have struggled to find full-time employment, she says. "People cannot afford to pay rent as backyarders and we cannot wait to be allocated housing by the government. The only option is to build a shack on open land … families are desperate."
As evicted families counted their losses, a blame game erupted between Sanral, the DA-led City of Cape Town and Western Cape, and the national government.
Ms de Lille says national government needs to review the funding model and legislation to speed up housing provision. Given that the population of Cape Town has grown by 30% in the past 10 years, she has previously written to President Jacob Zuma requesting his intervention to release two sizeable pieces of land, Youngsfield and Wingfield, which are close to public transport, for public housing.
The city’s population has grown from 2.9-million in 2001 to 3.7-million in 2011. This includes tens of thousands of people arriving from other provinces in search of better opportunities. The housing shortage has led to the mushrooming of informal settlements on the outskirts of the city, some of which are built on privately owned land.
Ms de Lille says 276,000 people are on the city’s housing waiting list. "(National) government should be responsible for providing housing for people who earn less than R3,500 a month, and the private sector should provide assistance to those who earn more than that."
The government should build houses for rent, with an option to buy them later, she says. High-density developments would also help alleviate the housing crisis.
According to government data, the backlog of about 1.5-million houses in 1994 has risen to 2.1-million as SA’s population has grown by 13-million to 53-million.
It is not only poor communities that are affected by the housing crisis. Government statistics show 15% of SA’s 14.45-million households earn enough to qualify for a mortgage; the 60% who earn less than R3,500 qualify for state housing; and the remaining 25%, which includes nurses, police officers and teachers, qualify for neither.
In her newsletter yesterday, Ms Zille wrote that at a conservative estimate for the Western Cape alone, to provide the land, services and top structures for all those waiting to be accommodated would cost more than R70bn, almost double the province’s entire budget.
"Can we, as a society, sustain the expectation that the government must provide free housing for all who need it?" she asked.
The Centre for Constitutional Rights says the evictions were unconstitutional, and the Human Rights Commission is investigating why people were evicted without alternative accommodation being made available.
Shack dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo has called it "strange" that these evictions are being given "so much attention".
"Evictions happen almost every day in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg … we have to ask, why now? One can only think it is politicking ahead of the local government elections," Abahlali president S’bu Zikode says.
Political analyst Prof Steven Friedman says homeless people usually do not have a voice.
Housing is likely to take centre stage ahead of the 2016 polls. "We saw something similar (in 2011) where the open-air toilets became a major issue. (The evictions) have put housing on the agenda."
- BDLive
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