CNN - House made from Hemp

Low Carbon Hemp House Put to the Test

Used to make paper, clothing and car body panels, hemp could also be used to build environmentally-friendly homes of the future say researchers at the University of Bath.

A consortium, led by the BRE (Building Research Establishment) Centre for Innovative Construction Materials based at the University, has constructed a small building on the Claverton campus out of hemp-lime to test its properties as a building material.

Called the "HemPod," this one-storey building has highly insulating walls made from the chopped woody core, or shiv, of the industrial hemp plant mixed with a specially developed lime-based binder.

The hemp shiv traps air in the walls, and the hemp itself is porous, making the walls incredibly well insulated. The lime-based binder sticks together and protects the hemp and makes the building material highly fire resistant.

The industrial hemp plant takes in carbon dioxide as it grows, and the lime render absorbs even more of the climate change gas, effectively giving the building an extremely low carbon footprint.

Dr Mike Lawrence, Research Officer from the University's Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering, explained: "Whilst there are already some houses in the UK built using hemp and lime, the HemPod will be the first hemp-lime building to be constructed purely for scientific testing.

"We will be closely monitoring the house for 18 months using temperature and humidity sensors buried in the walls, measuring how quickly heat and water vapour travels through them.

"The walls are breathable and act as a sort of passive air-conditioning system, meaning that the internal humidity is kept constant and the quality of the air within the house is very good. The walls also have a 'virtual thermal mass' because of the remarkable pore structure of hemp shiv combined with the properties of the lime binder, which means the building is much more thermally efficient and the temperature inside the house stays fairly constant."

Professor Pete Walker, Director of the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials, added: "The aim of the project is to provide some robust data to persuade the mainstream building industry to use this building material more widely.

"Hemp grows really quickly; it only takes the area the size of a rugby pitch to grow enough hemp in three months to build a typical three-bedroom house.

"Using renewable crops to build houses can also provide economic benefits to rural areas by opening up new agricultural markets. Farmers can grow hemp during the summer as a break crop between their main food crops, it doesn't need much water and can be grown organically.

"Every part of the plant can be used, so there's no waste -- the shiv is used for building, the fibres can make car panels, clothing or paper, and the seeds can be used for food or oil. So it's a very efficient, renewable material
.
"Lime has been used in construction for millennia, and combining it with industrial hemp is a significant development in the effort to make construction more sustainable."

Environmentally-friendly building materials are often more expensive than traditional materials, but the Renewable House project (www.renewable-house.co.uk) funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC) demonstrated a cost of around £75,000 (excluding foundations) to build a three-bedroom Code 4 house from hemp-lime making it competitive with conventional bricks and mortar.

The project is sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) under the Renewable Materials LINK Programme, and brings together a team of nine partners comprising: University of Bath, BRE Ltd, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Hanson UK, Hemp Technology, Lhoist Group, Lime Technology, the NNFCC and Wates Living Space.

- ScienceDaily

Sexwale's silence

BHEKI Cele recently justified his new R4 million house in Pretoria on the grounds that “If the head of Interpol visits me I don’t want him to find me living in a shack.” He’s not the only one of us who would prefer not to be living in a shack irrespective of who’s likely to be popping around for a cup of coffee. But the money spent on his house could have paid for houses for hundreds of shack dwellers and neither the incredible inequalities in our society, nor the ever more predatory and extravagant excesses of the politicians elected to ameliorate those inequalities, are passing unnoticed.

Along with unemployment, the housing crisis is one of the major social fractures producing the unstable and diverse political ferment at the base of our society. An increase in the housing subsidy was a central demand in the recent strike by public sector workers, housing has been a major issue in many of the local rebellions, the demand for decent housing is central to the struggles of most of the major poor people’s movements and it was often a key factor in the xenophobic pogroms of May 2008.

The African National Congress has built a lot of houses in South Africa. This fact is usually among the first to be deployed in defence of its record, but we shouldn’t be blind to the reality that states often build houses as part of a project of social control rather than social justice.

In the 1970s, the military dictatorships in Brazil and Chile found huge house-building programmes to be crucial strategies for securing their rule by simultaneously achieving the spatial exclusion and fragmentation of the poor and their precarious economic inclusion via home ownership. And, of course, we should recall that there was a time when the apartheid state was building houses at one of the most frenzied rates in the world.

These authoritarian projects couldn’t be more different to, say, the housing co-operative movements that developed out of radical political movements in parts of Europe and have produced collectively owned and managed as well as well located and designed housing projects.

One of the many reasons the anti-political language of “delivery” is so damaging to any attempt to think about the human realities of society is that it masks the fact that housing is an inherently political question. What constitutes a decent house, its location, its design, the mode of its construction, the nature of the space in which it is set, who gets to access the house and on what basis, and who gets to decide all of this are all deeply political questions.

The evasion of the politics of housing by the ANC in favour of the convenient fiction that resolving the housing crisis is solely a technical question of efficient “delivery” from above has largely resulted in very small and often badly constructed houses on the peripheries of cities. In many cases RDP houses have been built on land that the apartheid state had first acquired to build new townships and the immediate visible difference between apartheid and post-apartheid townships is often the sobering fact that houses built after apartheid are a lot smaller. The allocation of houses and of the contracts to build them has routinely been driven by political patronage rather than considerations of justice or efficiency.

The housing policy of the first post-apartheid government was negotiated in 1993 and drew on the subsidy system pioneered by the confluence of local fascism and American imperialism that brought the Pinochet dictatorship to power in Chile. A decade after the end of apartheid there was some recognition that the subsidy system was resulting in a replication of apartheid-style townships in peripheral ghettos and in 2004, a better policy framework was introduced in the form of Breaking New Ground. However, across the country there was a systematic failure to implement the substantive content of the new policy that recommends and makes financial provision for participatory and collective in-situ upgrades, instead of forced removals to peripheral dumping grounds.

It’s not just policy that was ignored. In some parts of the country municipalities have routinely acted towards the poor in ways that are unlawful and, in strict legal terms, criminal. This has included unlawful and often violent evictions, demolitions, forced removals and repression of poor people’s organisations.

One of the reasons for the contradiction between the law and formal policy positions on the one hand, and the altogether more grim reality of state action on the other, was that for some years key figures in the national political elite promoted an anti-poor discourse about “clearing” or “eradicating slums” that had, in practice, considerably more influence on state officials and much of civil society than the formal policy and legal commitments to which the state is bound in principle.

The date by which the slums would be cleared was first set at 2010 and then moved to 2014. This was a denialist fantasy on a grand scale but the eradication agenda, led by Lindiwe Sisulu and backed by both Thabo Mbeki and the Polokwane Resolutions, had very real costs. It resulted in the state increasingly responding to squatting as a security issue rather than a popular and entirely rational response to the housing crisis. Evictions escalated and considerable force was deployed to stop new land occupations and the expansion of existing shack settlements.

Another reason for the contradiction between the reality of state action and its formal legal and policy commitments is that while elite interests were well organised to pressure the party, from inside and from outside, there was no organised national popular movement that could, as was possible in the 1980s, exert a countervailing pressure from below.

The eradication agenda came to a head with the KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act, which sought to give it legal sanction and was supposed to be replicated around the country. It was overturned in the Constitutional Court in October 2009 and within months there was a clear shift in the discourse of the state away from eradication and towards an acceptance of the real scale of the urban crisis.

Unlike Lindiwe Sisulu, Tokyo Sexwale’s Ministry openly acknowledges that at the current rate at which it is building houses the state simply has no prospect of moving all shack dwellers into formal housing. The eradication agenda is over. This is progress. Facing the reality of a situation is obviously much better than denying it and then using state violence to try to keep it at bay.

But we also need to take concrete steps to resolve the housing crisis and Sexwale has shown no real willingness to get to the heart of the matter. On the contrary, his recently announced “radical plans” to “change the face of housing delivery” amount to little more than trying to cut out some of the corruption in the existing system, adding police stations and clinics to the peripheral ghettos that he is still building and creating still more space for state-backed civil society to substitute itself for genuinely popular participation in housing.

Sexwale is silent on the real issues that could make a real difference. He is silent on the urgent need to put the social value of urban land before its commercial value. He is silent on the equally urgent need to channel resources away from elite projects and towards basic needs. He is silent on the need to democratise housing and to wrench it, firmly, from the hands of the party’s patronage networks. He is also silent on the need to support people to occupy land and to develop services and build for themselves when the state cannot meet their housing needs.

And, while he cozies up to big business and state-backed civil society, he remains culpably silent on the political repression faced by the independent shack dwellers’ movements that have been trying to build a national network of poor people’s movements that are accountable to no one but their members and that could, in the words of the Landless People’s Movement, “use the weapon of mass struggle to rediscipline the parliamentarians”.

Sexwale is clearly an improvement on Sisulu and the end of state support for the fantasy that the eradication of shack settlements is imminent, is a good thing. But an adequate response to the housing crisis requires a lot more than this and, by any serious measure, he has failed his apprenticeship in this job.

• Richard Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University. This article first appeared on the website of the South African Civil Society Information Service (sacsis.org.za).

- The Witness

InternAfrica is doing something right...

Sentineal slopes 'invaded'

Hangberg residents are illegally building homes on the lower slopes of the Sentinel, putting them on a collision course with city authorities and the Hout Bay Residents' Association.

The Sentinel forms part of Table Mountain, which is a World Heritage Site.

Association chairman Len Swimmer says the matter has been reported to the City of Cape Town and the police, but claims that no action has been taken since the buildings were spotted "a few months ago".

Aerial photographs of the site, paid for by the association, showed that about 40 wood and corrugated iron homes had been built and that about 30 plots had been cleared, Swimmer said.

The houses are being built on a fire break.

"We were contacted by concerned Hangberg residents and reported the land invasion and illegal occupation to the ward councillor, the city and police but all they said was that they were dealing with it," he said.

The city told the Cape Argus it was aware of the construction and was taking the matter "extremely seriously".

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, Cape Town mayor Dan Plato, representatives from the SA National Parks (SANParks) and provincial government officials were to have met late on Tuesday to discuss the new settlement.

Swimmer said any development on the Sentinel's slopes jeopardised its status as a heritage site.

One section of the mountain is owned by SANParks, another by the City of Cape Town, while the rest is privately owned.

Last year the privately owned section of the Sentinel was put up for auction, a move which enraged Hangberg residents and forced the cancellation of the public auction.

Residents staged a protest at the scene of the planned auction and the police were called in to disperse the crowd.

Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) manager Paddy Gordon explained: "If you picture a triangle, then the top of the triangle is the Sentinel and some of the base is city and SANParks-owned land.

"We bought a section of it with the intention to purchase all of the privately owned land at a later stage but that purchase plan is being threatened by the land invasion."

The aim was to ensure that the Sentinel as a whole would fall under the authority of SANParks, allowing it to be conserved and protected, he said.

"But at this stage, with these developments (the illegally erected buildings), it won't be a part of the national parks and will not have protection."

He said that at least six structures had been erected on SANParks-owned land, but that the bulk of the problem was on land owned by the city.

Ward councillor Marga Haywood confirmed that the residents' association had contacted her about the issue.

"We contacted the city's anti-land invasion unit, who asked for support from the police to inspect the claims because, last year sometime, an official attached to the unit was shot in his hand by angry residents," Haywood said.

City officials had, however, been told that crime statistics in the area were down and, as a result, the police said they would not intervene, she claimed, adding that she had e-mails to confirm the police's response.

The 56-member anti-land invasion unit is not armed. Its members carry out evictions on behalf of the City of Cape Town.

Haywood said provincial police had later agreed to help formulate a plan to deal with the problem.

"We understand that there is a housing need but there is also a due process that needs to be followed - there is a housing waiting list that people can register on to obtain safely built homes in a legal manner," Haywood said.

She said about 25,000 people lives in Hangberg.

At the foot of the mountain on Tuesday, Alfred Abbot was digging trenches for his new home.

A network of electricity cables ran from the the new houses to formal homes nearby.

Abbot said he knew he was building an illegal home and that he could be forcefully removed at any time.

But he was defiant.

"If the cops come, I'll ask them if they want to live with their mothers forever," he said.

Abbott said he lived in a one-bedroomed council-owned house in Hangberg with his mother and four siblings, along with four children all under the age of nine.

City spokesperson Kylie Hatton said the city was aware of the situation and was "taking it extremely seriously" in light of the health and fire hazards linked to the new infrastructure.

Hatton said the council had not given residents permission to build on the mountain.

- Cape Argus

'We demand our houses'

The minister of Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale, was greeted by an angry mob yesterday as he arrived at the launch of the Lufhereng housing development near Protea Glen in Soweto.

He was met by more than 1,000 Soweto Bureau for Sustainable Settlement (Sobuse) members who were protesting on the road demanding that they too be allocated houses.

Some Sobuse members said they had been on the waiting list for houses since 1996, but were overlooked when houses were allocated.

When the crowd saw Sexwale they all ran to him singing:

Awulethe isikhiya sam (bring me my key).

Others shouted: "We are staying in shacks; we demand our houses."

Sexwale calmed the angry Soweto residents and told them he only found out about them yesterday in the media.

"You did not call me here; I came on my own," he said.

"I don't know about your issues - no one told me about them."

Sexwale urged the leadership of the group to give him a report of their grievances.

"I want the full story of why you are demonstrating," he said.

While Sexwale was addressing the crowd, Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane joined him on the side of the road.

Some people in the crowd shouted that they wanted their houses from Mokonyane.

"We need to sit down and discuss our own issues. We are not enemies," Mokonyane said.

"Our common enemy is poverty, hunger, unemployment and homelessness."

She told the crowd that the issue of houses in Soweto was not going to be resolved in one day, but asked them to work together with the government to fight corruption.

"If you have evidence of corruption, bring it forward and we will deal with it," she said to loud cheers.

She told the people that the issue of waiting lists was a problem in the whole country, but said there were plans in place to address this.

Six first-time home owners were handed their houses. Three of the beneficiaries first applied for their houses in 1996.

Elizabeth Mpeqeka, 75, who had been staying at the Protea South informal settlement for 16 years, was the first recipient of the four-roomed houses.

The elderly woman who had been staying with her two grandchildren at the shack was overwhelmed with emotion and said she was "extremely happy" that she had finally received her house.

MMC for Housing Ruby Mathang told those who had not received their houses that if they were on the waiting list of 1996 and 1997 their turn was going to come.

"We are keeping our promise of allocating houses to the beneficiaries who are first priority," he said.

The beneficiaries are Protea South residents who are living in a dolomite area, the Soweto 1996/1997 waiting list and the Doornkop farming community who now occupy the development land.

Lufhereng, which is the first mixed housing development in Soweto, is expected to provide 24,000 housing opportunities for residents of the greater Soweto area.

Housing products planned for Lufhereng include RDP housing, affordable housing for low-income households and fully bonded products for middle-to-high income groups.

Provision will be made for 15 primary and three secondary schools and about 60 community facilities.

There will also be an agricultural component of the project which will focus on small-scale intensive field farming and other agricultural activities.

It is expected to create approximately 10,000 job opportunities. The project will incorporate the existing Doornkop farmers as well as new aspiring farmers.

Meanwhile, 19 Sobuse residents arrested during a protest at Lufhereng on Sunday were released on their own recognisances at the Roodepoort Magistrate's Court yesterday.

- The Star

Ray of hope to end deadlock

ONE of the most militant unions in the public servants strike has raised hopes the impasse between workers and the government could be resolved after all.

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu), whose members were the first to reject the government's new wage offer on Wednesday, said yesterday its members might be reconsidering.

Spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said a change of heart might occur because of a new housing scheme for public servants that the government is busy working on. He said not all union members were yet informed of this new commitment by government, made this week in ongoing talks.

Public sector workers often complain they earn "too much" to qualify for RDP houses - but "too little" to get a decent bond from a bank.

"Government will recommend that the Government Employees Pension Fund, the Department of Human Settlements, and the Public Investment Corporation actually develop that idea (housing scheme). They will research it and put together a model before April 1 2011," Pamla told Sowetan.

He said many Nehawu members had not been informed about this when they rejected the offer.

"In terms of technical details, the plan is still vague but at least time frames have been set," he said.

The government's latest wage offer of a 7,5percent increase and an R800 a month housing allowance had been leaked to the media and this had caused problems, he said.

"Some stewards never took time out to actually read through the whole document. Some of them didn't explain it to the members. They just heard about the R800 and 7,5percent in the media and decided to reject it.

But Sowetan has also been told that Nehawu is divided over the housing scheme proposal. A Nehawu leader who spoke on condition of anonymity said the union could not tell members to go back to work because "there is something in the air".

"We heard that Tokyo Sexwale (human settlements minister) will introduce a programme and that this will be disclosed to us by April next year. But there are no details and we aren't going to rush to tell our members there is something in the air.

Public Service and Administration Minister Richard Baloyi's spokesperson Lebogang Mafokosi said she could not provide any details of the new housing scheme. She previously told Sowetan the housing scheme still needed to be developed and that discussions with the unions were to have started in October.

Cosatu declined to comment on the developments, saying a statement would be issued today. Spokesperson Patrick Craven said he did not want to affect the talks.

- Sowetan

moladi school - if it's good for your kids it's good for you!

Greetings from Cape Town

An update as to where we were on Tuesday - Day 2 at the Hillwood Primary School in Grassy Park

moladi formwork being removed with the cast reinforced walls showing - built employing local unskilled labour

'Hemp house' built in North Carolina

(NECN) - Usually houses full of marijuana plants are getting busted -- not being hailed for their energy efficiency.

But in North Carolina, that is the case for a house that was built out of hemp.

It's reportedly the first ever "hemp house" permitted to be built in the U.S. The owners say last month's cooling bill for the 3400 square foot home was only about $100.

That's because of the thermal capabilities of hemp. The couple also says it only cost $133 per square foot to build the house, using industrial 'hempcrete.'

They say they wanted to use recyclable materials that are healthy and better for the environment.

Cape council probes decision on open toilets

The city of Cape Town is to launch an investigation to find out which official was responsible for agreeing to building toilets without enclosures in Makhaza, with one councillor calling for disciplinary steps to be taken against the official.

City manager Achmat Ebrahim has ordered his officials to investigate after receiving a complaint from mayoral committee member for social development Grant Pascoe.

Pascoe wrote that the decision not to enclose the toilets and to leave it to the residents was unlawful.

"As you're aware, during 2007 a decision was taken to build toilets without enclosures in Makhaza section of Khayelitsha. According to information at hand, this was done in consultation with the community who allegedly agreed to build their own enclosures in exchange for a greater number of toilets than would otherwise have been built by the City of Cape Town," Pascoe said.

However, a number of residents reneged on the agreement and failed to build enclosures, Pascoe wrote.

"In January this year, the perceived failure by the city to build the enclosures was widely reported in the media, and is reportedly being investigated by the SAHRC (South African Human Rights Commission).

"It has come to my attention that the city's decision to build toilets without proper enclosures was unlawful," Pascoe said.

He quoted Section 9, of the Water Services Act, which states that "the minimum standard for basic sanitation services is a toilet which is safe, reliable, environmentally sound, easy to keep clean, provides privacy and protection against the weather".

"These actions have prejudiced the administration and are tantamount to negligence. It has brought the city into disrepute. I therefore request that an investigation into the decision and circumstances surrounding this decision be launched, followed by consequential disciplinary action."

- Cape Times

Sustainable hemp buildings

Grow Your Own Home

Affordable Housing becomes Green with hemp

Entering the housing market is not only a challenge for first time buyers, but also for conscious consumers wanting to take care of the environment without spending a fortune.

With now legal industrial hemp licenses available in many countries around the world, Growing Your Own Home has never been easier!

According to long-time industrial hemp expert Paul Benhaim, “just one acre of land is enough for you to grow a crop of hemp that can be converted to a regular looking building on that same piece of land”. He goes on to say “and we are not talking rustic homes, but regular looking solid council approved buildings”.

These new eco friendly buildings are built by regular builders, and don’t require specialist designs, though the developers recommend solar passive designs that take advantage of the thermal mass offered by the hemp walls. As well as residential and commercial projects, simple renovations are possible.

Until now you had to import materials to be sure of a standard building product. Previous versions of similar technologies commonly known as ‘hemcrete’ or ‘hempcrete’ have also required processing of hemp in large factories. Hence this technology has not been fully sustainable, until now.

This new technology developed over 10 years by Klara Marosszeky allows simple harvesting of hemp that makes use of the whole stalk to create a building material that has excellent rodents, fire and insulation properties. Although an option, no rendering or finishing is required (you can colour through the mix) and all local materials can be used in what is becoming the leader in the latest trend in environmentally friendly building techniques.

Klara is currently hoping for a project to see some genuine and direct outcomes for the Indigenous people of Australia in regards to Affordable 'home grown' housing. South Africa and Trinidad have also showed interest in this technology.

Klara Marosszeky and Paul Benhaim are about to launch their findings in a new book on Building with Hemp which includes a detailed construction manual. To support professional builders, self-builders, renovators and eco enthusiasts Klara and Paul will personally share this technique at workshops around the world in 2011. A one-off special preview workshop will be launched in Byron Bay, Australia on September 4th 2010.

Cut in electricity subsidy for poor targeted

Cape Town mayor Dan Plato is to meet Public Enterprises Minster Barbara Hogan to discuss the city's subsidy to Eskom to provide free basic electricity to households, a subsidy that costs the city more than R100-million.

Plato said that, to be fair to all indigent electricity users in Cape Town, the mayoral committee had recommended to the council that the city amend its policy of subsidising Eskom to provide free basic electricity to users in the Eskom supply area of the city.

About one-third of consumers in the metropole, mainly in rural areas, Table View, Khayelitsha and Parklands, buy electricity directly from Eskom, and the rest buy through the city council.

"It is recommended that the city reduce its subsidy to Eskom to provide free basic electricity to Eskom customers who use less than 250 kilowatt hours per month, and not to those who use less than 450kW hours, as it used to do," said Plato.

He said he would meet Hogan to discuss the issue.

"I've asked her to intervene for funding to fill the gap," Plato said.

In the meantime, the city will continue to provide free basic electricity to its own customers who use less than 450kW hours a month.

Plato said Eskom had changed its tariff structure so that domestic customers using more than 150kWh a month were paying significantly less than the equivalent City of Cape Town customers.

"The city therefore needed to review its free basic electricity subsidy to Eskom, so that the city's subsidy to Eskom did not result in Eskom's customers paying less than the city's own customers," he said.

Mayoral committee member for finance Ian Neilson said that all municipalities in the country subsidised Eskom by about two cents per kilowatt.

"Those two cents might not seem like much, but it's around R120-million.

"And the city is one of Eskom's biggest customers and it should be subsidised," Neilson said.

The ANC's Raymond Mrawu said the city should charge a cheaper tariff for everyone.

"I don't know why the city doesn't change. Eskom is more sympathetic to the poorest of the poor.

"It's very important for the city to follow Eskom," Mrawu said.

Cynthia Clayton of the Independent Democrats said electricity had become so expensive that the meter boxes in homes in her area had become like televisions.

"People are watching their boxes more than TV. It's a total rip-off for the poor. We're actually going backwards," Clayton said.

The city's new system slots consumers into a tariff band according to the amount of electricity they buy.

The basic price of electricity increased by an average of 25 percent at the beginning of the month, but several consumers the Cape Times spoke to have found that their bills have increased by 60 to 70 percent.

A pensioner in Gordon's Bay found herself paying 93.31 cents per unit compared to 53.31 cents per unit before the tariff change.

"A unit is equal to 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh).

"I was told by the municipality that if you purchase more units than you normally use, you will be placed in a higher band," she said.

A man in Claremont found himself in a similar situation.

"I would urge all pre-paid users to check their new costs of power, mine increased from 61 cents per unit to 106 cents per unit, a far cry from the 25 to 35 percent announced," he said

"Energy has become more expensive than it used to be and people need to understand that the more they use, the more they will be charged.

"Free basic electricity is still there for lower users," Neilson said.

Neilson said people needed to change their lifestyles and make use of cost-saving measures.

Jolene Henn, Eskom's regional communication and stakeholder manager in the Western Cape, said that all those customers within its electricity supply areas consuming up to 450kWh per month did receive free basic electricity.

"Eskom's direct domestic customers pay less for electricity than the city's, depending on the tariff and consumption level," she said.

- Cape Times

Project to improve 230 RDP houses

A TOTAL of 230 RDP houses in the Mamre area will be retrofitted with ceilings to help residents cut down heating costs, the City of Cape Town said yesterday.

This would improve the quality of life and provide jobs for unemployed Mamre residents, mayoral committee member for housing Shehaam Sims said.

"There are thousands of houses in Cape Town which were built before the National Housing Subsidy allowed for the inclusion of ceilings. A house without a ceiling falls far short of the ideal thermal protection one would like to see in every house."

Retrofitting houses with insulated ceilings improved energy efficiency, health and livelihoods.

The project was being driven by the city's environmental resources management department as part of the Danish Development Aid-funded Urban Environmental Management Programme.

The city said 65percent of the 230 houses had already been retrofitted with insulated ceilings. By the end of the year all the identified houses would be completed. The project had also created jobs for 18 locals.

Western Cape finance and economic development MEC Alan Winde said he would investigate whether Expanded Public Works Programme funding could be made available so the programme may be extended in the province. - Sowetan

Boy electrocuted by illegal cable

A three-year-old boy has been electrocuted after he stepped on an illegal electricity cable.

Little Simamkele Mfazwe was still clutching the packet of chips he had just bought after he stepped on the live wire in Oscar Mpetha informal settlement, Nyanga.

Nolakhe Mfazwe, 41, said she was sitting with a friend on Monday afternoon when one of her neighbours came to tell her about what had happened to her son.

"I was listening to my neighbours talking about poor service delivery and lack of electricity in our area," she said.

"Then someone came to tell me Simamkele was dead.

"I rushed out and found him lying there with his mouth open. He was still holding the packet of chips and his eyes were bluish."

Nolakhe said a nearby resident Philiswa Khondyo, 37, explained that Simamkele was electrocuted after he walked on the wires that were lying on the ground.

"She said she saw a bright flash and the child fell on his back," she said.

Simamkele died on arrival at the KTC Day Hospital.

"I still can't believe that I have to go to bed without my son next to me. I can't believe he is dead," said the mother.

Nyanga police spokeswoman Ntomboxolo Sitshitshi said she was aware of the incident and cops have opened an inquest docket. - Daily Voice

No more open candles for light

EZY Light RDP Unit Product Specifications:

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• 5x 15LED Cluster Light with Maxi Prism Dome
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  50m cable
• 20W Solar Panel
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• 10m Solar cable
• Approx 6 hour battery life
• Low Voltage battery disconnect feature
• Optional Battery Expansion packs available
• 12 Month Warranty *
• NEEA Approved
• Manufactured in South Africa

EZY Light manufacture a range of OFF Grid Solar lighting systems that is specially designed for areas that do not have electricity. WE also have a Solar Hot water solution that operates off grid as well as on grid. WE are an alternative energy solution company that can offer a total turn key solution in Solar Energy products for various applications.

EZY Light's product range minimizes injuries and health risks by removing the need for candles and kerosene lamps from these households. We have developed a product range that is capable of providing sufficient light, is totally safe and adaptable to various applications. EZY Light's Solar water heating solution provides hot water in sunny and cloudy conditions, is NEEA and SABS approved.

Being a South African company EZY Light design and manufacture our products locally and source our components from vendors within South Africa. By manufacturing locally we ensure that we create employment and as our production capacity expands we envisage further job creations.

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Further information can also be obtained from the website: www.ezylight.co.za

Dan Plato calls for end to hazardous shacks

Mayor Dan Plato has made an impassioned plea for an end to shacks, at a City of Cape Town-organised memorial service for nine members of one family who died in a fire.

"I appeal to the three spheres of government to look at the number of shacks in the Western Cape and Cape Town," Plato told a memorial service for the nine on Wednesday.

"They need to see what they can do to eliminate the shack structures. Only if we stand together as the government and as communities will we be able to overcome all the difficulties experienced in this form of living."

Khayelitsha's OR Tambo sports hall was packed for the memorial service.

Close relatives of those who died huddled together near the front of the hall, while about 300 residents sang and danced. A choir also sang.

The fire broke out early last Wednesday, engulfing two large wood-and-iron structures in Lingelethu West, Khayelitsha.

A candle had been left burning on a plastic chair.

Sisters Marche, 30, and Nomampondo Mdla, 26, died with their boyfriends, Bulelani Nqundwana, 38, and David Khoboka, 33, and their five children.

The children were Nomampondo's eight-year-old daughter, Asimahle, and Marche's three sons - Aviwe, 5, Luxolo, 4, and six-month-old Spumzo - and daughter, Andisiwe, 3.

They were locked inside their homes and emergency officials were unable to get in to fight the flames.

Plato extended his "deepest condolences" to the family.

Grandmothers Eunice Ndibi and Rosalina Ndibi and a cousin, Patience Gwa, were among the close relatives at the service.

"This incident was really very tragic," Plato said.

"I just want to say to the family, may God give you the strength to go through this difficult time."

Plato wished the family a safe trip to the Eastern Cape for the funerals.

ANC provincial task team leader and Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana also attended the service.

- Cape Times

'There was no flooding'

Two hundred shacks were waterlogged and 500 residents were affected by heavy rains in Cape Town, the city's disaster management said on Sunday.

"We need to clarify that there was no flooding," said spokesman Wilfred Solomons-Johannes.

"Informal settlements in Kanana, Gugulethu and the Cape Flats were waterlogged after the heavy rains hit the area yesterday [Saturday]," he said.

He said the problem was that people had dumped rubble in storm-water drains.

Disaster management cleared the drainage system and residents were back in their shacks on Sunday.

While no more rain was expected in Cape Town, there had been snowfalls on the Matroosberg Mountains in the Boland and cold weather was expected. - Sapa

I believed a lie - Zille

The repeated allegation that "for two years, 55 families in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, were forced to relieve themselves in full public view" is untrue, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Monday.

Writing in her weekly newsletter, the Western Cape Premier also slammed the ANC Youth League and SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) for their roles in the saga.

There were too many contradictions and unanswered questions. And too few facts, about the open toilets saga, she said.

The media had repeatedly reported that 55 families in Makhaza were forced to relieve themselves in full public view for over two years.

"This has been repeated so often, in various ways, that I believed it was true. I apologised in Parliament.

"And I asked myself: how was it possible for this to happen under a DA administration, and on my watch as mayor?

"But the more I thought about it, the less the story hung together: If this project started in 2007, why did I only hear about it in January 2010? Why did no-one protest sooner?

"Even more mystifying was why the ANC didn't use the 'open toilets' against me in the run-up to the 2009 election?

"And most puzzling of all: why did Andile Lili, the project's paid facilitator since 2008 (as well as a local ANCYL leader), only start to protest against the project when it was 96 percent complete?

"Indeed, given that he was the project facilitator, why was he protesting at all?," Zille asked.

"The answer is simply this: there were, in fact, no open toilets in 2007 or 2008 or indeed until the end of 2009.

"The 55 toilets that remained open were those installed in the very final stage of the upgrading project - in November 2009 - when 96 percent of the 1316 toilets provided for each family had already been enclosed.

"For some reason, the last 55 were not."

Following a newspaper photograph of an open toilet in January 2010, Mayor Dan Plato immediately ordered them to be covered, despite the objections of the 1261 families who had enclosed their own toilets.

But on January 25, when the city arrived to enclose the toilets, they were prevented from doing so by a small group of people claiming to represent "the community".

Two subsequent attempts by the city to erect enclosures, were thwarted when the ANCYL tore them down, despite almost all the individual families requesting, in writing, that the city enclose their toilets, she said.

During the time that the 55 toilets remained open, no person was "forced" to use them.

The community was well serviced with an alternative option - one enclosed toilet for every five households which was the national norm for incremental upgrading projects.

Given that 96 percent of the families in the project now had their own toilets, the communal toilets were free most of the time.

"In other words, the repeated allegation that 'for two years, 55 families in Makhaza were forced to relieve themselves in full public view' is entirely without foundation," Zille said.

Furthermore, as soon as the city learnt about the open toilets, they attempted to enclose them.

But the ANCYL wanted them open, because it suited their agenda. The 55 open toilets happened to be located in the precise area where the ANCYL's leading "thugocrats", Andile Lili and Loyiso Nkohla, conducted their "reign of terror".

"Given the contradiction between the community's wishes and the ANCYL's actions, there is only one conclusion: the open toilets were a direct result of the ANCYL's intimidation in order to drive their political agenda.

"I experienced this first-hand when I visited the area to speak to members of the community.

"I was informed that the last person to openly express opposition to the ANCYL, had to live with the consequences.

"So why can't we erect concrete enclosures for the 55 families? And why did the 1261 families who enclosed their own toilets, not demand concrete enclosures as well?

"I put this to the officials working on the project. And I found the answer instructive," Zille said.

Upgrading informal settlements had two phases - providing infrastructure services, such as roads, stormwater, water, and sewage, and secondly erecting the house.

The two phases had to be aligned, because if concrete toilet enclosures were provided on each erf during phase one, they had to be removed in phase two to incorporate the toilet into the house.

This meant an additional cost of R4 000 per erf, deducted from the R75 000 subsidy for each family's top structure.

This meant, in practical terms, that a concrete enclosure in phase one, would result in a house in phase two that was two square metres smaller than it would otherwise have been.

"If you enclose your own toilet in phase one, it can be incorporated into your house in phase two, and you will reap the benefit of a bigger house.

"This is why families choose to enclose their own toilets in phase one.

"It is an empowering and logical choice. That is, until the ANCYL decides otherwise," Zille said.

The saddest aspect of the saga was the "pitiful report" of the SAHRC, which "is full of the factual inaccuracies required to reach the conclusion that the council violated the human rights of the residents of Makhaza".

"It is the clearest possible demonstration of what happens when the ANC deploys its parliamentary cadres into institutions that are supposed to be independent of the ruling party.

"They become extensions of its power abuse instead of limits on its power.

"Some Chapter Nine institutions allow themselves to be abused and, unfortunately, the SA Human Rights Commission is one of them," Zille said.

- Sapa

City tells toilet man to provide details

Jeff Franciscus, the businessman who offered to help solve the open toilets controversy in Khayelitsha, met city council officials on regarding his plans to establish a pre-cast concrete factory.

For months 55 families of Makhaza in Khayelitsha had to relieve themselves in full view of the public because their toilets had no enclosures.

The issue turned into a political hot potato with the ANC Youth League filing a complaint against the city with the Human Rights Commission, violent protests and a clash between the ANCYL and Premier Helen Zille.

Franciscus, the owner of Darrow Pre-Cast, had proposed to the SA National Civics Organisation to train unemployed people to build concrete toilets, and offered to donate the first 100 manufactured during training.

But for Franciscus' offer to materialise, land has to be acquired to set up the factory.

"Yes we met. It was just a preliminary meeting. He (Franciscus) must provide technical information. He did not bring any documents with him," city council manager for new housing, Herman Steyn said yesterday.

Steyn said another meeting would be held as soon as Franciscus submitted more information.

Franciscus said he was pleased city officials were accommodating and willing to listen to his idea.

"They informed me that land is put out to tender and so I asked what about a temporary use so we could at least try and help solve the problem those people are facing. It looks positive," he said.

- Cape Times