Tornado victims still wait for homes

Hundreds of Manenberg residents are still living in Wendy houses seven years after a tornado tore across the Cape Flats, damaging 2,000 homes.

And residents claim there are signs of structural flaws in the 280 new houses built in parts of Manenberg after the heart of the tornado ripped through the area seven years ago today. - Cape Argus

Demystify environmental issues: Mlambo-Ngcuka

CAPE TOWN – It was essential to demystify environmental issues so that more ordinary people took up the cudgels for a green planet, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said on Tuesday at the third assembly of the Global Environment Facility in Cape Town.

“We must do all that we can to show ordinary people, particularly the rural poor, have a role to play in ensuring that our environment is protected and to promote good practices when it comes to environmental issues,” she said at the opening plenary session of GEF.

The GEF is an independent entity based on a partnership with the UN Development Programme, the UN Environment Programme and the World Bank to help fund projects aimed at protecting the global environment.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said South Africa was also affected by the impact of global warming and climate change, with increasing temperatures affecting the wine and fruit industries of the Western Cape, as an example.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said a concerted drive should be undertaken to mobilise the youth around environmental issues, saying they had a critical role to play.

She said that the youth needed to view environmental issues, such as deforestation and climate changes, with the same intensity as when the older generation chanted the anti-apartheid slogan “victory or death”.

“Because it’s a survival issue,” she told delegates, adding that messages needed to be communicated simply.
“If you don’t protect your environment there will be no wine,” she said.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said it was important to balance and locate economic growth within a sustainable development framework.

So, when the country embarks on its massive housing programme to build new houses, it should be done with an eye on sustainable development.

“We must ensure we are not pound foolish and penny wise” when it came to questions of environmental sustainability, said Mlambo-Ngcuka.

She told delegates they should review whether the policies of GEF, a major financing mechanism for global environmental issues, were able to meet the growing scale of challenges facing the developing world, especially Africa.

Earlier, chief executive of GEF, Monique Barbut, said man-made pressures on ecosystems were having a disastrous effect. “Each and every part of our planet is suffering the vagaries of nature,” she said, listing drought, desertification and their attendant socio-economic manifestations as some of these vagaries.

Barbut said it was vitally important to come up with solutions to poverty and sustainable development, and how the GEF’s “record-breaking” replenishment funds of US 3.13 billion would be spent.

She said the GEF worked in such focal areas as biodiversity, climate change, water security and land degradation.

Barbut stressed the role of the private sector to take a “broader and more concrete part” in the resolution of problems that were of a global nature. – Sapa. The Citizen

Toddlers burn to death in Cape fire

Fires devastated various parts of Cape Town this weekend, with one fire destroying 36 informal houses in Zone 23, Langa early on Sunday morning, and two toddlers, aged one and three, were burnt to death in another fire.

Residents of the Langa informal settlement believe the fire was started by an allegedly drunk man who knocked over a paraffin stove.

One of the residents, Samkelo Lali, said: “I was awake 10 minutes after the fire started, there were a lot of people outside wanting to see what was happening.

“These people are trying to rebuild their houses but not everyone has enough money to rebuild.”

Lali said no-one was hurt during the blaze.

“The man who did this ran away and people are still looking for him,” he said.

Another resident, Jackson Mgxosholo, said he and his wife were sleeping at the time.

“I woke up and tried to put water on the fire. It took about four hours to put the fire out,” Mgxosholo said.

Disaster Management spokesperson Greg Pillay said: “The fire happened at 3am, 36 informal houses were destroyed and about 150 people were displaced by the fire.”

He said five fire engines responded to the call and an NGO, Historically Disadvantaged Individuals (HDI), is to provide food and blankets to the displaced residents.

The city’s human settlements division has also been informed and is going to supply the now homeless residents with building materials, according to Pillay.

He said another fire in Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay, displaced 15 people and burnt four shacks down just before 12pm on Saturday night.

Pillay said the Red Cross had been asked to provide food and blankets to the residents.

An informal house that was home to five people also burnt down in Lavender Hill near Military Road on Saturday night.

Pillay said a fire occurred in Phumlani Village in Lotus River at 9pm on Friday night.

He confirmed that seven adults and seven children were displaced as a result of the fire, and two toddlers, aged one and three, burnt to death.

“It has been reported that a candle caused the fire,” he said.

One fire engine from Ottery responded. - Cape Times

WC Officials face home subsidy fraud charges

Huge sums lost to irregular housing subsidy payments are being verified by Western Cape officials in preparation for a forensic audit and legal action against those suspected of committing fraud.

And new measures are to be put in place by December to prevent a recurrence of irregular practices.

The irregularities, disclosed recently by the Auditor-General, are being assessed by the provincial housing department and are expected to be handed over to forensic auditors by the end of September, according to Local Government and Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi.

Earlier this year at a meeting of parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), it emerged that Auditor General (AG) Shauket Fakie had found that of the R2,5-billion paid out in government housing subsidies since 1994, R323-million had been paid out for irregular applications.

Money had, among other things, been granted improperly to government employees earning salaries higher than the threshold for eligibility for subsidies.

Money had also been granted to people who had died and to people with invalid identity numbers.

Fakie also found that some people had received duplicate subsidies.

In the Western Cape, a number of cases identified by Fakie were being verified prior to being handed over to forensic auditors for further investigation, Dyantyi said.

• A total of 376 subsidies in the Western Cape were approved after the applicant’s death, according to Fakie.The department is investigating 105 of these cases after finding that 271 did, in fact, comply with the requirements.
  
  
• The AG found 256 cases of applicants receiving more than one subsidy in the province.All of these irregularities are being investigated by the department.
  
  
• The AG identified 245 instances where subsidies had been paid to applicants under the age of 21. Of these, the province is investigating 55. It was found that 164 of these applicants turned 21 in the year in which they applied for the subsidy and 26 of them were married.
  
  
• Altogether 255 applications for housing subsidies received from people with invalid identity numbers are being investigated by the province. Irregularities have been found in 94 cases. A further 161 are being investigated by the province.
  
  Dyantyi said that all identity numbers had been sent for checks against the population database.
  
  
• The AG found that in 2,047 cases, duplicate subsidies were approved for a specific property. After a deeds check, the province found that only one site was registered for each applicant. Three cases are being investigated in which subsidies were awarded to people who received a monthly payment from the Government Employee Pension Fund.

Dyantyi said: “All three of the cases identified by the AG are being investigated.

“After investigation, the applicants’ details will be sent to the forensic auditors for further investigation and legal action.

“The department will finalise the verification of the AG’s findings by the end of September.

“All verified findings will be handed over to forensic auditors for further investigation and legal action where alleged fraud has been identified.

“The provincial departments are to establish corrective measures to be implemented for proper management and elimination of any identified risks and control weaknesses.

“The deadline for this is December this year.” - Cape Argus

Cape Town in housing crisis

The city’s worst nightmare has come true. It has had to accept it faces the enormous challenge of providing housing for 400,000 families in Cape Town.

This figure has been confirmed with the merging of the housing allocation lists of the city and the department of housing. There was initial scepticism that the figure could not be that high.

There are 150 000 names on the city’s housing waiting list. There are another 150,000 on the national housing department. It is estimated that a further 100,000 families who have not registered for a house at all, are also in need.

‘It is not just a number. It is people who need homes’

The council committee on housing, city housing officials and the national housing department thrashed out the city’s housing backlog on Tuesday. They confirmed the problem was bigger than originally thought.

City mayor Helen Zille said she was still shocked by the extent of the crisis.

“I’ve got over the initial shock but this is still a very substantial challenge. It is not just a number. It is people who need homes,” she said.

Zille said the city’s old methods of providing houses could not address the crisis. She was now focusing her efforts on “thinking out of the box”.

The biggest challenge in dealing with the crisis is identifying and accessing land.

The true extent of the crisis emerged last month. Consultants compiling a database for provincial government after a housing registration drive earlier this year told the city council housing committee that preliminary figures indicated that the backlog was in the region of 400,000, despite a small percentage of overlap with the city housing list.

The city had been working on a figure of 260,000.

Housing portfolio committee chairman Neil Ross said the city’s list has since been refined. According to the city database, 150,000 are awaiting housing.

The two housing lists are expected to be fully merged within the next two weeks and the housing committee will then consider a report on the next steps.

Ross said the DA administration would have to “up its game”, and set its targets higher, to provide 20 000 housing opportunities a year as opposed to the current target of 7,000.

Ross said the city would never be able to provide houses for all and would have to aim for providing “housing opportunities”, which included getting land and servicing it.

Development Action Group (DAG), a NGO which facilitates the provision of houses in poor communities, said the crisis had been underestimated, and that 400,000 would have been a more accurate reflection of the problem.

Another housing NGO, Habitat for Humanity, said it had not conducted a housing assessment survey but it believed the number of those in need could be even more than 400 000.

Habitat for Humanity’s regional programme director for the Western Cape, Thembi Sithole, said the major problem for NGOs wanting to help build houses was access to government subsidies and land.

“We have the capacity. We have the people ready to build, but we don’t have land and it takes time to get subsidies,” she said.

DAG Programme Manager Shamil Manie said alternative solutions to the housing crisis had to be considered. She said informal settlements could be upgraded with services, and job opportunities and public infrastructure could be made more accessible to the people living there.

Housing authorities also needed to consider clustering low-income housing along transport routes rather than pushing these developments to the outskirts of the city.

The city’s population needing housing grows by about 48,000 a year.

Tuesday’s meeting also decided that the city’s housing allocation policy would have to be amended, such as basing allocation on the time spent waiting for a house and whether a housing project was intended for a specific community.

The committee also decided that housing waiting lists would no longer be published or made available to political parties.

“They tend to be misused for party political purposes. We don’t want politics to impinge on housing delivery,” said Ross.

Those on waiting lists would be informed in writing that they were on the list, as well as through public notices. Those on waiting lists would be requested to update their details if and when these changed.

The recommendations are expected to be taken to council for endorsement by October.

Cape left reeling in wave of land invasions

The City of Cape Town is buckling under a wave of land invasions as thousands of people erect illegal structures in and around the city.

And, according to a report by the city’s Human Settlement Services to the Safety and Security Portfolio Committee, most of the invasions are orchestrated either to achieve political goals or for other motives by groups of people such as backyard dwellers.

In the past four years alone city officials have removed 7 707 pegs put down by people intending to to build illegal structures on open land, while 1 320 illegal structures were demolished.

There were 62 land invasions and in addition, people illegally occupied 2 575 structures. These figures reflect invasions in only three of the city’s subregions, Central, South Peninsula and Tygerberg.

They do not include Blaauwberg, Helderberg and Oostenberg.

Steve Hayward the city’s operational manager for informal housing told the committee that it was virtually impossible to deal with the situation with its small staff.

The city only had 36 staff members to help prevent and remove illegal structures or to stop land invasions city-wide.

Hayward said once officials had stopped invasions, private contractors were contracted to remove illegal structures.

He said there had been some instances where city councillors had taken sides with the land invaders against officials trying to do their work.

This made it extremely difficult for officials to carry out their work.

He made a passionate plea to city councillors to allow officials to carry out their work.

Portfolio Committee chairperson JP Smith pointed out that if councillors obstructed law enforcement officers in carrying out their duties, such councillors could be suspended.

“There is a code of conduct councillors must comply with, otherwise they will have to face consequences.”

Independent Democrats councillor Celeste Williams said it was important that councillors upheld the law.

“What is right is right. We should uphold the law. It is better to stay away from such situations otherwise people expect miracles from you.”

Smith asked whether the Metro Police were helping the small team of 36 officials in cases of land invasions.

Metro Police Chief Bongani Jonas said city police were law enforcers and provided protection and should not be required to remove illegal structures.

ANC Councillor Depouch Elese said some of the people invading land were gangsters who occupied land and then formed illegal committees. Cape Argus

Knysna wants to curb urban sprawl

In a bid to prevent rampant development in ecologically sensitive areas, the Knysna local council has drafted a tough new Spatial Development Framework to curb urban sprawl. Full Story…

Homeless Horror

Three 19-year-olds accused of murdering a man in the Tygerberg area said in the Bellville regional court on Thursday that they “kicked and punched him because he was homeless”.

Klaas Thomas, a homeless man from Ridgeworth, died of his injuries in Tygerberg Hospital on April 19, 2004… Cape Times

City to foot bill for shoddy homes

The City of Cape Town and the National Housing Finance Corporation will spend R2,6 million fixing the structural problems of houses built by the Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC).

The costs will be shared equally as the city is a 50 percent partner in CTCHC.

The CTCHC acknowledged this week that its houses were not structurally sound after a report, released by the University of Cape Town last week, said the company had flouted building regulations.

‘Walls were cracked and many were falling to pieces’

The CTCHC built 2,000 houses in nine sites on the Cape Flats, including Gugulethu, Mitchell’s Plain, Philippi and Heideveld.

Mayoral committee member for housing Dan Plato told Mayco councillors on Tuesday that he had received an “awful lot of complaints” from homeowners and that in loco inspections had led to “scary” revelations of the state of the houses.

Plato said the houses he had visited had not been built on a level plane, walls were cracked and many were “falling to pieces”.

On Tuesday, Mayco approved the appointment of a third social housing company, Communicare, to help it build 5,000 houses by 2008.

Plato said the council had to approve the expenditure to fix the CTCHC houses as it did not want to leave homeowners in the lurch.

Plato said the city should have smelt a rat in CTCHC after the recent resignation of most of its financial staff.

A financial forensic report is currently under way, but a preliminary report already indicated the company had financial problems. - Cape Argus

Cape housing department declares war on corruption

Richard Dyantyi, the Western Cape housing MEC, says they found the problem to be widespread and his department is now doing its best to fight corruption.

Staff may be involved in shady dealings

He says he has reason to believe that some of his own staff may be involved in these shady dealings. One person was arrested in April and more arrests could follow.

Dyantyi plans to spend his entire R600 million budget on building and completing more homes by the end of December. He says he will resign if he fails. - SABC

Shack flood lands

Saving lives: Professional and volunteer rescue services worked together to rescue dozens of people across flooded Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage. Photo: Steve Lawrence, The Star. Full story

Delft Housing Riots

THE housing shortage in the Cape and allegations that certain groups are favoured, created violence in Delft when residents became involved in street fights with the police.

Backyard dwellers in Delft are up in arms because residents of Langa started moving into temporary housing units in Delft last Wednesday.

The dissatisfied people are of the opinion they are entitled to the housing.

Lorries transporting property of Langa residents who were the victims of the Joe Slovo fire in December last year, were stoned in Delft before police dispersed the angry crowd with a warning shot and a shock granade.

Many people were arrested.

The Langa residents had been promised houses in the N2 Gateway project. Until this project has been completed, they will live in Delft…]

An angry Maureen Philander, a resident of Delft, told reporters residents were sick and tired of empty promises regarding housing for Delft backyard dwellers.

“We’ve had enough. We were promised houses and now they move people from Langa into the houses. We are from Delft. It is our right to move into the houses,” she said.

People shouted: “We are going to burn down the houses!”

Gertsie Cupido, another resident, said she has been waiting for the past sixteen years.

“Why must I wait 16 years and they immediately get houses? It is simply not right,” she said.

A few hundred Delft residents demonstrated to show their dissatisfaction with a faulty system while members of the South African Police Service and of the City Police watched.

Buyiswa Mjobo, a city councillor, addressed the crowd and said, “If you want a meeting, let us go to the rentals office and discuss the matter. We will not solve the problem in this way.”

The demonstrators were not happy with her words. When the lorries with the property of the Langa people arrived, the stone throwing started.

When the police intervened, the crowd calmed down, but then emotions once more ran high and a bus was also stoned.

Monde Maduba, a Langa resident, earlier expressed fear for the safety of the Langa people.

“We are not happy. There is much crime. The people here stone our houses. We are not safe,” he said.

Richard Dyantyi, Western Cape minister of local government and housing, said his department wants to make it clear that the actions were unacceptable and could not be condoned,.

According to him, talks were held earlier with the residents of Delft.

“The Langa people will only be staying in Delft until the N2 Gateway project has been finalised.”

He said he could understand the people of Delft’s attitude, but they must realise they were not the only ones who need housing.

“The housing problem is very complex. Delft is not my only priority. They will not solve the problem by acting in this way.

“We are ready to listen to their grievances, but their present actions are unacceptable.

“We will not be intimidated by this action,” he said.

He said the people of Delft must remember that Phase 2 of the Gateway project will accommodate them.

“They must just wait.” - City Vision

Shock new housing list statistics show city crisis is ‘almost insurmountable’

The city’s housing crisis has been “seriously under-estimated”, says Mayor Helen Zille, after the release of shocking new waiting list statistics.

Instead of the 260 000 families initially thought to be on the waiting list, it emerged during a housing portfolio committee meeting yesterday that there could be as many as 400 000 families waiting for houses.

“The existing challenge around access to land and housing is almost insurmountable. If the actual number of people requiring access to housing is nearly 50% more than we expected, it raises the bar even further and requires an entirely different policy approach,” said Zille.

The actual numbers behind the city’s housing backlog were contained in a presentation by Nkonki consultants, appointed last year to compile a housing list database for the city.

Zille said the consultants were appointed by former executive mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo “to undertake various functions, including help develop an integrated data-set for housing demand in Cape Town”.
People already on the housing list, as well as new applicants, were required to register on Nkonki’s database.

According to the city’s statistics, the waiting list for houses was 260 000 families. Nkonki identified 150 000 families during its audit.

However, when the two lists were combined, there was an overlap of only 6 000 families.

Zille said: “That is why I asked whether this meant that the original statistics on families requiring access to housing was a serious under-estimate. The answer I got indicated that this is probably the case.”

A consultant from Nkonki said the city already had a housing list database when they started their audit.

“We did not scrap the old database but we allowed people to register.”

She said when the city’s database was loaded into their new database, there were fewer than 6000 matches.

“The mayor is correct that the number (of people waiting for houses) will be higher.”

Zille said the city had, until now, based its housing policies on the figure of 260 000.

“This illustrates the scale of the problem and shows how, under the current housing policy, the city cannot address the backlog.”

According to an informal dwelling count study by the city’s information and knowledge department, there were 98 031 informal dwellings in Cape Town in 2005, considerably higher than the 28 300 shacks counted in 1993.

“The housing problem is clearly more acute than it was a decade ago,” states the report.

Of the additional 100 000 families that would now need to be accommodated by the city’s housing policy, Zille said: “This raises the bar considerably. The implications are enormous.”

She said more money would need to be allocated to the province by the national fiscal and finance commission.

“Currently the money is moving in the opposite direction to the way people are moving. While money pours into the Eastern Cape, more and more people are moving to establish themselves in the Western Cape. The money must follow the people, not the other way around,” she said.

She said the applications for houses were currently being verified by the city.

Councillor Neil Ross, chairman of the housing portfolio committee, said the city would be testing the consolidated housing lists during the next two months.

This would determine whether there was any duplication.

Allegations of households applying more than once for houses would also be investigated. - Cape Times

Toddler killed in shack fire

A two-year-old girl burnt to death on Thursday after her mother left her locked in a shack with a paraffin stove on, emergency management services said.

Spokesperson Malcolm Midgley said the girl’s mother had visited neighbours at 8am. When she returned, her shack was engulfed in fire.

“When firefighters got to the scene, the shack had already collapsed and the baby was dead,” he said.

It was not yet clear whether the mother would be charged.

Midgley said the Alexandra toddler’s death was the third fire-related death in two days, all in shack fires.

On Wednesday, two children were burnt to death in separate incidents in Johannesburg.

A boy, 8, was burnt to death while sleeping with his parents in a shack in Lombardy East and a two-year-old toddler was killed when a shack caught fire in Ivory Park. - Sapa