Cape's informal settlements in weary battle

"We don't want your blankets. We don't want your food. What we want are proper houses. The houses that we have been promised for years and have not been delivered."

This was the collective message from frustrated Kosovo residents in Philippi on yesterday to Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi who visited the flood ravaged area.

According to Disaster Risk Management's Wilfred Solomons-Johannes, 3,000 people in the area were displaced and 400 shacks affected.

The Philippi community is one of 24 informal settlements affected by floods in the Western Cape in which 16,000 people have been displaced and 3,600 dwellings affected.

"If political parties want to get it right next year during the elections, they should just deliver houses," said one resident who declined to be named.

Another resident, Ntombekaya Qhala, said she feared for her children.

"I have three children and I fear that they will get diseases from the pools of water surrounding our houses," Qhala said.

"We simply need houses - we are tired of this miserable life."

Dyantyi acknowledged residents' frustrations and the difficulties they have every winter when their homes get waterlogged.

He said Kosovo was one of the areas that needed urgent attention and that plans had been put together by his department, the city and other stakeholders to find suitable pieces of land to relocate the people from the area to.

"You cannot stop the rains from falling," he said, adding the biggest challenge faced by his department was the acquisition of land for housing development.

Meanwhile, in Valhalla Park, residents faced similar conditions as the rains left informal dwellings in the area under water.

Sarifa Simons, her husband Shafiek and their four children were among the families who were displaced after the flooding of their informal dwelling in 8th Avenue.

"I don't know what to do now. I get a disability grant, that's all," said Simons, holding a baby to her hip.

Simons said she has been living in Valhalla Park for two years and was also a flood victim last year.

Their home also has no electricity. "We make the fire outside to cook and to get warm," she said.

"We struggle if the wood is wet, like now. My children get sick with flu because of the wet and the damp, and my house floods all the time."

Another family affected was the Odendaals, whose home was destroyed by gusting winds and rain.

Father-of-three Peter Odendaal yesterday tried manfully to scoop water out of the shack, but appeared to make very little progress.

"It's been three years since I have been living here. Every winter this happens and there is nothing we can do about it," said Odendaal, who only has the use of one of his hands.

Another resident Sumaya Sylvester said they have come to expect flooding.

She said she has lived in Valhalla Park for two years and "nothing has changed".

- Cape Argus