Houses of the dispossessed

A crumbling home unfinished after seven years

Latutu Sindaphi never imagined he’d be staring at a crumbling shell nine years after being told the government was building him a home.

“My dreams of owning a house I can call my own became true in 1999, when a local councillor delivered a letter informing me that I will have a four-roomed house built at plot No 70 in NU18,” said Sindaphi.

Since the first brick was laid in 2001, house No 70 in Mdantsane, East London, remains unfinished. At least two construction companies were involved in the project. Yet still there is no roof, floor, windows or doors.

Sindaphi’s story is testament to the huge backlog in the province that Lindiwe Sisulu, the minister of housing, this week said might need the intervention of defence force engineers .

The Eastern Cape failed to use almost R500- million in funding it received from the government for housing. And Sindaphi and his wife, Ethel, who survive by making bricks at a nearby dam, have lost all hope of holding the key to their dream home.

National housing department spokesman Xolani Xundu confirmed that more than R443- million of the Eastern Cape’s integrated housing and human settlement grant — allocated by the national treasury — was redirected to Gauteng after the 2007/8 financial year because the Eastern Cape failed to spend it.

“The Eastern Cape is the only province where we had to recall funds,” said Xundu. He said parliament was concerned about the province’s poor building performance .

# The province’s housing delivery rate dropped from 37500 homes in the 2004/5 financial year to only 11000 in the 2007/8 financial year.

# According to provincial records, at least 19953 homes that the province had built are of such poor quality that about R18000 would have to be spent to repair each of them.

Xundu said parliament told Sisulu to form a task team in April to help speed up housing delivery in the province. The minister met emerging construction companies in Bhisho this week to discuss the housing backlog in the province.

Xundu said contractors highlighted problems, including corruption by government officials and late payment to companies by the department.

A project to build 2503 houses for shack dwellers in Mdantsane was launched in 2001, with 500 houses to be built in the first phase.

Sindaphi was among 628 shack dwellers who qualified for that phase. Since moving to Mdantsane in 1975, he has lived in backyards . Promises to Sindaphi by a local councillor last week that the home would be completed soon have come to nothing.

“The visit by this councillor … is to lure voters in preparation for next year’s elections,” said Ethel. “ Whether they finish my house or not, I won’t vote. My family won’t go to the polls. I don’t have any job. Why do I have to vote as if this government cares for us, because they don’t.” - The Times