Table Mountain fire causes chaos

Cape Town - Residents were evacuated from their homes on Wednesday morning as firefighters continue to battle the blaze on Table Mountain in Cape Town, Disaster Management services said.

Spokesperson Greg Pillay said people from University Estate, Walmer Estate, Urban Edge of De Waal Drive, The Towers and Vredehoek were requested to leave their homes for safety.

"Approximately 60 evacuees are currently being accommodated at the Good Hope Centre where medical crews are on standby."

"At this stage no property has been damaged and the fire crews are battling to bring the fire under control as a result of strong wind conditions," he said.

Pillay added that the fire first started in the vicinity of Rhodes Memorial.

"Strong winds resulted in the fire spreading rapidly around the mountain to Vredehoek."

"Fire & Rescue Services deployed 29 fire engines, 90 firefighters who are being assisted by 45 fire-fighters from the South African National Parks and volunteers of Disaster Management," he said.

According to Disaster Management two helicopters are also on standby to assist with aerial support at first light.

Traffic affected

De Waal Drive (incoming and outgoing), Tafelberg Road towards the Lower Cable Car Station and Signal Hill Road have been closed.

Pillay urged motorists to leave earlier than normal and to anticipate delays with incoming traffic to Cape Town CBD as a result of the fire.

"An appeal is being made to the general public not to make their way to the fire incident, or viewing spots in the area, to prevent hindering fire-fighting efforts."

"The Table Mountain Cable Car has also been grounded until further notice," he said. - NEWS24

Housing delivery takes backseat to legal fees & helicopter rides

Providing housing was a race against time and a fight for resources, Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Monday...

We all noted the millions in rands being spent on ANC caders in the court system, and their lawyers. The race against time to spend taxpayers monies on more arms deals and bailing more Zimbabweans out is competing with our political and fiscal will to deal with the housing crisis - she should have said... but I am enjoying the rented helicopter flight arn't you?

The minister was speaking during a helicopter flyover of various Gauteng housing projects accompanied by Angolan housing minister, Sita Jose.

"The level of poverty in South Africa is still very high," she said.

"The previous government under apartheid stopped building houses for blacks in the 1960s. It's really a race against time and a fight for resources to ensure that our people receive housing."

The province's many informal settlements remained an eyesore

The minister told her Angolan counterpart of the challenges facing her department, including protests at perceived lack of housing delivery.

The Gauteng landscape from the air - with tarred roads across its length and breadth, some bustling with traffic, some desolate - provided a birds-eye view of the department's ambitious plan to house the people of the province.

The projects included the Thornton View Housing project, a mixed development providing 8557 subsidised houses, 3252 credit linked houses and 3261 bonded homes; the Pennyville Project, also a mixed development earmarked to house those living in the Zamimpilo informal settlement near Riverlea and the 200-hectare Chief Mogale Sustainable Integrated Development.

Construction was well underway at most of the sites. However, the province's many informal settlements remained an eyesore.

The department's "Breaking New Ground", 2004 housing plan aimed to address this with a vision to create integrated communities from all economic and social spheres, uniting them in "sustainable human settlements", complete with schools, clinics, shopping malls and parks.

If the budget is larger we can deliver more houses

Sisulu said government, however, also faced the "ever-increasing" problem of people flocking to larger cities, seeing in them better job opportunities and economic advancement.

This was a "natural thing", she added, but it placed strain on the housing department's ability to respond to the demand for housing, which was increasing, even with the current pace of delivery.

Rural development, one of the ANC's priorities in its upcoming term, would work toward addressing this challenge, she said.

Gauteng housing department head, Benedicta Monama, said she expected her department to take a hit as a result of the global financial crisis, preventing it from rolling out as many houses as it would like to and also potentially decelerating the pace.

"If the budget is larger we can deliver more houses but with the economy slowing down budgets will shrink," she said ahead of the flyover.

"That is also how it impacts, inflation in building material costs," she said.

The minister was more optimistic saying she anticipated that the effects would not be as dire as predicted.

"We will be able to withstand it," she said.

Jose, who was in the country to learn from South Africa's experience with providing housing on a large scale and at a rapid pace, said the idea of integrated communities and mixed developments appealed to him and would be one he would like to import to his own country.

"It is good for upliftment the integrated system does not only focus on housing but on schools, clinics," he said.

His government was tasked with the monumental task of building one million houses. Angola had been offered $500 million (R5 billion) by the Development Bank of China to assist it in funding the project.

Monama said that while Gauteng had rolled out 68 000 houses in 2008 through various projects and many through public and private sector partnerships, the demand continued to grow.

The provincial housing department had compiled a demand database asking people already on housing waiting lists to re-register and also calling for new applicants.

The database was intended to improve the process of allocating houses on their completion and also to help plan further projects.

Monama conceded that the backlog remained "quite high". - Sapa

There is no housing crisis in South Africa

I was watching the debates on the upcoming election in the Western Cape recently. A large piece of the debate referred to what was deemed a “housing crisis”. I hear similar things being said around Durban and indeed all over South Africa.

I make the claim there is no housing crisis in South Africa. The focus on finding suitable housing for shack dwellers and the homeless only creates ghettoes and entrenches social problems for the poor.

The crisis is not in the lack of urban housing but a lack of real, substantive rural development. The crisis is a lack of jobs and support for rural spaces. If South Africa focused its energy on rural spaces the poor and desperate would not flock to the slums seeking a better life.

How much better would it be for the poor of South Africa to be able to stay at home in their communities surrounded by friends, family and a larger community with who they share a history?

It is not a big logical leap to make the claim that people do not wish to live in the slums. Yet the assumption being made appears to be that people wish to live in small concrete cubes surrounded by thousands of other soulless concrete bunkers. The other development is the continued use of large hostels to house workers far from home.

I for one cannot believe that it is cost-effective to maintain the soulless hostels in Durban’s south industrial basin. These horrific spaces have social spin-offs in the form of the bawdy and rough shebeens, deeply unhappy people crammed together in terrible living conditions and a need to ever extend municipal services.

Mooi River textiles closed down in 1999 leaving thousands of people out of work as they could not compete with Chinese imports. If industry was offered incentives to work in rural spaces then perhaps urbanisation would not be happening at the rate it is. How many factories and businesses could be run just as easily but with a happier, healthier workforce from rural spaces.

Mass urbanisation is not an inevitable effect of modernity and industrialisation. It is the outcome of narrowly focused technocratic solutions to a problem clearly not being understood. Too many town planners trained specifically in urban solutions seem to be involved in what is essentially a rural problem. The politicians themselves often hail from urban spaces and fail to make the necessary connections.

KwaZulu-Natal still has more than 55% of its population living in rural spaces. It clearly needs to focus on rural planning and I have only heard one party discuss rural issues in any meaningful way. The Inkatha Freedom Party actually makes a lot of sense on these issues.

I for one think that we should support the majority of our province in creating a meaningful life in their communities and not aiding the destruction of their communities and the building of slums to house them.

- M&G Thought Leader

Claims of nepotism spark inquiry

Cape Town's disaster management and emergency services departments have initiated an internal forensic investigation into claims of nepotism in the appointment of staff.

Particularly at issue is the recent appointment of a group of assistant disaster management officers, which had other staff crying foul, alleging that more qualified staff had been overlooked for the positions in favour of new recruits.

The Cape Argus has been alerted to at least three cases in which a relative of a city employee, working in either disaster management or emergency services, has been appointed as one of these officers.

These include:

The brother of the disaster management spokesman and special projects manager, Wilfred Solomons-Johannes. The daughter of Steve Abrahamse, a fire services divisional commander stationed at Goodwood. The son of the disaster management manager for logistics planning and management, Peter Daniels. Late in 2008 the city advertised for 21 assistant disaster management officers and made appointments in January 2009. Greg Pillay, head of the disaster management department, declined to comment. But the city's media manager Kylie Hatton confirmed that a forensic investigation was under way. She would not, however, confirm or deny whether these three cases were under investigation. "The city confirms that there is a forensic investigation under way into allegations of irregularities with the recruitment and appointment of certain staff within the city's disaster risk management department but cannot disclose the details or scope thereof at this stage," Hatton said. Approached for comment, Solomons-Johannes confirmed that his brother had recently been employed in the disaster management department but said he had nothing to do with his brother's recruitment and was on leave at the time the appointment was made. "I am led to believe that he is working in a Brackenfell office but I don't want to get involved," he said. Abrahamse said his daughter was well qualified for the job, having been a disaster management volunteer for at least 10 years. She was also a qualified basic ambulance assistant and was qualified to work in vehicle rescue. She had previously worked as a teacher. "She was one of many selected and underwent a rigorous short-listing and interviewing process. Besides, disaster management has nothing to do with fire services," he added. Daniels declined to confirm the appointment of his son, referring questions to Pillay. Assistant disaster management officers earn about R144 000 a year. Although the advertisement did not specify that a post-matric qualification was required and offered on-the-job training, city staff are upset that some people with recognised disaster management qualifications were allegedly overlooked. "We are very unhappy that some of us didn't even get an interview," said one source.

- Cape Argus

Constantia housing plan 'a political ploy'

The proposal to build "integrated and mixed-density" housing in Constantia, described as a political ploy to paint residents as racist, has become something of a political football.

Speaking at a Tokai Neighbourhood Crime Watch meeting recently, the area's outgoing DA ward councillor Leon van Rensberg told residents the plan is intended only to score the ANC votes in the area through "divide and rule" tactics and to paint itself favourably in terms of integration.

Both the provincial departments of public works, who proposed the development, and housing have rubbished this view.

The province intends to build high-density small homes surrounded by three-storey flats, all aimed at "gap and affordable income groups".

But the proposal raised heated comment at a packed public meeting in October last year where residents and affected parties complained of a flawed public participation process.

Included in a comprehensive list of concerns about the proposal, they said "forced integration" was not sustainable and the development was out of keeping with the semi-rural nature of the area. There would not be enough schools and transport networks would not cope with the number of new residents.

Given an overwhelming public response, the comments period was extended by a month to December 10.

"We are still capturing all the comments. It's taking a long time because there were so many," said consultant Junaid Moosajee of Environmental Partnership.

Van Rensburg - who announced his resignation as ward councillor at the recent crime watch meeting, saying he needed time for his legal practice - said the proposal "makes no sense" from a town-planning point of view and is unlikely to be passed "by any reasonable government" after the election.

He said the homes had been valued at R750 000 at the public meeting and would not be affordable to the intended market.

But in a column published in the Cape Argus last week, provincial housing MEC Whitey Jacobs spoke of the "monumental task" of reversing apartheid-era town planning, particularly given the shortage of land available for development in Cape Town.

Comparing the proposed Constantia development with another in Elsies River, he called for Capetonians to "give integration a chance".

"A new generation of Capetonians - unfettered by class and race divisions - can emerge."

While Ann Coltham of the Constantia Hills Residents' Association said she did not wish to comment on Van Rensburg's statements, in a letter to the Cape Argus last year she referred to the proposal as a "point scoring" initiative.

"Stop wasting taxpayers' money, stop wasting time, and most important, stop building dreams of prosperity for people when you have no thorough plan to deliver," she wrote.

Provincial housing spokesperson Lukhanyo Calata said: "These are very unfortunate comments. We're trying to do away with apartheid-era planning, but people are not willing to give integration a chance. The DA will try to oppose any progressive development."

But Van Rensburg, speaking of the ANC-led provincial government, said: "Their strategy is to divide and rule. They propose a development like this to show how committed they are to integration.

"And when the residents of what government leaders like to call 'the leafy suburbs' complain, then they make them look like a bunch of racists."

According to DA provincial housing spokesman Michael de Villiers: "The problem in this instance is not integration but in finding a suitable location for the proposed housing development."

Saying the DA agreed with the intention of proposed low-cost and gap housing, he called for better consultation with people affected by such projects and for better consideration of city planning needs.

"Where home owners have invested their hard-earned funds in homes, they deserve proper consideration so that their investments are not unnecessarily adversely affected by improperly situated low-cost housing developments."

Transport and Public Works MEC Kholeka Mqulwana said the accusation that the proposal was a political ploy was "highly unfortunate" and "a perpetuation of the Group Areas Act".

"The DA plays geographical politics where they want to make sure that poor people stay out of rich areas."

But De Villiers said the province and city administrations needed to work "hand-in-glove" to find solutions that work for everyone in such situations.

- Cape Argus

No temporary solution

BLIKKIESDORP won’t be found on any South African map. Its official name is Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Area and it is not supposed to exist for more than a short time.

The residents prefer their nickname Blikkiesdorp — Tin Town — as it accurately describes the 1000 or more structures that the city of Cape Town erected in Delft last year to house them.

The temporary relocation area is a stone’s throw from the shacks of the Symphony Way pavement dwellers . The 100-odd families have been living illegally along a blocked-off section of Symphony Way since February last year.

On March 2, the city notified the pavement dwellers of its intention to seek an eviction order in the high court to remove them. But last week, the Durban High Court granted judicial oversight of a transit camp in KwaZulu-Natal, and now the Cape Town residents intend to use this precedent to defend their eviction.

Provincial governments across the country have been using these settlements — known as temporary relocation areas in Cape Town, transit camps in Durban and government shacks in Gauteng — to “temporarily” house residents from squatter camps and inner-city slums until formal housing is provided for them.

“Transit camps often look like concentration camps with razor-wire fencing, spotlights, single entrances and 24-hour police guards,” says shack-dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, which won the Durban High Court victory . “Residents are often highly controlled in these places, as if they are in prisons.

“In most cases, these camps are far from the cities where people live, work and school. People are taken there against their will with no guarantees about the conditions there, how long they will be kept there and where, if anywhere, they will be taken next.”

Unlike Tsunami, a neighbouring temporary relocation area , Blikkiesdorp does not look like a slum. The tin walls and roofs of the dwellings gleam in the afternoon sun. There is little space between the structures which are arranged in blocks, with one toilet shared by four households . The toilets appear to be functioning and do not emit the foul smell coming from those in Tsunami. There are taps with running water, but no ablution facilities.

Ashraf Cassiem, chairman of the Anti-Eviction Campaign in the Western Cape, says “the toilets (at Blikkiesdorp) are concrete, the pipelines are concrete” — an unexpected feature in a “temporary” camp .

At the entrance to Blikkiesdorp, three police vehicles and an armoured truck, manned by the Land Invasion Unit, are permanently stationed to maintain order and monitor the area .

Cassiem says there are no temporary relocation areas. The city, he claims, was given R20m to build Blikkiesdorp. It built 1200 structures for people evicted from the adjacent N2 Gateway houses in February last year and is planning to build 1200 more units.

Instead of a temporary stop and a prelude to permanent housing, it is being used to house everyone: people evicted by the council and other homeless families. The city has a 22-year lease on the land on which Blikkiesdorp is erected.

Blikkiesdorp, says Cassiem, is part of a strategy to move unwanted people — “like cattle … as if you are doing them a favour” — to the fringes of cities and outlying areas where they are less visible.

Temporary relocation areas in the Western Cape — such as Happy Valley, built more than 12 years ago outside Stellenbosch and now a vast informal settlement — are permanent relocation areas.

The metal sheets used to construct the walls and roofs of Blikkiesdorp are flimsy and poorly assembled. They can easily be penetrated and several residents have been robbed. Their locks have been cut and new occupiers installed . One resident, it is claimed, is living outside his former home — with his ID and other documents locked inside by the new occupiers.

Residents allege corrupt police officers hand out occupation rights for R600.

Life goes on at Tsunami. A sign above a defunct and odiferous ablution block reads: “Drink Beer Save Water.” Underneath, someone has written: “ibeer idrink ikhona apha”.

At Portia’s Hair Salon across the way, prices are low: R15 for a wash, R30 for a blow-dry and R50 for “Precise Dark and Lovely”. There are numerous spaza shops in the area. Blikkiesdorp already has six shops.

Xolani Bokolo has been living at Tsunami since 2005.

The authorities refused to allow him to rebuild his shack in Joe Slovo informal settlement after a fire there in 2005 left 12000 people homeless.

He says several Tsunami residents have been moved into the adjacent N2 Gateway houses, but when he followed up on his application for a house, he was told he was “not on the system yet”.

“The last forms that we filled in (applications for housing), they found them in the dustbin,” Bokolo says. He refuses to fill in another application , saying he cannot see a reason for doing so.

Bokolo has painted the interior walls of his tin shack a dull shade of powder pink, and has constructed a dividing wall to create a living room and a bedroom .

He says dust seeps through the walls, and despite stuffing paper into the cracks, he sometimes has difficulty sleeping at night because the dust is so thick.

The Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits condemns the government’s policy of using transit camps as accommodation for forcibly removed shack dwellers.

“Relocation to transit camps is most often done to make way for infrastructure and development projects which will not benefit those being removed,” it says .

Last Friday, the Durban High Court ruled in favour of residents who had lived in the Siyanda informal settlement who had been moved to a transit camp in nearby Richmond Farm. The residents had been promised houses in a nearby development. However, angry at the conditions in the camp, they sought the protection of the high court. It ruled that they must be given permanent housing within a year.

The court also ruled that there should be an immediate investigation into the corrupt allocation of houses in Siyanda and, where necessary, restitution made to the victims of corruption. It ordered that a report be made to the court every three months on conditions in the camp and that Siyanda residents can return to the court after two weeks if conditions in the camp are not adequate

A decision is pending in the evictions case of 20,000 Joe Slovo residents, who refuse to move to the Delft temporary relocation area. Their case was heard in the Constitutional Court in August last year.

- Business Day - News Worth Knowing

Local leaders incited xenophobia attacks: study

Community leaders played a role in the xenophobic violence in May 2008, a study by the International Organisation for Migration released today showed.

"The idea that it was caused by a faceless crowd doesn't hold water," a researcher at the Forced Migration Studies Programme at Wits University, Jeanne Pierre Misago said. "Community leaders were involved," Masigo added.

He said local leaders organised xenophobic attacks to improve their credibility within the community. "They can then say they are the one true leader of the community," the researcher said.

Misago was speaking about the findings at a conference at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. He said these local leaders had some co-ordination in organising xenophobic violence in neighbouring townships.

Media reports also played a role by showing successful looting by mobs and the inability of police to handle the situation. – Sapa

Hundreds homeless after Joe Slovo blaze

Tangles of blackened mattress springs, charred corrugated iron and sodden mounds of ash and debris.

This is virtually all that remains of at least 400 homes razed by a fire in the Joe Slovo informal settlement.

The fire broke out early on Monday and spread rapidly in the strong southeaster.

'I was fast asleep when I heard screams'

The shelters had been home to nearly 2 000 people.

About six hours after the blaze was put out, many of them began sifting through the debris, to salvage what they could.

Scores of children had not been sent to school and played together, digging in the ash.

Some people, balancing their weight on the metal frames that were all that remained of their chairs, simply stared at where their homes had stood. They appeared to be in shock.

Nopinki Sonkgayi sat beside a mound of blackened debris.

"That's all I have left," she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

"I was fast asleep when I heard screams. I ran out of my house and saw the flames coming. I ran to get away and watched my house... disappear. I lived here for 15 years, and now everything is gone."

Emily Zolwana, sifting through the ashes of her home, picked up a blackened fork. She was in her pyjamas as she had been unable to save her clothes.

- Cape Times

Fire leaves thousands homeless

Cape Town - The scene at Joe Slovo informal settlement was one of devastation on Monday after the south-easter turned a small fire there into a raging inferno that razed 400 shacks and left about 1,600 people homeless.

The fire started at about 2.00am on the corner of the N2 and Vanguard Drive.

On Monday morning residents were scrambling to salvage whatever they could. Others stood guard over their property, cordoning it off with whatever they could find as they feared others might lay claim to their land.

Cape Town City fire chief Ian Schnettler confirmed that about 1,600 people had lost their homes and were being cared for by the City's Disaster Management department.

The blaze is one of the most devastating of all the fires that have raged across the Western Cape the past month.

Thotyelwa Kaso and her daughter, who lived in a 2x2m shack, stood looking at their razed shack in disbelief this morning. Kaso lost everything, but said she would not budge from the site until her new shack was built.

She refused to go to one of the civic centres selected by Disaster Management to house displaced residents. "I'm going to stay here until they rebuild my house. What must I do at the hall?" Kaso said she was hungry and tired, but determined to rebuild her home.

Disaster Management's Charles Williams said they were waiting for the cleansing services to arrive before housing officials would provide starter packs. In the meantime, hot meals would be provided to residents, he said.

Metro police and police officers monitored the area on Monday morning, stopping some of the residents removing electricity cables damaged by the fire.

Williams said it was not clear when cleansing and housing officials would start clearing the area. "But we would like to get (the residents) settled in as soon as possible.

"We always find that the community prefers to stay here and stick it out rather than go to the hall because they don't want to lose their land," he said.

Residents standing around in groups surveying the damage indicated that they were determined not to be moved to Delft.

Meanwhile, another fire broke out on the mountainside above Somerset West on Sunday, threatening the town's plush suburbs of Silverboomkloof and Spanish Farm.

The fire devoured some fynbos and eucalyptus forest, but was contained.

Smoke continued to waft across the Winelands towards Cape Town on Monday, still from various fires on the slopes of the Paarl Mountain, which is burning for the sixth consecutive day.

- Cape Argus

Diarrhoea's seasonal sweep claims kids' lives

At least 11 children in Cape Town died of diarrhoea at provincial hospitals last month and 1 000 were admitted for the treatment of gastro-enteritis.

This weekend alone, there were 45 new admissions to Red Cross Children's Hospital from its specialised rehydration unit, designed to address the seasonal diarrhoea epidemic in the city. Ten of the 45 were admitted early this morning.

The province's biggest hospital, Tygerberg, said six children had died after being admitted in February, and Red Cross said five had died since the third week of January.

Tygerberg Hospital spokesperson Laticia Pienaar said the number of admissions for gastro-enteritis for February had risen from 95 last year to 124 this year.

There were more than 1 000 cases in hospital in the province for January and February

Although there were more than 1 000 cases in hospital in the province for January and February, health authorities warned that the outbreak was not over, as late March and April were considered peak season for diarrhoea.

"March is the hottest month of the year in Cape Town, and because of poor living conditions… things get worse," said Dr Tony Westwood, co-ordinator of child health services at the Department of Health and a specialist at Red Cross hospital.

"Another aspect is that the more infected people you have, the higher the risk."

Areas in Philippi, Guguletu, Nyanga, Delft, Khayelitsha and Ikhwezi township in the Helderberg were described as hotspots for diarrhoea.

Given the sporadic outbreak in the province, health workers were taking precautions and testing the more severe cases of diarrhoea for cholera, but there had been no cholera cases among children.

'... because of poor living conditions, things get worse'

Tygerberg Hospital, which has about 33 cases, said a significant part of its intensive care unit space was filled with critically ill children.

Pienaar said at least 30% of children in the hospital needed to be admitted for longer than 48 hours because of the severity of their illness. Most of them were younger than two and most were dehydrated.

"There is a range from mild to very severe cases. Most of the mild cases are dealt with at local clinics and don't get to hospital.

"Some severe cases are from clinics and community health centres, but many are transfers from district hospitals because the children are so ill," she added.

Westwood said that of the 1 000 admissions for January and February, at least 470 were at Red Cross and 140 at Tygerberg.

Although he had noticed a steep increase in the number of admissions, which was putting pressure on hospital beds, it was too early to say whether the situation was worse than last year.

"We don't yet know if it's worse than usual," he said, adding that when the numbers have been crunched, it might be possible that figures were down, considering the increase in the province's immigration numbers.

Temba Gubula, a spokesperson for Red Cross, confirmed that up until the end of last week, 150 children had been admitted.

But then another 45 had been admitted in the past three days.

A total of 33 were discharged while 20 were transferred to other provincial hospitals, including Tygerberg and Karl Bremer.

Gubula said there was no significant increase in the number of deaths this year.

- Cape Argus

Fire guts 800 shacks in Langa

About 800 shacks were gutted in a fire at the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa on the Cape Flats on Monday morning, police said.

Superintendent Andre Traut said fire services extinguished the blaze in the early hours of the morning.

"About 800 shacks were damaged in the fire. No-one was killed or injured. There are negotiations under way to relocate the affected families to an area in Delft," said Traut.

The cause of the fire was not yet known. - Sapa

Fire destroys over 400 shacks in Cape Town

Cape Town Fire says their tally of shacks that have been gutted in the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa on the Cape flats has doubled. Early estimates put the figure at 200.

However, Cape Town Fire spokesperson Deon Smit says about 400 shacks have been burnt, at least 1600 people left destitute. No injuries and fatalities were reported. Disaster Management officials have been deployed to the area to assess fire victims' humanitarian needs.

Meanwhile the gale force South Easter which affected participants in the Cape Argus Pick'n Pay Cycle Tour in Cape Town has not had much effect on efforts to battle a blaze in the Boland town of Paarl. Deputy Fire Chief in the Drakenstein municipality, Dereck Peceur, says the fire is under control, although they are monitoring hotspots.

Fresh fire-fighting teams have however been deployed to Jonkershoek in the Boland to battle a blaze which has been raging on and off for the past month.

The fire has destroyed thousands of hectares of fynbos. Spokesperson for the Boland fire department, Ian Ross, says they've been working throughout the night to stop the fire line from spreading. He says hot and windy weather conditions are hampering their efforts to put out the blaze. - SABC

Refugees: City goes to court

Cape Town will be filing an application in court before the end of the week for an eviction order for the remaining refugees at the Blue Waters safety camp near Strandfontein.

Pieter Cronjé, spokesperson for the City of Cape Town, said there were 396 refugees at Blue Waters and 64 at the Youngsfield military base, even though the camps had been closed.

He said that while the city, the province and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were still assisting people with either relocation or re-integration, many of the remaining refugees had refused all offers. So far the cost to the city had been R120-million. To date they had only recovered R17m from national government Cronjé said .

Cronjé said they would not use force, but would rather allow the legal process to take its course.

He said that once the application had been filed with the Cape High Court, the sheriff would advise the refugees, who would then have 10 weekdays - days in which the court was in session - in which to indicate whether they wanted to defend the action or not.

"If they do want to defend it, they will have 15 working days in which to file their affidavit and the city, as the applicant, would be given 10 days to file an answering one."

The registrar would then set a date for the court to hear the matter.

Cronjé said the eviction would only apply to Blue Waters because it was municipal property. The SANDF would need to take legal action on the Youngsfield refugee camp.

But Braam Hanekom of People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (Passop) had appealed to the city not to evict the refugees until after the elections in the interests of stability in the Western Cape.

This week the Tshwane Metro Council bulldozed the last remaining refugee camp in Akasia outside Pretoria and the Department of Home Affairs shut down its refugee processing centre at Musina, a move that was denounced by international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontiéres (Doctors Without Borders) who said 3,000 to 4,000 Zimbabweans queued to apply for asylum and sought refuge there each night.

- Cape Argus

Not enough to just deny evidence of farm failure

Acting chief land claims commissioner Andrew Mphela has once again misrepresented the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) and sought to deny the vast body of evidence that the land reform process is failing.

CDE supports land reform and sees it as an important part of South Africa’s economic renewal.

At the end of the Sunday Times’s devastating, independent exposé of failures, “Farms collapse as land reform fails” (March 1), Mphela chose to scapegoat CDE’s supposed “self-proclaimed experts” on land reform, saying that our findings — depressingly corroborated in the same story by independent journalists — are “baseless”, “frivolous” and “vexatious”.

CDE employed the country’s leading experts over several years, and tested their conclusions several times over, before publishing the sobering results in its May 2008 report, Land Reform in South Africa — Getting back on track.

Any serious reader would appreciate that CDE supports land restitution and redistribution and was extremely worried by the inescapable findings of widespread failure.

The tragic stories of “assets dying in the hands of the poor”, as the director-general of land affairs has described it, are just a tip of the iceberg of opportunities lost through a failed process.

CDE’s research on land reform has been praised in parliament and by many in the agricultural sector; while it paints a worrying picture of actual land reform results to date, it offers a feasible way forward.

Mphela has yet again failed to engage seriously with CDE’s research findings or dispute our conclusions that land reform, and especially restitution, is in disarray and that the future of major components of South African agriculture is now seriously threatened.

CDE stands by our call for the urgent establishment of an action-oriented partnership that addresses previous injustices around land in an economically viable way.

— Ann Bernstein, executive director, CDE and Jeff McCarthy, CDE research director, land reform project - The Times

Navy to splash out on six new vessels

The SA Navy plans to buy six new patrol vessels to combat piracy and poaching in African waters.

Navy chief Vice Admiral Refiloe Mudimu told Parliament yesterday that the navy would urge next week’s meeting of navy chiefs from across Africa to devise a plan to fight crime and piracy at sea.

“About 95percent of the world trade is conducted at sea and an increase in piracy forces ships to take different routes, and costs will increase,” said Mudimu.

The navy plans to buy six offshore and inshore patrol vessels to stamp out piracy, human trafficking, smuggling and poaching, he said.

Each inshore patrol vessel will cost about R100million.

Rear Admiral Rusty Higgs said “the offshore ships would be a lot more expensive”.

Higgs said the first vessel would be in the waters in 2012 .

Under the controversial R65billion 1999 arms deal, the government bought four corvettes from German firm Thyssen.

These heavy warships were criticised after it emerged that they cost about R8,2million a day to operate, and were too expensive to be used against poaching and maritime crime.

- The Sowetan

Father, newborn baby die in Delft blaze

One of the Western Cape's largest nature reserves has been devastated by fire, while a blaze in Delft has taken the lives of a father and his two-week-old baby.

The baby's mother suffered serious burns and remains in a critical condition after their wendy house caught alight in the early hours of Monday morning, apparently after a candle fell over.

Meanwhile, the blaze which has raged for the past month in Somerset West last night surged towards the town of Grabouw in the Elgin Valley, after cresting the Hottentots Holland mountains, razing large parts of the Hottentots Holland nature reserve.

At the country club at Eikenhof dam last night, residents watched as the flames burned almost down to the water's edge, and fires burning in the MTO Forestry plantations lit the night sky.

Brian Pickering, owner of Nature Discovery Tours in the Elgin Valley and an honorary ranger, told the Cape Argus this morning: "I've just been up there and the fire has totally devastated the whole area."

"This is the worst ecological disaster here ever. It's going to take years for the fynbos to restore itself," he said.

At the time of going to press this morning, the fire had burned at least 8km into the Elgin Valley.

To the north-east, Cape Nature's Nuweberg offices and residential communes were evacuated last night.

Sources said fire teams had back-burned away from the tourist cottages at the Eikenhof Dam, allowing them to be saved.

Leon Lourens, chief of operations at Nuweberg, said: "We're totally surrounded by live fire lines. Yesterday the fire was being driven by a pumping north-westerly, threatening lives and property."

Around 100 people were being housed in a hall in Grabouw.

Wilfred Solomons, from the city's disaster risk management centre, said hundreds of people had been displaced in shack fires across the city since last Thursday. A man was killed in Du Noon on Sunday morning and other fires in Philippi, Gugulethu and Khayelitsha gutted several shelters.

Back in Somerset West, the fire which has devastated wine estates Lourensford and Vergelegen was still burning high up in the mountains.

- Cape Argus

Cholera crisis costs SA R40 million thus far

The South Africa government has begun revealing the bill for taxpayers from the cholera crisis. The Department of Water Affairs has spent close to R40 million so far, half of that in Zimbabwe. At the start of National Water Week, South Africans have again been assured that tap water is safe to drink and that it's ranked among the best in the world.

Nearly 12 000 South Africans have been treated for cholera since the end of last year and 59 people have died. Most were victims of the Zimbabwe outbreak, which spread across into Limpopo and Mpumalanga. However at one stage all nine provinces were treating cholera cases. Water Affairs has now put a cash figure on the crisis. So far the department has spent R21 million on Zimbabwe's collapsed water system and a further R18 million will be spent in Musina.

Alongside the Zimbabwe cholera crises, the main problem in these areas is access to clean water. Department of Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks says: “We've been so much on the ground, being hands- on, giving support to various municipalities, we have gone to the extent of deploying our own technicians and engineers and even attracted skills from other countries to municipalities that are far flung in rural areas.”

The department insists the country’s tap water is safe but six municipalities don't meet quality standards. The department has also allocated R4 billion to upgrade municipal infrastructure nationwide.

- SABC

The cost, in rands, of a Zim bail-out

Although South Africa can technically afford to give Zimbabwe the R6-billion that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has reportedly asked for, it would have to be part of a broader financial bail-out package if South Africa does not want to throw good money after bad.

Yet assistance from other countries has not been forthcoming as potential lenders are not convinced that Zimbabwe is on a real road of change while Robert Mugabe still holds power.

Stanlib economist Kevin Lings says the national budget does make provision for a contingency reserve, which this year is budgeted at, coincidentally, R6-billion. This money is put aside each year in case of a natural disaster such as floods where government needs to provide urgent assistance to its citizens.

Lings says government did indicate last year that this reserve could be used for other types of disasters when it considered using the reserve as an emergency bail-out for Eskom. Zimbabwe's case could be argued as a disaster, which has a significant impact on South Africa's financial and political stability, but this would leave South Africa short, should natural disasters hit our shores... - M&G

Du Noon resident burns to death

A resident of the Du Noon informal settlement died and more than 100 were left homeless as firefighters fought three separate shack fires over the weekend.

They also continued tackling blazes in Somerset West.

Teams of firefighters worked throughout Sunday night trying to contain fires in Somerset West they have been battling for eight consecutive days.

Early on Sunday, a Du Noon resident burnt to death.

Greg Pillay, head of the city's disaster risk management centre, said 24 shelters were gutted and about 100 residents left homeless.

Milnerton police spokesperson Daphne Dell said she was yet to receive information on the blaze and the identity of the deceased resident.

Pillay said that in a second shack fire, four shelters on Lower Railway Road in Woodstock were destroyed leaving 10 residents homeless. The Blind Quip Cape factory was also damaged.

In a third blaze, six Khayelitsha residents were left homeless when two shacks burnt down.

While the affected informal settlement residents started rebuilding their homes, more than 100 firefighters battled a blaze which stretched from the mountains above the Lourensford wine estate in Somerset West to Sir Lowry's Pass.

The fire, which had been contained on Thursday, flared up again late on Saturday and was fanned by gale-force winds.

The flames were most intense above Lourensford wine estate, Vergelegen wine estate and on Horse Shoe Bend in Sir Lowry's Pass.

Pieter Smit at the Cape Town Fire Command and Control Centre said soaring temperatures and thick, dense vegetation were hampering firefighters' efforts.

The temperature reached the high 30s in Somerset West. Smit said if the wind picked up, property would probably again be under threat.

On Sunday, at an area above Sir Lowry's Pass Village, firefighters tackled flames in the bushes between trees near a house.

Flames could be seen at the base of some trees and blackened logs were smouldering on the ground.

Some of the trees snapped and crashed down as the fire neared.

A firefighting helicopter later boosted firefighters' efforts and dumped loads of water where a thick plume of black smoke was rising.

A firefighter emerging from the smouldering vegetation, face red, said the heat was too intense.

He had two bottles of water in his pockets and after a short rest he said he was taking them to his colleagues "suffering" nearer the flames.

The fire flared up in Somerset West last week and raged until Thursday.

While some firefighters suspected the fire was started by arsonists, others believed it was an extension of a blaze that broke out in Jonkershoek, Stellenbosch, nearly a month ago.

- Cape Times

Cape Town fires flare up again

Properties on the luxury estate Knorhoek and the centuries-old wine estate, Vergelegen, are under serious threat as fires flared up again in the Somerset West area. Cape Town Fire Services say the fire is being fanned by strong winds.

Nearly 150 firefighters, 18 vehicles, a spotter plane and a helicopter are currently on the scene. Meanwhile, a shack fire broke out earlier in Gugulethu on the Cape Flats.

It's now been extinguished. No injuries were reported, but 10 people were displaced and five shacks were destroyed in the blaze. Two grass fires are also being monitored in Site B in Khayelitsha and next to the M-5 highway near Rondebosch East.

- SABC

W Cape govt announces mult-million housing initiative

The Western Cape government has announced a new initiative worth R126 million aimed at addressing the huge housing backlog in the province. Under the new Social Housing Project, government will provide houses to people earning between R3 500 and R7 500 a month for low rental.

A total 450 houses have been earmarked for the first roll-out of the project at Retreat and Steenberg. Housing MEC Whitey Jacobs says they are co-operating with private companies to provide affordable housing through subsidies in the province.

In the Eastern Free State, the community of Intabazwe in Harrismith is set to benefit from a R450 million land development project. Reports yesterday said the project includes the erection of about 2 000 houses, a shopping complex, day-care and multi-purpose community centre and 19 public parks, among others.

The launch of the Free State development project will be officially opened by provincial MEC for Local Government and Housing, Joel Mafereka. The project is also intended to have more settlements developed in close proximity to the economic hub of towns and cities.

- SABC