Shack dwellers warned of winter flooding

About 8 500 shacks on the Cape Flats are at high risk of flooding in the coming winter, according to a warning issued by the City of Cape Town.

The city said on Tuesday that one temporary relocation area with 500 units had been established to house flood victims who wanted to be relocated.

Barry Wood, the city's manager for catchment, stormwater and river management, said a technical assessment study had identified 24 communities as hotspots, including Guguletu, Khayelitsha and Philippi.

Wood said 90 percent of in-formal settlements had floors below ground level and no conventional drainage systems.

Elizabeth Thompson, the mayoral committee member for transport, roads and stormwater, said residents should be on high alert and play their part in minimising flooding.

She appealed to residents to clear away rubbish that could block the drainage systems.

The city's Disaster Risk Management Centre also called on residents to check that their drainage systems were not blocked; to clear gutters, downpipes and furrows; to ensure that their roofs were waterproofed; and to remove dead branches from trees.

The centre added that residents in informal settlements could dig furrows around their houses to divert floods, slope their roofs to assist run-off or move to higher ground.

Residents were also advised to secure furniture that could be blown away by high winds, to be alert to weather warnings and to report blocked drains and intakes and illegal dumping.

Mzwandile Sokupa, the city's informal settlements manager, said some victims could be allocated housing units under the emergency housing programme.

But he warned that they would not be allowed to jump the province's housing waiting list, which had a backlog of 400 000 names. It was a misconception that people could skip the waiting list if they built their shacks in flood-prone areas.

The weather bureau says the province can expect short, sharp periods of rain this winter, as well as cold fronts.

Flooding, blocked drains and service disruptions can be reported to the city's all hours Technical Operations Centre on 0860 103 054.

In an emergency that threatens lives or property, contact 107 from a landline or call 021 480 7700 from a cellphone.

Meanwhile, the city says a R13.4 million investment to reduce water pressure in Cape Flats pipelines has yielded annual savings of R83m.

The project forms part of Cape Town's water demand management strategy.

Other elements of the plan include public awareness cam-paigns on water conservation, the replacement of old infrastructure and the treatment and reuse of sewage effluent.

- Cape Argus

Residents attack police during protest

Lansdowne Road in Khayelitsha was turned into a war zone for the second consecutive night as residents vented their fury over service delivery problems, forcing police to close the road in the face of stonings and burning of tyres and rubbish.

The protesting residents in Site C charged that they had seen no change in the area in 15 years, with conditions now deteriorating further.

"We have no toilets, no water and no electricity, and we are being forced to connect electricity illegally," said resident Justice Tshaka.

On Tuesday municipal workers spent much of the day clearing the charred remains of rubbish, tyres and three containers after protests on Monday night, sparked by the arrest of four residents accused of stealing electricity.

Last night protests resumed in both the AT and BT sections of Site C, with the police closing Lansdowne Road and diverting traffic after residents started stoning cars.

Another resident, Nawakhe Kula, said her husband had died in 2008 after he was hit by a car while crossing the road to throw water down a drain opposite them.

"We don't have drains and toilets. We don't have anything and speeding cars make the situation worse," she said.

Kula said the police could "come and shoot us" because they would continue blockading the road "until someone come to address us".

"We are actually not scared of police any more because we are tired of being isolated and treated like we don't exist," she said.

Khayelitsha police spokesperson Constable Mthokozisi Gama confirmed that residents had initially become angry on Monday when they arrived to arrest the four, charged with stealing electricity from one of their neighbours.

The resident who laid the charge claimed she had got an electricity account of about R1 500 for a single month after four neighbours connected their homes to her power source without her consent.

Last night one of the four was released on bail, with the others due to be released today.

- Cape Argus

Grassy Park residents ask state to intervene

Residents of the Grassy Park informal settlement Egoli, who say they have been living for 15 years in abject poverty in shacks built on damp ground, have called for urgent government intervention.

At a meeting called by PAC member Phindile Jimmy Xalipi on Monday, the community asked to be moved to dry land and to be provided with the basic services to which all citizens were entitled.

They have invited DA leader Helen Zille, the Western Cape premier-elect, and ANC president Jacob Zuma, incoming national president, to visit the area to check out their conditions first-hand.

'My worry is that their children are not getting a proper education'

The community consists of about 700 families living on just more than two hectares of land.

Cassiem Alexander, who co-owns the land, said he did not want to evict the informal residents, but stressed that the government should find alternative land.

"My worry is that their children are not getting a proper education, and may end up doing drugs," he said.

The conditions were the worst he had seen yet, he added.

The residents complained that they lived without running water, used buckets for toilets and had no electricity. Their shacks were built on damp ground, resulting in the outbreak of disease, they said. Many were jobless.

During a visit on Monday, residents told of how a man who lived in a shelter on the site had died of tuberculosis.

Many people were continuously ill and there were frequent deaths, especially in winter when conditions were harsh, residents said .

"Since 1994 we have been voting," said Joshua Komani, 39, a father of five who said he had lived in Egoli for seven years. "We are not foreigners in this country."

Karina Jacobs, 35, a mother of two, said: "I don't want my children to be abused in this area. When it's wet in winter, people die."

Jacobs said she was most worried about her 10-year-old daughter, who has asthma.

Elizabeth Reiners, 51, who is wheelchair-bound, lives in a leaking shack.

She said she was sick and had no one to care for her.

"In winter when it floods, water reaches the bed," said Edward McKenzie, 25, who lives on a disability grant.

Xalipi said he had talked to mayoral committee member in the mayor's office, Dan Plato, more than two weeks ago about the area, but had had no response as to the way forward.

- Cape Argus

Wet weather forces families to flee

Heavy rains on Saturday flooded dozens of shacks in Freedom Park informal settlement in Tafelsig and families were left without accommodation.

Community worker Najwa Galant said about 50 families were affected by the floods and did not have alternative accommodation, so they were standing in groups outside their homes.

"I am sitting with these families and they have nowhere to go. They are soaking wet and have had to move from their shacks and I don't know what to do," she said.

Galant said even though Disaster Management had visited the families it had only provided families with "50 blankets, clothes and a few pair of shoes".

She said most of the residents did not want to go back into their homes because their floors were covered with water.

"We need a place where they can go because they can't stand in the rain and we don't know how long the rain will continue for," said Galant.

Ward councillor Sheval Arendse said almost every home in certain streets had suffered.

"They are still outside in the rain and we are trying to see where we can move them to until the rain has subsided," he said.

Disaster Management spokesperson Wilfred Solomons-Johannes said there had been other "minor incidents" across Cape Town, such as blocked drains and City of Cape Town and their own teams had been deployed to sort things out.

"Those areas have now been cleared and we will continue to do so as we get calls."

Solomons-Johannes said they were on "high alert" for any eventuality as the winter season had now started.

He appealed to residents to heed weather warnings in the media. - Weekend Argus

House made from Cannabis

Hemp, a plant from the cannabis family, could be used to build carbon-neutral homes of the future to help combat climate change and boost the rural economy, say researchers at the University of Bath.

A consortium, led by the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials based at the University, has embarked on a unique housing project to develop the use of hemp-lime construction materials in the UK.

Hemp-lime is a lightweight composite building material made of fibres from the fast growing plant, bound together using a lime-based adhesive. The hemp plant stores carbon during its growth and this, combined with the low carbon footprint of lime and its very efficient insulating properties, gives the material a ‘better than zero carbon’ footprint.

Professor Pete Walker, Director of the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials, explained: “We will be looking at the feasibility of using hemp-lime in place of traditional materials, so that they can be used widely in the building industry.

“We will be measuring the properties of lime-hemp materials, such as their strength and durability, as well as the energy efficiency of buildings made of these materials.

“Using renewable crops to make building materials makes real sense - it only takes an area the size of a rugby pitch four months to grow enough hemp to build a typical three bedroom house.

“Growing crops such as hemp can also provide economic and social benefits to rural economies through new agricultural markets for farmers and associated industries.”

The three year project, worth almost £750,000, will collect vital scientific and engineering data about this new material so that it can be more widely used in the UK for building homes.

The project brings together a team of nine partners, comprising BRE Ltd, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio architects, Hanson Cement, Hemcore, Lhoist UK, Lime Technology, National Non-Food Crops Centre, University of Bath and Wates Living Space. As part of the project the University of Bath received a research grant of £391,000 from the Renewable Materials LINK programme run by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA). - Allvoices.com

How to build your own Cannabrick Home

Karoo houses hijacked

Shack dwellers in the Karoo town of Oudtshoorn who have waited years for a home, have occupied houses nearing completion on the edge of the suburb of Bridgton.

They claim officials are not giving the houses to people on the council's waiting list. Instead, they allege, the houses are going to people who have paid the officials R3 000 and who have provided them with a "slagding" (slaughter animal).

"The women got together and said it was time to act," one mother said.

"We have lived in shacks for years and are too poor to pay officials, so we are overlooked when new houses become available. This is not fair. We have been waiting years."

'You must wait, be patient'

She claimed newly-weds and single men who had money were receiving preference, while families with children living in shacks were ignored.

Several dozen families, about 200 people, moved into the council houses about a week ago, just as Oudtshoorn's famous Klein Karoo National Kunstefees was about to start.

They say when they opened some of the houses, they found sheep and donkeys inside.

Window panes still had to be added to the houses and locks fitted to the doors. The "invaders" set about blocking the windows with corrugated iron or cardboard and added their own locks.

The acting town manager has written to the "illegal occupants" telling them that no one is allowed to occupy a dwelling before an occupation certificate has been issued.

The letter reads: "You are committing an offence. No housing subsidy has been allocated to you and you are therefore illegally occupying the house. You are urgently requested to vacate the house in order for the contractor to complete the unit and allow the necessary handover to the legitimate owner."

The occupants, however, have no intention of giving up their "new homes".

Among them are Hester and Benjamin Olifant who say they have been on the waiting list since 1991. They have spent most of their life in the Oudtshoorn area. The couple applied for a house when their daughter Vanessa was four. She is 22 now and still shares a small room with her brother, Bennet, 17.

Hester never gave up hope of a house. She wanted a place where her children could grow up "nicely". Through the years she went regularly to find out when their name would be at the top of the housing list.

"I was always given the same story: 'You must wait, be patient'," she says.

But, like the other illegal invaders, she became increasingly disheartened when she saw newly-weds, whose names could not have been ahead of hers on the list, being given houses. She and other shack dwellers noted with growing anger that even unmarried men were allocated houses. When work started on the new housing developing in Rosebank, they watched to see who would get the properties - but this time they decided to act.

"We knew that if we were to get a house of our own we would have to just go and take it," Olifant said.

"We weren't going to stand and watch newcomers given our homes when we had waited such a long time for one."

As a young mother she dreamed of raising her family in a decent house, but her daughter has never known what it is like to have space of her own.

The "room" Vanessa and Bennet shared throughout their childhood is so small that just a small double bunk fits in, with one sibling sleeping in the top bed, the other below. It is here, too, that Bennet does his homework. He uses a chair as his desk, and the bottom bunk as his seat.

The Olifants' makeshift old home was tucked in the backyard of their landlord's house. In summer it is hot - temperatures often reach 40 degrees Celcius - and in winter icy cold. When it rains, the roof leaks.

There is no bathroom. The family has to share their landlord's facilities. Privacy is a luxury they do not have.

Yet, for all its limitations, the couple did their best to make the "informal house" comfortable. It is swept and tidy.

Now that they have taken possession of a house, they are already dreaming of expanding it. Olifant's husband is a builder and once the property is in his name - he does not doubt it will become his - he plans to add an extra bedroom for his daughter.

Most of the illegal occupants have similar stories to tell. Their corrugated iron shacks have been erected in the backyards of "formal" houses, providing an income for the owners of the property, but little more than a roof for the tenants. As they grow older, children spend less and less time at home, preferring places with more space to meet their friends.

The Olifants believe their application for a house was overlooked because they did not have the cash to have their names moved to the top of the list. Hester is a domestic worker, her husband an unemployed builder.

She says she grew up in a decent house in the Calitzdorp district.

"My husband and I moved to Oudtshoorn because there is work here for us. But after 18 years we are still homeless," she says.

Another shack dweller, Klaas Tiemie, echoes her sentiments.

"We have been made promises, but they are all empty. No one cares."

For the moment, the families have homes and are sitting tight.

Repeated attempts to reach the acting municipal manager, Wessel Rabets, or his assistant, Anel, failed. - Sapa

Western Cape Suffers EC migration burden while Gauteng cashes in

It's a matter of taking from the poor and giving to the rich as more than half of the unspent housing money returned from the Eastern Cape has ended up in Gauteng housing projects.

The Eastern Cape can be likened to an internal Zimbabwe; backward development due to corruption nepotism and cronyship, from where the people have migrated in droves to other provinces.

Treasury spokeswoman Thoraya Pandy confirmed yesterday that R270 million of unspent housing money from the Eastern Cape had been re-allocated to other provinces where housing projects were under way.

Gauteng received R152 million of this money, the Free State R68 million and Mpumalanga R50 million.

Despite all the former MEC of Housing Richard Dyanti's 'hands-on' management of Eastern Cape housing probelms - No amount is listed that the Western Cape benefited from...

2009 is the third consecutive year that unspent money from the Eastern Cape's conditional grant for housing has been re-allocated to faster-spending provinces.

In 2008 the province returned half of the R1 billion it received for housing;
In 2007 R200 million,
and in previous years the money returned totalled almost R400 million.

Pandy said that at the end of 2008, which was three-quarters into the financial year, the Eastern Cape housing department had had the lowest spending rate in the country, at 56 percent.

The National Treasury then stopped R270 million in terms of the the Division of Revenue Act and re-allocated the money.

This was gazetted in the Government Gazette on February 6, she said.

Pandy said this money had at that point not yet been transferred to the Eastern Cape and was simply re-allocated within the national housing department.

"The three provinces that were allocated the money from the Eastern Cape included the relevant amounts in their own adjustment budgets which were passed at the time of the tabling of provincial budgets in February 2009," she said.

Eastern Cape Housing MEC Thobile Mhlahlo, who took over the reins of the department in September 2008, denied that the money had been forfeited or that it was lost due to a lack of delivery.

"Around November 2008 we said we might not have the capacity to spend the remaining R200&nsp;million but on the ground we are moving with housing projects," he said.

Mhlahlo said instead of forfeiting the money to the National Treasury the province had struck an early agreement for the money to be taken back and returned later when the Eastern Cape had the capacity to spend the money and needed it.

"It is not because there is a lack of delivery. It is just that we wanted to buy some time in terms of expenditure strategy."

Despite the province's difficulty in spending the money and addressing delivery problems for three consecutive years its unconditional grant for housing is set to grow.

The province received R1.2 billion as an unconditional grant for housing in 2008/09, an allocation which has grown to R1.5 billion in the current financial year and which is due to grow to just under R1.9 billion in the next financial year.

DA leader in the province Athol Trollip said about 26 000 houses could have been built with the money the provincial housing department had failed to spend over the years.

One of the big problems was the 710 vacant posts in the department, he said.

The DA said there was a housing backlog of about 800 000 units in the province.

Eastern Cape ANC spokesman Mcebisi Jonas said the ANC was aware of the problem in housing.

He said there had been an improvement in delivery after the housing and local government departments had been split.

The lack of co-operation between tiers of government, the lack of officials with technical skills and problems with the acquisition of land were the problems.

- Cape Argus

MEC in the house?

The Western Cape government has sprung into unaccustomed action as the country heads towards a national election on April 22. Hardly a day passes without an MEC holding some sort of walkabout, delivery demonstration or talk shop.

Last week it was the turn (again) of the MEC for local government and housing, Whitey Jacobs, who called together interested parties to discuss the housing plan for the disabled.

Head of the Housing Department Shanaaz Majiet and department official Jackie Samson presented a paper titled "Provincial policy to support group accommodation for people with special needs".

It is apparently the product of interaction with various organisations that are involved in care for the elderly, the blind, people with cerebral palsy, orphans and victims of abuse.

It is proposed that on top of a housing subsidy of about R52 000, provided by the central government but channelled through the provincial government, a R10 000 once-off grant be given to those with special needs to provide the appropriate "top structure", such as wheelchair access for physically disabled people.

Asked whether a fund had been set up for such a payment, Western Cape Housing Ministry spokesman Lukhanyo Calata said: "It is in the document and will be acted upon."

The idea is to mirror normal households, especially for children who are abandoned, with a house parent for about six children per household. A pilot project has been set up in the informal settlement at Hermanus, near Cape Town, where a cluster of three houses has been built with the support of churches.

Jacobs, billed to attend the talk shop, was called to an "important" government meeting instead. One assumes he was getting his house in order.

- Business Report

Rubber bullets used on crowd

Western Cape police had to use rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of 250 protesters from the N2 highway near Cape Town on Saturday.

Senior Superintendent Billy Jones said the crowd blockaded the highway on Saturday morning in protest against housing delivery.

"A case of public violence has been opened but no arrests have been made. The road was reopened at about 10:00 and police are on the scene to monitor the situation," said Jones.

- SAPA

A HOUSE MADE FROM CANNABIS

MANY people controversially argue that cannabis has health benefits.

But never before has the class B drug been described as a way to save the environment too.

Researchers at the University of Bath believe they have discovered a way to build carbon-neutral homes of the future - by using cannabis instead of the usual bricks and mortar.

Experts are working on a revolutionary housing project using construction materials made out of hemp-lime, a form of the drug.

The lightweight building material is made of fibres from the fast-growing cannabis plant, bound together using a lime-based adhesive.

The hemp plant stores carbon as it grows and combined with the low carbon footprint of lime and its efficient insulating properties, gives the material a “better than zero carbon” footprint, researchers said.

Professor Pete Walker, director of the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials, said: “We will be looking at the feasibility of using hemp-lime in place of traditional materials, so that they can be used widely in the building industry.

Using renewable crops to make building materials makes real sense - it only takes an area the size of a rugby pitch four months to grow enough hemp to build a typical three-bedroom house

Professor Pete Walker

“We will be measuring the properties of lime-hemp materials, such as their strength and durability, as well as the energy efficiency of buildings made of these materials.

“Using renewable crops to make building materials makes real sense - it only takes an area the size of a rugby pitch four months to grow enough hemp to build a typical three-bedroom house.

“Growing crops such as hemp can also provide economic and social benefits to rural economies through new agricultural markets for farmers and associated industries.”

The three-year project, worth almost £750,000, will collect scientific and engineering data about this new material so it can be more widely used in the UK for building homes.

- Express

• How to build your own Cannabrick Home Naturally

Housing row puts Cape officials at odds

A furious row has broken out between Cape Town city officials and Western Cape provincial authorities over housing accreditation for the council. But the municipality won't get accreditation rights, says Housing MEC Whitey Jacobs, because of a "collapse of governance".

"The mayor of Cape Town must understand that accreditation is not as simple as supply and demand. It is about creating conditions for the totality of government, working together to improve implementation and delivery."

Jacobs responded to mayor Helen Zille's statement in a council meeting that housing project delays could be avoided if the province granted the city council the housing accreditation it had been asking for since 2006.

The accreditation would allow the council to implement housing programmes without provincial approval.

Zille said accreditation would allow the city to approve housing projects in two to three months compared with the eight to 18 months it took the provincial housing department.

The city council had met the criteria stipulated by the provincial housing MEC for accreditation and submitted a business plan in 2006, said Zille.

Zille said the city declared an intergovernmental dispute with the province that then said the city's housing department had to first be assessed by the auditor-general to ensure it had adequate capacity.

"The irony is rich considering that the city received an unqualified audit while the provincial housing department received a qualified audit. It is even more ironic when you consider that the auditor-general found 60 percent of houses delivered by the province had serious defects, 2 200 subsidy allocations by its housing department worth R65-million were given to people who did not qualify and R16-million of the department's budget was unaccounted for."

She said the city waited 16 months to be told that the auditor-general could in fact not do the assessment for housing accreditation, despite auditors-general in other provinces giving assessment certificates to metros with less capacity than Cape Town.

But Jacobs said the city was one of 19 municipalities that were required to document capacity requirements for accreditation.

Many cities, including several that were better prepared than Cape Town, were also not accredited yet as they were still going through the necessary processes.

Although "largely completed in 2006", the process was delayed when the city declared a dispute with the province, Jacobs said.

The council's housing executive director, Hans Smit, and the director of housing finance, Wayne Muller, said the quickest way to resolve the dispute would have been to grant accreditation.

"The provincial officials indicated that the main reason for not granting the council's accreditation application was that the city council comprises 72 percent of the provincial housing budgets and this could effectively impact on the role of the province over the city."

But Jacobs said the city council had failed to implement its requirements for accreditation.

Muller and Smit said city staff had already been on a number of training programmes with the national and provincial housing departments, and the city received funding for accreditation from the national housing department used for the core accreditation staff and the information technology infrastructure which was already in place.

Jacobs said the city rejected inter-governmental co-operation, and wanted housing accreditation so that it could operate independently of other spheres of government.

"The city is therefore itself frustrating its accreditation process."

But the city said the province was withholding accreditation because it did not want to lose its housing budget.

- Cape Times

The HIGH price South Africans are paying

The corruption case against ANC president Jacob Zuma has so far cost the taxpayer well over R60-million.

A senior NPA official told the Sunday Times this week the Zuma case was the most expensive in the history of the prosecuting authority. “I can confirm the cost is well beyond R50-million,” he said.

The Presidency has said it has paid more than R10-million for Zuma’s defence. The state is paying because he was in government at the time of the alleged offences.

NPA spokesman Tlali Tlali said yesterday the cost of the Zuma case would be revealed tomorrow when the NPA announces its decision on whether the charges against Zuma will be dropped.

The investigation against Zuma started seven years ago. Although it has led to the conviction of his former financial adviser Schabir Shaik, the ANC president himself has never set foot in the dock.

The NPA assembled a team of senior prosecutors and Scorpions investigators to focus on the Zuma case. Led by Billy Downer SC, the team travelled beyond the country’s borders in search of evidence.

The biggest cost for the NPA arose from a series of legal challenges brought by Zuma.

One of the senior advocates hired by the NPA, Wim Trengove SC, said yesterday his fees range from R15,000 to R30,000 a day.

- Sunday Times

If after reading this you are wondering what this has to do with housing delivery, well aside from the money spent on arms which could have gone to providing services for housing, this money could have gone further but Madam M3 herself is clearly doing something else other THAN HER JOB. She's spending South African's money on legal aid... ...another 2 humans died in shack fires last night with 500 left homeless; by the way...

In Zuma’s corner: Minister of housing Lindiwe Sisulu ensured that former judge Willem Heath, right, was secured to provide legal advice...

A “brains trust” of legal and academic experts is helping the ANC devise a strategy to get its president, Jacob Zuma, off the hook -- possibly by closing all investigations and prosecutions relating to the controversial arms deal for good.

- M&G

2 die, 500 homeless after fire

Two people died and about 500 people were left homeless after a fire raged through their homes early on Saturday morning in Mbekweni, Western Cape police said.

Constable Lungi Nqakelana said the two men aged between 25 and 40 died during the fire that burnt down some 143 shacks.

An inquest docket was opened to determine the cause of the fire.

Nqakelana said the municipality was busy making arrangements to provide temporal accommodation for the affected families.

Provincial MEC for Social Development and Finance was also expected to visit the affected community.

- SAPA

The community that SA forgot

Former president Thabo Mbeki once spoke of South Africa as a country of two nations, the rich and the poor.

But for the people of Kosovo, it's a country of three nations; the rich, the poor and the forgotten.

While many poor people in this country decry the high rate of unemployment, lack of decent houses and poor-quality education, for the people of the Kosovo informal settlement in Philippi, it's a totally different ball game. A simple flushing toilet, for example, would make a huge difference.

For Thandiswa Mjobo, who walks for 30 minutes just to find a clean toilet, political party manifestos have no meaning, as they have failed to deal with her most basic need - an indoor toilet.

As you drive into Kosovo, you are welcomed by an all-consuming sten

She says this would not only be convenient for her eight foster children, aged between three and 14, but it would save her from the daily half-an-hour walk to the nearest community hall, which, is the closest clean toilet to her home.

As you drive into Kosovo, you are welcomed by an all-consuming stench that lingers in the air.

It is this lack of basic services, like proper sanitation, that breeds the belief that Kosovo is a forgotten community.

After years of using the bucket toilet system, the City of Cape Town "opened" flush toilets to the community last month, but the relief was short-lived as these toilets are already out of order.

The Cape Argus spoke to several women, none of them older than 40, and none of them holding down a job.

'I've heard all sorts of promises from politicians over the years'

Mjobo, 36, tells the Cape Argus she is a frequent visitor to the local clinic as her children are prone to water-borne illnesses. "As you can see and smell, this is a serious danger to children," she says of the shallow canal that runs right in front of her home.

She claims that people throw dirty water, urine and sometimes faeces in the canal, which was meant as a drainage system.

Mjobo says she has told health inspectors about their conditions and that an inspector from the City of Cape Town had suggested that they move from the area.

Although Mjobo feels let down and forgotten by the government and doesn't see change in their future, she says she will still vote in the coming election and make her voice heard.

However, for the first time, she doesn't know which party she would vote for.

"I've heard all sorts of promises from politicians over the years. Ministers have been to my shack, during the floods season, and they left promises."

She accuses politicians of hijacking communities and politicising service delivery, with community meetings no longer addressing community issues, but politics.

While Kosovo has been around since 1998, and is made up of an estimated 7 500 shacks, there is not a single school in the area, nor is there adequate sanitation.

Its streets are lined with various small businesses, which include spaza shops, hair salons and vegetable stalls. Also lining the streets are street poles with political posters, ones that carry the promises of a better future.

The densely populated shack area could easily be one of the poorest in the city, as at around 11am on a weekday the streets are buzzing, mostly with unemployed youth and young children who should be at school.

Parents say they can't afford to send their children to preschools in other areas, because of poverty.

"The residents here feel they are the forgotten people of Cape Town, maybe not during this electioneering period, but generally," said community co-ordinator Andile Dlali.

Dlali corroborated Mjobo's sentiments, saying that while the need for jobs and houses was high, people in Kosovo were hoping for at least basic things, like operating toilets.

Dlali blamed poor sanitation system as contributing to health risks in the area, especially towards the spread of TB infections.

City of Cape Town's Zwai Sokopo said that if the land were to be developed, only 3 295 houses could be built on it and the rest of the people living there would need to leave.

Kosovo is built on private land of 27.64 hectares.

- Cape Argus