Khayelitsha’s choking air

The City of Cape Town is to start measuring the air pollution in Khayelitsha where concentrations of particulate matter often exceed safety guidelines.

Poor air quality in the area is thought to contribute to respiratory conditions such as asthma and to increase hospital admissions related to breathing problems.

On average the air monitoring readings for Khayelitsha are 25 percent higher than Goodwood and 70 and percent higher than central Cape Town… - Cape Argus

WHO - Indoor air pollution and health

Eastern Cape fires kill six, 14 hurt

Five people have died and 14 have been hurt after a fire gutted a hut at Theko Springs in Centane in the Eastern Cape. The blaze occurred early this morning. The deceased include a three year-old boy.

They were part of a rite of passage for girls, known as intonjane, at the village. Jackson Manatha, a police spokesperson, says: “It is said that the father heard screams from hut and when they came out to see what was wrong, they tried to remove some people inside. Unfortunately a total of five people died including a 66 year-old woman who was guardian of two girls, her 3 year-old grandson”.

In a separate incident, an elderly woman has died after a veld fire spread uncontrollably at Lambasi village in Lusikisiki in the Transkei.

A large area of grazing land has been reduced to a black patch. When the fire was noticed, villagers came out in large numbers to douse it before it could reach their homesteads. It appears the 70 year-old woman was caught in the flames and smoke. She died on the scene. - SABC

2010 won’t erase suffering of the masses

South Africa will not be rid of the crime wave after the 2010 World Cup.

Well, for starters, it is not Fifa’s responsibility to eradicate crime in host countries.

World football’s flagship competition has been the catalyst for much infrastructural development, but never before has it been documented that, as a direct result of the month-long event, everyone in the host country lived happily ever after in a crime-free environment.

That’s a pipedream - and the sooner we face that reality the better. Fifa president Sepp Blatter had a full go at international detractors during his whistle-stop visit to the Mother City earlier this week, but little could he have known that the Cape would burn later the same evening courtesy of the latest war between frustrated communities and drug dealers.

Blatter could also not have known that, at about the same time, a helpless little disabled girl would be gang-raped or that another young girl would stab a woman to death or that somewhere on the Flats people were having their houses burgled, some victims being more fortunate than those who lost their lives in the process just last week.

We have a major problem, and World Cup 2010 will not bring the desired relief.

Yes, the 2010 show will deliver a couple of widened roads, bigger airports, better transport systems for some, hordes of tourists and upgraded (football) venues, and so on and so on.

But why must we wait for this wonderful sporting showpiece to be staged here before the authorities inject the missing urgency?

In this country, respect for life had, in fact, diminished a long time ago. In the dark days of apartheid, I lost a younger brother through senseless violence, his charred remains stuck in the front seat of his panel van after thugs had thrown a petrol bomb through the front window.

People blamed the system, saying a loss of dignity and human rights and poverty had led to his death and other tragedies of the time.

Years later, though, we all still live in fear; yes, even the previously advantaged whites who back then could not have imagined nor bothered about a day in the life of a township dweller.

Blatter said we must ignore “those jealous critics who rubbish South Africa’s ability to host a safe World Cup”, and so we should, because it’s not football’s job to ensure that the Promised Land materialise for the citizens of this country.

However, I take huge exception to the nonchalant manner in which the topic of crime is dealt with at press gatherings such as Tuesday’s on the site of the new Green Point Stadium.

Claiming that crime was rife all over the world anyway is tantamount to ignoring the plight of the local people and is no way of dealing with the scourge on our shores. It was a rather short-sighted view which does nothing to ease the pain and suffering of the masses.

Ultimately, though, the government and the police have to heed the desperate cries. They owe it to the people to find the solutions because it’s downright dangerous out there. And calling on the poor communities to do more is simply passing the buck, and this week proved exactly the dangers attached to empowering ordinary people who have spent most of their lives in fear.

Try solving the crime problem in your area after a tough day at work - with a family to feed and keep safe - or, even worse, a day spent begging for work or for food. Is that not exactly why, as a civilized society, we have law enforcers?

I have been privy to the wonderful atmosphere of the previous two World Cups and there’s absolutely no comparison. But then how much joy would 2010 bring to the then victims of especially violent crimes?

Would hosting the planet’s multi-millionaire star footballers mean a damn thing should life remain so cheap?

- Cape Times

InternAfrica needs not point out the obvious again - as to how many houses could be built for the same cost. How much dignity could be delivered instead of a single use stadium…

State might regulate land ownership

Landowners may in future be forced to declare their property with the minister of land affairs as the government tries to step up the pace of land redistribution, MPs were told on Wednesday.

“Everybody should declare, even Lulu Xingwana should declare, to the minister of land affairs that I have so many houses and how many farms do I have and what am I doing with those farms and who my co-owners are,” Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana told the National Assembly in isiXhosa.

The government was also looking at new ways of regulating land ownership by trusts and companies to ensure that people did not “hide” behind them.

‘What is clear to us is the need to regulate the access of land by foreigners’

She said her department was also still awaiting the finalisation of a report on land ownership by foreigners in South Africa.

She said it was believed that about three percent of land in the country was owned by foreigners and that once the report was completed it would be taken to cabinet for a decision and what steps to take.

“What is clear to us is the need to regulate the access of land by foreigners,” she told MPs.

Xingwana has repeatedly stated that if people were to be taken out of the poverty trap the pace of land reform had to be accelerated.

During her budget vote in May Xingwana said the challenge still facing the government was to ensure that the land reform targets they had set, especially the transfer of 30 percent land by 2014 and land restitution by 2008, were met.

Xingwana said on Wednesday that it was wrong to believe that the state-owned vast tracts of land that could be given over to landless groups. She said the fact of the matter was that only approximately five percent of the land was owned by the State, which was not enough to meet the needs and requirements “of the majority of the population of South Africa”.

“We have to take some of the land that belongs to the privileged groups,” she said paying special attention to those who had benefited from “dispossessions” since 1652.

“Our people have been waiting for decades, if not centuries, for their land to come back and we are pleading for people to support the movement in their efforts to ensure a fair and just redistribution of land in South Africa,” she added to applause. - Cape Argus

XDR-TB cases shoot up

The number of people with extreme-drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) has more than quadrupled in the Western Cape in the past three months, provincial health department figures show.

Also, the Brooklyn Chest TB Hospital has no room for more patients. It has 22 beds in the isolation wards to treat XDR-TB cases.

This comes as the City of Cape Town has drawn up contingency plans in the event of an XDR-TB outbreak.

It has killed 290 patients nationwide
Since World TB Day in March, 45 XDR-TB cases have been notified in the province. Eight people have died, according to department figures. In March, there were 10 known XDR-TB cases in the province.

XDR-TB, which withstands first-and second-line antibiotic treatment, is almost impossible to treat. It has killed 290 patients nationwide.

Department spokesperson Faiza Steyn said most patients with XDR-TB were admitted as quickly as possible to Brooklyn.

“At times, patients do have to wait for a bed at Brooklyn Chest Hospital,” Steyn said.

Some patients were treated in side wards at the hospital, while the rest were in isolation at prisons in the province, she said.

Treatment was provided for everyone who needed it.

City health director Ivan Toms said the department and clinics had implemented steps to reduce the health risk of TB and XDR-TB.

“These include clinic designs to separate waiting areas for TB clients, ensuring good airflow in TB areas, providing masks to coughing TB patients, and respirators for all staff in the TB area,” he said.

“Apart from City Health’s excellent progress in reducing the defaulter rate and increasing the cure rate, we have implemented steps to reduce the health risk of TB as well as XDR-TB,” said Toms.

He said in the last quarter, Cape Town achieved its best cure rate of 79 percent for TB.

XDR-TB statistics for SA show that there are 437 cases, with 290 patients having died. Most were in KwaZulu-Natal, where the outbreak started.

According to Karin Weyer, director of the TB Research Unit at the Medical Research Council, XDR-TB pointed to the failure of TB control. “We have to cure TB first time round and step up drug resistance surveillance now that XDR-TB has emerged.” - Cape Times

Renaming debacle reaches the Cape

InternAfrica - wonder’s what it is like to live in a suburb of streets with no names… for years on end… how do you comply with FICA or participate in the economic society if you can’t even be sent a bill?

How long does the ‘memorialisation’ period last - till all named streets are renamed? Then only will they get to the un-named streets, erm why spend money on RE-naming. Why not Name for the same if not lesser price. In fact it would add value to those cityzens lives.


It (the panel) agreed that all the “NY” - an abbreviation for “native yard” - streets in Gugulethu should be changed, but said this should be done after a “memorialisation” process and community consultation.

The same process should be followed with streets in District Six. - IOL

Property intervention on the cards

The government is mulling over intervening in the property market in an attempt to bring property costs down while also delivering on SA’s housing need. Here’s what the ANC may be planning.

Bruce Whitfield:
I always get a bit nervous when government talks about interfering into the supply and demand side of the economy and many of us are very pleased at the increasing value of our homes but it is not good news if you are a first-time buyer, somebody trying to get onto the property ladder.

The ANC’s policy conference starts next week and already its members have been telling the party’s top officials that they want the issue of property valuation to be discussed and also building costs and some kind of intervention in the housing market.

Now the Public Works Minister Thoko Didiza has been talking about this issue today wearing her ANC National Executive Committee hat and she says it is obviously a complicated situation but what might be worrying though is the spectre of government intervention in the property market. This is what she had to say.

Thoko Didiza:
What I would say emerges in the discussion as they have been undertaken in the province also looks at the construction industry as a whole as to where the pressures (are) that actually increases costs. Issues of suppliers in terms of material supply, do you want to make an intervention there, what are the issues with regard to certain supplies such as you know the mining of cement is that where you may need to do an intervention? Where do these costs emanate from?

Is it a question of land in terms of your real estate in particular that has gone higher and that is why you have had even some of the proposals which relate to special purpose vehicles where maybe the state must be creative and look at acquisition of land which they need in their portfolio for housing delivery in those areas where they are.

You would recall that at some stage Minister Sisulu even made some passionate appeal to municipalities not to dispose land without looking at the housing delivery needs. So if you were to say is there a straight answer at the moment in terms of creative ways of curbing the land prices I would say no.

Bruce Whitfield:
Certainly worrying that government is even considering intervening in the first place, that is certainly my perspective on it but Thoko Didiza the Public Works Minister speaking today ahead of next week’s ANC Policy Conference. World at Six

Huge levels of methane emitted in city - Politicians questioned

Ageing equipment at the Athlone, Cape Town sewerage works is allowing enormous quantities of methane to escape into the atmosphere, where its global warming effect is about 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The amount of methane emitted every day from Athlone is roughly equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide a middle-income family of four would emit from electricity use over eight years.

Or the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from one car travelling around the circumference of the Earth - twice.

And because of budget constraints, it appears that this climate-changing methane will continue to pour into the air for the next three years - in a city which has a climate change strategy in place.

The amount of methane generated daily is equivalent in global warming effect to about 30 tons of carbon dioxide.

Energy expert Alastair Gets said on Monday it was “very serious” to have this amount of methane going into the air.

“The best solution would be to capture the methane and use it to power a generator, which could contribute a large amount of that plant’s electricity demand.

“At a very minimum, it should be flared (burned),” he said.

Mark Borchers of Sustainable Energy Africa, said: “As a city with an energy and climate change strategy, I’m pretty sure they would want to do something about it right now,” adding that he would try to facilitate a solution.

Ossie Asmal, director of the city’s environmental planning, said he was aware of the problem and was encouraging all departments to reduce their carbon footprint.

Kevin Samson, manager of the city’s wastewater department, said the anaerobic digesters at Athlone had been built in the 1950s and had reached “the end of their economical life”.

The poor condition of the digesters’ roofs meant it was no longer possible to capture the methane gas produced.

Any attempt to effect temporary repairs would be a waste, Samson said.

The recent allocation of funds would be spent on addressing the handling of sludge.

Samson said that over the next three years the digesters would be replaced with different equipment which would do away with the need for the outdated system. - Cape Times

Moving is a bridge too far for N7 squatters

Residents of a small informal settlement under a bridge on the N7 near Goodwood are refusing to move after an attempt to evict them.

The squatters said the sheriff and the police had arrived early on Friday morning to evict them from their homes. They said their homes had been broken down and their personal items removed in trucks.

Ten of the 26 families living in the settlement chose to move to Happy Valley near Blackheath on Friday.

‘The streets are clean in Goodwood’
But the 16 remaining families are waiting for their opportunity on Thursday to tell the Goodwood magistrate’s court why a temporary interdict obtained by the City of Cape Town to evict them should not be made final… Cape Argus

How much would you pay for your dream home?

The hottest properties in Cape Town, on the Atlantic seaboard, are fetching staggering prices in spite of forecasts that the housing boom has run out of steam.

A Bantry Bay flat was sold recently for a record R78,370 a square metre the day it came on the market. The full asking price of R25-million was paid by a South African for the 319m2 flat in The Bantry.

A bigger flat of 610m2 in the same block was bought by a Briton for R38,250,000… - Cape Times

Inconvenient G8 truth about the carbon offset industry

…The British government itself has been caught out over emissions from its presidency of the G8 in 2005. The then environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that all carbon emissions from all meetings and travel linked with the one-year presidency would be neutralised.

Delegates to the Gleneagles summit in July 2005 were given certificates declaring that all their carbon emissions were being offset. But it hasn’t happened.

The plan was to spend £150,000 in Kuyasa, a suburb of Cape Town in South Africa, refitting shack-like homes with insulated roofs instead of corrugated iron, and providing solar panels for electricity and long-life bulbs for light. But the project, which would cut carbon emissions as well as helping needy people, has run into bureaucratic, financial and practical problems. The environment department, Defra, says it is keeping it under review. The project’s leader, Shirene Rosenberg, says she is still fighting to keep it alive with no start date on the horizon…

Guardian Unlimited - Unraveling NEWS

InternAfrica would like to point out that at the current exchange rate of 14.04 the carbon offset would have been able to BUILD Kuyasa for R2,106,000 or 140 isothermic carbon-compliant cannabrick homes. ie. a whole suburb.

Robbed of her dream by fraud and corruption

Josephine Dlomo, 79, lives in a wood and iron shack covered with plastic sheeting that is so full of holes that the icy winter cold seeps in.

The floor is bare red sand and the shack is filled with smoke from the fire that she burns constantly in order to cook and to keep warm.

The mother of five is a resident in Inanda, one of four squatter settlements situated between the beautiful homes of the upper middle class areas of Northriding and Bridgeview, north of Johannesburg. Her children also live in shacks in the area.

But Dlomo has never given up hope that she will get a home of her own. It is a dream she shares with millions of other poor South Africans who - 13 years into the new democracy - still live in appalling conditions in informal settlements all over the country.

‘The mother of five is a resident in Inanda’

Dlomo has been on the housing waiting list for years, but in 2003 she thought that her dream was finally going to come true after housing officials arrived at her home, took down her personal details and wrote a number on the door of her shack.

They did the same with her neighbours, who also expected to be moved into proper homes.

But four years later Dlomo is still living in a shack, even though some of her neighbours have moved into new homes in the nearby Cosmo City development, amid allegations that they had paid bribes.

Yet, while people like Dlomo wait for homes, unscrupulous developers have taken advantage of the government’s push to house South Africans, with allegations of widespread fraud involving developers claiming payment for houses never built, or cutting corners and costs and building houses of such poor quality that they fall apart within months of the new owners moving in.

Now the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has received R10-million from the Treasury to fund an investigation into housing fraud that is said to amount to at least R3-billion, perpetrated by unscrupulous housing developers and contractors since 1994.

‘In Cape Town, the N2 Gateway project is mired in controversy’

The investigation follows a proclamation by President Thabo Mbeki instructing the SIU to investigate this massive fraud, and is aimed at rooting out corruption in the national housing department.

The corruption includes government employees obtaining housing subsidies to which they weren’t entitled; houses paid for but never built; and housing officials offering houses to people willing to pay bribes, while people with a legitimate right to a house remain homeless.

One example is in Polokwane, Limpopo, where the department of housing forked out R15-million for RDP houses that were never built. And, while the people who were promised houses are still living in shacks, the developer has disappeared and no trace can be found of the missing millions.

In Cape Town, the N2 Gateway project is mired in controversy as many of the houses in the first phase of the multimillion-rand development alongside the airport freeway are cracking and subcontractors who haven’t been paid have downed tools.

Costs have escalated dramatically, and the project’s completion date has been shifted from 2005 to 2009.

Speaking in parliament last week, Democratic Alliance MP Greg Krumbock said the housing budget this year was close to the more than R9-billion the minister of housing expected would be spent in 2008 and 2009.

“So the problem is not lack of finance. The problem rather is a series of inefficient, ineffective and uneconomical practices which bedevil those good intentions,” he said.

But while the SIU probes the alleged fraud and the politicians squabble, ordinary people like Dlomo continue to live the way they do.

However, Gauteng housing MEC Nomvula Mokonyane said yesterday that the province is to get about 10 new mixed housing developments in the current financial year. They would come into being in Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Mogale City and Johannesburg.

The developments would be similar to Cosmo City. In particular, a major mixed housing development was planned at Doornkop.

Mokonyane said her department would speed up plans to acquire prime land closer to urban centres for housing developments.

“We will explore various options, including expropriation,” she said. A drive to have no informal settlements in the province by 2014, would see 10 such settlements eradicated in this financial year.

Additional reporting by Sapa

Probe into decade of housing fraud

THE Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has begun to investigate an estimated R3bn fraud perpetrated by “unscrupulous” housing developers and contractors against the state over a 10-year period between 1994 and 2004.

The sum of R3bn was identified as unaccounted for by former auditor-general Shauket Fakie, but housing director-general Itumeleng Kotsoane said the amount had been reduced somewhat.

The national treasury has allocated R10m for the SIU investigation.

President Thabo Mbeki issued a proclamation authorising the SIU investigation about three weeks ago, following which the housing department entered a service-level agreement with the SIU, Kotsoane said at a media briefing after the housing budget debate in Parliament on Friday.

He said the fraud arose because after 1994 the government did not have adequate policies to regulate and manage the disbursement of subsidy payments to provinces.

Provincial housing development boards made advance payments to developers for housing projects, who sometimes just disappeared with the money.

The investigation is a further prong to the department’s clampdown on fraud in the sector.

It has also taken action against about 53000 government employees who fraudulently obtained housing subsidies to which they were not entitled.

A 2006 report by Fakie estimated that R323m in subsidies was paid out to about 53000 non-qualifying government employees between 1995 and 2004.

Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said in her budget vote speech that a number of public servants had surrendered their fraudulently obtained houses.

A national anti corruption forum was being set up and a whistle-blowing policy finalised.

Sisulu applauded the fact that banks had extended low-income housing loans worth R32bn of the R42bn they had pledged. An audit had yet to be conducted to determine whether this had benefited the very low-income earners in the R1500 to R3500 a month category.

“What is significant about this is that it has gone ahead without any guarantees from government,” she said.

A new policy would give about 9000 former combatants in the liberation struggle, and ex-servicemen no longer in the South African National Defence Force, preferential access to houses.

Business Day - News Worth Knowing

Climate Change is a poverty issue

Energy in the Western Cape is set to become cleaner and greener with the introduction of ground-breaking legislation that will kick-start the renewable energy industry throughout the province.

The legislation includes a range of incentives, tariffs and tax breaks to stimulate the use of renewable energy across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. - Cape Climate Change