Housing targets can be met ‘if we change our ways’

The Department of Human Settlements is confident of dealing with the housing crisis by 2030 and its targets are "not ambitious".

THE Department of Human Settlements is confident of dealing with the housing crisis by 2030 and its targets are "not ambitious", says its director-general, Thabane Zulu.

The targets are attainable as long as "we start doing business differently" , he said.

"We cannot continue to do business the same way as the past 15 years. We are starting to say let’s look at alternative, creative and innovative ways to increase our service delivery."

The department has estimated that 2,1-million new houses are needed to address the current housing backlog. In 1994 the figure was 1,5-million .

In his budget speech earlier this year, Housing Minister Tokyo Sexwale said it could take decades for the backlog to be cleared considering "continued economic and population growth and the rapid pace of urbanisation". But Mr Zulu said some housing projects had failed largely due to poor co-ordination and slack implementation strategies.

"We have developed some effective policies in the past but the implementation has been a challenge. The backlog is huge and we have to be very tight on implementation strategies…. We will work 24/7 to tighten our implementation strategies."

There is political will to meet the housing targets, Mr Zulu said, and this is illustrated by President Jacob Zuma changing the mandate on housing. It now includes infrastructure and community habitation, rather than simply building a house.

Mr Zuma has also ordered that departments co-operate in the building of human settlements.

Mr Zulu reaffirmed this, saying the department will work closely with other s such as transport, and of co-operative governance and traditional affairs, in order to deal more effectively with the crisis. "The mentality of silos has been there for some time and we have to begin to kill it."

But Richard Pithouse, a housing expert and politics lecturer at Rhodes University, contradicted Mr Zulu, saying it was precisely a lack of political will that compounded the crisis.

"There are all sorts of technical complexities that must be confronted by any project that aims to build housing on a large scale and quickly," Mr Pithouse said.

Lauren Royston of Urban Landmark said the new housing targets are much more realistic and attainable.

- BusinessDay - NEWS WORTH KNOWING

Cape Town backyarders conned by crooked house owners

A group of backyard dwellers in Du Noon are furious to discover they’ve been conned for years by the owners of the RDP houses in whose backyards they were led to believe they were staying. After paying R200 a month, some of them since 2008, to their crooked landlords, they recently discovered that their shacks were not in the RDP backyards, but on land belonging to Transnet.The RDP owners had illegally extended their backyards onto Transnet land and then rented it out.

The backyarders discovered the situation after officials from the city’s Anti Land Invasion Unit visited the Siyahlala informal settlement in Du Noon earlier this month.

On the edge of Siyahlala, bordering the railway line, is a row of ten RDP houses. Five of the owners had extended their backyards onto Transnet property and rented out their ‘backyards’ to squatters.

When they were told what the situation was, the backyarders were outraged and refused to pay any more rent.

In retaliation, one of the crooked ‘landlords’ demolished Fundiswa’s Hlakalashe’s shack on Wednesday last week.

Community leader Sandile Mpawu said residents called the police, who ordered the landlord to rebuild Hlakalashe’s shack.

Hlakalashe, an unemployed mother of two children aged seven and 13, who is studying to be a nurse, has since opened a case of malicious damage to property against her former \landlord.

Although her shack is illegally occupying Transnet land, Hlakalashe said she was very happy to discover she should not have to pay backyard rent.

And now she also wants all the rent she ever paid given back to her.

“I want my money back since when I started paying rent,” said Hlakalashe.

The SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco) Du Noon branch has told the other backyarders whose shacks are on Transnet land to also stop paying rent.

Behind the RDP house where Hlakashe stays are eight shacks, three of which are on Transnet Freight Railway line land.

Mpawu said five RDP owners on the row of houses were cheating backyarders this way.

Andres Leoto, 29, a husband who shares his one-roomed shack with his two young children and wife, is one of them.

Leoto said he had been paying R200 per month rent to the RDP house owner since 2008.

He said he had already paid his November rent but would not be paying for December, as Sanco had instructed.

Chair of the Du Noon Community Policing Forum (CPF), Andile Peter confirmed that backyarders on Transnet land had been advised to stop paying rent.

He said the RDP house owners were profiting from vulnerable people. However, he was unable to say exactly how many people had been exploited other than to say “there are a lot”.

Head of the City’s Anti Land Invasion Unit, Stephen Hayward, said there were home owners in other townships who were also renting out land that did not belong to them.

Hayward said the problem was “quiet extensive”.

“It’s a city wide problem,” he said.

– West Cape News

Khayelitsha protestors break pre-school

Residents of Khayelitsha’s TR section who have been involved in service delivery protests vandalized a pre-school on Sunday because the owner refused to let them have a community meeting there. As a result, 51 pre-school children have nowhere to go.Owner of the Bongani educare centre, Theodora Gila, said on the previous Sunday (7 November), she refused to let the community hold a meeting about the planned protests that have since resulted in cars and buses being stoned and set alight.

She said she refused because their toyi-toying inside the building was destroying the wooden floor.

As a result, she said, some of the residents threatened to burn her pre-school down. She then went to the Lingelethu police station to get a protection order, but that just seemed to anger the residents further.

This Sunday, the angered residents broke into the pre-school and ripped up the floorboards and broke the windows.

Gila was speaking to West Cape News as she was packing her bags to flee the area. She said she is scared the angered residents will burn her house down after she pressed charges of malicious damage to property, resulting in the arrest of three women and a man on Sunday night.

“I know they’re having a meeting to burn my house as we speak, that is why I’m running. By the time they finish on that meeting I will be out of this place,” said Gila.

But she said she’d be back.

“I know who’s behind this and they’re doing this because of jealousy.”

Residents’ committee member Khaya July said Gila never told the committee that people threatened to burn down her pre-school.

July said the land the pre-school was situated on belonged to the community.

“This is not her house and we are the reason she owns it.”

He said for years the community held meetings in the pre-school.

“When something is broken, she used to tell us and the community always fixed it,” said July.

He said they invited her to a community meeting on Monday, 15 November, to hear her complaints, but she never attended, he said.

Residents’ committee chairperson Luvuyo Hebe said he was not in the area when the pre-school was vandalized.

“I came home around eight o’clock at night and the police were arresting three women and one man, accusing them of damaging Gila’s property. This is not her property, the land belongs to the community.”

Lingelethu police spokesperson Siphokazi Mawisa confirmed that four people had been arrested for allegedly vandalizing the pre-school.

She said they would appear in the Khayelitsha Magistrate’s Court on Monday 22 November.

– West Cape News

Cape Town community angry over dumped rubbish

Residents in Du Noon’s West Beach informal settlement are up in arms over a mounting pile of garbage in their area which they say a city-contracted company is refusing to remove.West Beach residents say people from surrounding communities dump a wide variety of rubbish in and around a shipping container which serves as a refuse storage bin, and city contractor Indu Staff Solutions only removes household rubbish, leaving the rest behind.

Residents say as a result there is a mounting pile of junk, including faeces and animal carcasses, causing a stink and attracting rats and other vermin.

Community leader Mnzwalane Caji said the rat plague was so bad that they came into people’s homes and often bit sleeping children.

Caji said residents were collecting money so that they could hire a truck to pull the container into the road as they believed blocking the road was the only way they would be certain of getting the city’s attention and forcing them to act.

“We don’t want this container. We don’t want to see it at all. Rats get inside our shacks and nibble on our children while they’re sleeping,” said resident Thuliswa Mnguni, who is mother to a two-year-old child.

Mnguni said on several occasions she had found her son playing with friends in the midst of the trash and she was worried the children would contract a disease.

Father of a one year old child Mncedisi Mkhohlwe, 28, said dogs and other animals that were killed by cars, and sheep heads, bones and skin discarded by hawkers who sold meat or ran braai stands, were also dumped into the container.

Du Noon area manager for Indu Staff Solutions, Andile Mbeshu, said residents had complained about the accumulating trash but it was not Indu Staff’s responsibility to remove illegally dumped material.

He said Indu Staff solutions was responsible for removing household rubbish and what the residents were moaning about was illegal dumping, which was a common occurrence in Du Noon.

“It’s not our job to remove illegal dumping,” said Mbeshu, “we remove normal house-hold refuse but they are dumping tv’s and chairs. That’s not part of our job.”

Blaauwberg sub-council chairperson Heather Brenner while said there was an excessive amount of “waste of “all types” being dumped across the metro but the city was constrained by its budget.

“The city has been trying to deal with the backlog (of illegally dumped refuse) within the constraints of its budget,” said Brenner.

She said the city’s solid waste department was aware of the problem in Du Noon, as Indu Staff were contracted to remove household rubbish in black plastic bags that were dumped in the refuse container.

“The residual dumped refuge is collected from time to time when required,” she said.

She said the situation in Du Noon would be addressed as soon as the city could catch up with its backlog.

— West Cape News

Abandoned baby found in bucket toilet

Yet another Cape Town baby has been abandoned by its mother, this time in a bucket toilet in Philippi’s Emangcwabeni informal settlement. Nomzi Gebenga, 29, said she slipped out of her shack at about 6am on Sunday morning to relieve herself at the communal toilets and was called over by a neighbour who had found the lifeless body of a prematurely-born baby boy.Shocked resident quickly gathered to witness the scene. Police later arrived and cordoned off the scene.

“I quickly went to the area committee to notify them about the discovery and then police were called,” said Gebenga.

“I was shocked and I am still shaken by this experience,” she said on Sunday afternoon.

Resident No-Amen Skhalo, 36, who lives close to the toilets

Community members compiled a list of all the women in the settlement who were known to be pregnant and they were identified, but none of them had recently given birth.

REsident No-Amen Skhalo, 36, said: “It’s difficult to know who dumped the new born because women that were pregnant in the area are still pregnant. The person who did this evil must be living in another area, not here.

“How come people can be so cruel and after months of carrying a child in the womb decide to dump the baby. That baby is innocent and does not deserve this,” she said.

Sunday’s incident comes a week after Development MEC Patricia de Lille held an ‘emergency summit’ at the provincial legislature where organisations dealing with the abandonment of children gathered to discuss how the phenomenon could be addressed.

The summit concluded that education programmes for both boys and girls at school was necessary to teach teenagers about the impacts of teenage pregnancy and its consequences..

At the summit De Lille said the reason babies were abandoned was because they were unplanned, in some instances the mothers may have raped.

Lack of familial and financial support, being infected with HIV, substances and alcohol abuse were other contributing factors to mothers abandoning their children, she said.

Nyanga police station spokesperson Ntomboxolo Sitshitshi said a case of concealment of birth had been opened but no-one has been arrested.

She said anyone with information could contact the Nyanga police station at 021 380 3376/3320 or Crime Stop at 08600 10111.

— West Cape News

‘We want the houses you promised’, say Khayelitsha residents

Residents of Khayelitsha TR section say they have been waiting two years for houses promised by the provincial government and they’ve had enough of waiting. The residents of TR’s Bongani area say that in 2008 the councillor for their area at the time, Whitey Jacobs, said they were going to move into houses on land in Kuilsriver called ‘Nuwe Begin’. But they are still stuck in their shacks.They have been protesting against the delay since October and say they are not going to stop until they get the houses promised to them.

Community member Majoli Buli said: “It’s been 22 years living in this area but the government hasn’t done anything to help us and we are tied of empty promises. We are fighting for ourselves because the ward councilor refuses to help us as he claims he was not voted in by us.

Residents committee chairperson Luvuyo Hebe said he had “lots of meetings” with the city and they had promised to build their houses by March this year.

“But it hasn’t happened,” he said.

He said residents had told the committee to step down because the problem had not been solved. “That is why they protesting.”

Ward councillor Mpendulo Solizwe said he didn’t understand why Bongani residents were protesting, as they were been taken care of.

“The constructor is busy with infra-structure and they will get the houses next year March,” said Solizwe

Housing MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela’s spokesperson Zalisile Mbali said the building of 900 houses for TR Section Bongani residents had been delayed due to “technical problems”, but now “everything will be sorted out”.

“We will start preparing the land by the end of this month in Nuwe Begin next to Kuilsriver and the infra-structure will be done in May next year,” he said.

“An arrangement to move 900 families has been made and those families have been identified.”

He said the protests were as a result of a misunderstanding.

“We said we will start building the houses in May next year at the last meeting we had in Mew Way hall, unfortunately the committee of TR didn’t attend the meeting.” said Mbali.

– West Cape News

20 year waiting list for houses

Cape Town - The housing situation in the Mother City is so bad that people who are currently on waiting lists for houses will stay on those lists for another 15 to 20 years.

This was the sad picture painted by Cape Town mayor Dan Plato at a local housing conference on Sunday, where he said housing is the one thing that gets people up in arms.

"If I were in that position I would be doing the same thing and asking what the government is doing for me. People want houses."

Bonginkosi Madikizela, Western Cape housing MEC, pointed out that South Africa has a population of 50 million people of which only 5.5 million are taxed.

"There are 15 million people receiving government grants, there are free schools and healthcare services, and the money for that comes from the same pocket."

Less to more

South Africans should be realistic about the available money, that's why there are new plans for spending at provincial level.

It costs about R30,000 to service a piece of land and nearly R70,000 to build a house. And for this reason, the provincial government would rather service more properties over the next four years.

The only way to help more people with the same limited budget is to give less to more people.

"It is important to help those who want to help themselves. This way people can go ahead and build their own houses on the properties, rather than living in squalor and waiting for help."

Madikizela added that those living in back yards and those in informal settlements should be treated the same way.

"In future development we want to treat people living in back yards and people from informal areas 50-50."

Plato said it should become clear up to parliamentary level that the current pace of housing delivery does not help people at grassroots level.

"Everyone wants a big property and house."

Build up

Plato said more people should be housed on a single piece of land and therefore multi-storey buildings are the solution.

"If one takes into account that 350,000 houses are needed, the properties would stretch from Cape Town to Malmesbury.

"Our infrastructure can't handle this."

There also isn't enough money for brick houses.

"Government should openly and honestly admit to the people that it can't afford properties with brick houses.

"We have to consider what we can afford and for that reason we have to think about servicing properties rather than building houses on properties," said Plato.

- Die Burger

Bullets and rocks fly

Violent protests in Khayelitsha spread to Lansdowne Road yesterday forcing authorities to close a major thoroughfare, declaring it a no-go zone.

The third consecutive day of violence in Khayelitsha saw angry service delivery protesters open fire – apparently with live ammunition – at a security vehicle and hurl rocks and a petrol bomb at several other vehicles in Mew Way, a major through-road.

With blood pouring down his neck, Abdurahman Allie from Kensington said he had been on his way to Khayelitsha to drop off furniture when people threw rocks at his van.

“We were told the trouble was over, and that it was safe to come here, but just as we entered Mew Way, the people started throwing rocks,” he said.

Allie complained of dizziness after he was hit on the back of his head. He was treated at the scene by paramedics.

The occupants of an Isuzu bakkie narrowly escaped a fiery death when a petrol bomb was apparently hurled into the vehicle.

The men managed to get out, but could not save the steel rods they been transporting to a business.

“Luckily we escaped without injuries,” one of the workers said.

Deon Jordaan, from the Protea Coin Group, said protesters shot at their bakkie, with what appeared to be a 9mm firearm.

“We saw an Isuzu bakkie standing in the middle of the road and we wanted to turn back, but suddenly people started throwing stones,” he said.

Jordaan said they were on their way to help staff of one of their cash vehicles when they ran into trouble.

“If it wasn’t for the bulletproof windows, we would not be standing here,” Jordaan’s passenger added.

Simon Monde, who works at the Mdzananda animal clinic in Khayelitsha, said he had just dropped off dogs when his vehicle was pelted with stones.

Authorities later closed Mew Way saying it had become too dangerous for delivery and company vehicles.

Meanwhile the violence spilled over into Lansdowne Road, where residents tried to set a vehicle alight, but law enforcement officials quickly moved in.

Western Cape community safety MEC Albert Fritz, who was escorted to the scene of the protests under heavy police guard, said the torching of vehicles, barricading of roads and total disregard for the law was “nothing short of anarchy”.

And he laid the blame for the unrest at the door of the ANC Youth League, saying: “I just think they’re getting desperate politically and we know it’s the ANC Youth League, getting very desperate, inciting violence and making the area ungovernable.”

He said officials had warned delivery vehicles not to come into the area. “It’s not safe for them.”

Fritz said the spate of violence was clearly politically orchestrated.

“We have heard from about two formations, among them the ANC Youth League in the area, saying that they’re going to make the next 14 days in the area ungovernable. It’s sad to see how these formations use very ordinary people to exploit the whole thing around their own agenda.”

He said it appeared the protests were part of the build-up to the local government elections next year.

Fritz said ordinary people could not be held to ransom by this kind of behaviour. “There are these few people fuelled by criminality pushing the political agenda.”

He expressed concern that hundreds of people stood watching, yet nobody admitted knowing anything about the perpetrators.

“As long as communities shield these criminals, who disguise their actions as service delivery protests, the chaos will continue,” he said.

Fritz said two people had been arrested.

“I’ve asked that we build strong cases against them to secure convictions. Other people must know that if you disobey the law, you’ll land in prison,” said Fritz.

When the Weekend Argus team attempted to speak to residents living along Mew Way they were chased away by an angry mob.

- Weekend Argus

Human Settlements housing tribunal hailed a success

Western Cape Human Settlements officials have reported that at least 1,342 cases have been lodged to its provincial housing tribunal in the first six months of 2010.

The body was launched in September last year to mediate in housing disputes between tenants and their landlords.

It said most of reported cases relate to failure by property owners to refund deposits to their tenants when they leave.

The department’s Nathan Adriaanse said last year more than 1,000 cases were also solved.

“What we’ve seen since we’ve launched the campaign, the number of complaints has increased dramatically. During the reporting period 2009/2010 we had a total of 1,254 cases which were lodged at the tribunal."

Adriaanse said numerous awareness campaigns about the body’s free services have been very helpful.

“We think that just given the fact that we’ve seen an increase in the number of cases which have been lodged, that in itself is an indication that the programme has been a success and the campaign has been a success,” he added.

- Eyewitness News

Shack, rattle and roll

Mzonke Poni is the face of an ANC nightmare - an angry activist mobilising the township masses to protest at what he calls the government's failure to create a better life for the poor.

Poni heads the Cape Town branch of Abahlali baseMjondolo (ABM), which means "shack dwellers" in Zulu, and is a social movement that was formed amid housing protests in Durban five years ago and has spread across the country.

The group, which shuns all parties and electoral politics, launched an "informal-settlement strike" in Khayelitsha last month, which the city of Cape Town said cost R1.5-million in damage to property, including a fire station that was attacked by a rock-throwing mob.

It has threatened further protests to disrupt local elections next year - adding a new ingredient to the political cauldron of the Western Cape, where the ANC is desperately fighting the ruling Democratic Alliance.

"In this country, it's time the people stood up and questioned the authorities," said Poni, 32, this week from his office in a converted container in the garbage-strewn streets of Khayelitsha.

"I'm living in an informal settlement, so that is why I'm getting involved. I don't have my own toilet, that's why I'm getting involved. I don't have electricity, that is why I'm getting involved."

Poni said that the first and last time he voted was in 1999. "I gave my vote to the ANC . But from 1999 until now I'm still experiencing the same conditions - I'm stealing electricity under democracy. I'm going out at night and connecting it illegally. I don't even have R5 for airtime."

Since it launched in Khayelitsha two years ago, ABM has alienated everyone from Cosatu and the SACP to Helen Zille's DA and the ANC Youth League.

A joint statement by the Treatment Action Campaign, Cosatu and the Social Justice Coalition has denounced the ABM protests as "irresponsible, immature and ignorant".

"The struggle for social equality . requires serious organisation . not a few hundred who throw stones for a few days and become cannon fodder for self-appointed leaders," it said.

The DA's provincial spokesman for safety and security, Melanie Kuhn, said: "They don't seem to be interested in sitting round a table."

The deputy chairman of ABM in Khayelitsha, Mthobeli Qona, though, was unapologetic about the movement's tactics. "We are just burning tyres so the government can come and listen to us. If you send a letter, they will never listen. The only thing is to barricade the roads, then they will come."

- Timeslive

Rioters stone children’s bus

Residents of TR Section in Khayelitsha set this truck on fire and stoned other vehicles in Mew Way, including a bus full of children on their way to a year-end camp in Villiersdorp.

A bus carrying about 30 children and NGO workers was stoned in Khayelitsha’s TR Section as residents protesting against poor service delivery ran amok for the second day running.

Trucks were set alight, cars stoned, and police said people also tried to set a crèche alight.

The ANC’s Youth League has warned of more of the same today. The league says it has organised a service delivery march, with the region’s treasurer, Andile Lile, saying he could not be certain that the protest would not turn aggressive.

“The thing that happened in Khayelitsha, it might happen again,” he said.

“We won’t be able to control people’s emotions. We can’t say nothing will happen. But the most important thing is that we will continue with our protest and programme.”

Yesterday several children were hurt when a crowd attacked a bus carrying them to a year-end camp. Natalie Mason, a British musician from Birmingham and a facilitator at the Music Therapy Community Clinic, said they were “shocked” by what had happened.

Mason, four colleagues and children aged between 10 and 16 were travelling along Mew Way, one of Khayelitsha’s main roads, about 2.30pm when they reached a roadblock barring access to TR Section.

But when the bus turned around, a group of people began pelting it with rocks.

Windows were smashed and several children were hit. One child’s lip was cut and another was struck in the back by a rock.

“It was all so sudden; we were very shocked,” said Mason. “Luckily no one was injured too badly, and the children are doing well.”

The group, on its way to a camp in Villiersdorp, had already picked up children from Heideveld, and were collecting the last of the children in Khayelitsha.

Music Therapy Community Clinic director Sunelle Fouché said that while everyone had a “big fright”, they had gone ahead with the camp. “We got a new bus and informed all the parents, who are still happy for their kids to go on the camp.”

This stoning was one of many in Mew Way yesterday. Hostile residents randomly stoned cars and trucks, making it difficult for even the police to reach the area.

Authorities hung back, closing the road off at the Lansdowne Road intersection.

At the next traffic lights just a couple of hundred metres beyond the intersection, residents pelted selected vehicles with stones.

Later, however, they turned on any vehicle which drove past, including a big furniture removal truck and vehicles driven by other Khayelitsha residents.

Khayelitsha police spokeswoman Captain Anneke van der Vyver said that after violence on Thursday, things had quietened down, only to flare up again.

“This morning they tried to burn down a crèche but they failed, and the owner laid a charge,” she said.

“One man even came into the police station threatening to burn down a crèche in TR Section.”

On Friday’s incidents came just hours after the ANC Youth League called a press conference to distance itself from Thursday’s trouble, during which protesters set alight several vehicles including a government car carrying matric exam scripts.

Allegations were rife yesterday that the youth league was behind the violence, with organisation Abahlali baseMjondolo, which itself faced blame for the incident, pinning it on the league.

At Friday’s press conference, called by the league’s Dullah Omar region, it denied any involvement in the TR Section violence, and announced it would hold a 14-day protest against poor service delivery, which would begin when they secured a protest permit from the City of Cape Town.

Lile said a separate league march would be held today to protest against poor service delivery and against banks which did not assist poor clients.

But the City of Cape Town said if today’s march went ahead it would be illegal.

Spokesman Charles Cooper said the league’s application for a permit had not been granted for today.

“We informed them that the police could not attend to them because of another commitment and they agreed to protest on November 19.”

He said the city had also not received an application for a 14-day protest, which Lile said they had submitted last Monday.

- Weekend Argus

Housing backlog a challenge for W.Cape

Housing officials in the Western Cape on Saturday said they are struggling to cope with the backlog and are appealing for community support.

A housing summit in Cape Town addressed issues regarding human settlements in the Peninsula.

Provincial officials, city housing staff and residents on the city’s housing database gathered at the Civic Centre.

Officials painted a bleak picture of the challenges facing the Human Settlements Department.

The city said it has to juggle the need for new housing projects with the scarcity of land. Added to this, it’s landlord to more than 40,000 rental units.

Officials said they are working on an informal settlement upgrade plan, but need community support.

They said they have to operate on a first-come, first-served basis, and have a growing list of names on the database.

- Eyewitness News

Housing Summit with the Integrated Network for Human Settlement in the Western Cape

You Have ONE DAY to respond....

MEDIA RELEASE

NO. 830 / 2010

11 NOVEMBER 2010

The Integrated Network for Human Settlement in the Western Cape has requested a Housing Summit on Saturday 13 November 2010 to obtain clarity on housing issues and the future plans for housing from the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape Provincial Government.

Some 100 delegates from the 18 regions in the Cape Metropole are expected to attend.

The delegates will be addressed by the Executive Mayor, Alderman Dan Plato, Provincial Housing MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela, Mayoral Committee Member for Housing, Councillor Shehaam Sims and housing officials.

Items on the agenda include: Housing Projects, Informal Settlement Upgrades, Project Steering Committees and Land Management.

All media are welcome to attend.

Date: Saturday 13 November

Time: 10:00 – 13:00

Venue: Council Chamber, 6th Floor, Podium Block, Civic Centre

RSVP: By close of business Friday 12 November 2010 to rulleska.singh@capetown.gov.za

END

ISSUED BY:

COMMUNICATION DEPARTMENT, CITY OF CAPE TOWN

MEDIA ENQUIRIES:

RULLESKA SINGH

MEDIA SPOKESPERSON FOR THE EXECUTIVE MAYOR OF CAPE TOWN

TEL: 021 400 1257 CELL: 082 402 4825

Tenants taunt MEC

A MEETING between Western Cape MEC for human settlements, Bonginkosi Madikizela, and Samora Machel residents turned ugly when residents accused him of ignoring backyarders.

Madikizela met residents on Monday to report back on a survey conducted by the department last August in Samora Machel.

The door-to-door survey was meant to find out if all occupants of council houses in the area were the rightful title holders.

"During the survey, we found that were people who sold their houses while others rented them out," he said.

But Madikizela conceded that the survey was not entirely accurate since some people didn't want to participate.

About 4,139 houses participated in the survey, 197 didn't want to participate, 330 had nobody at home when surveyors visited, 306 had been rented out while 185 people in rented houses didn't want to give out the names of homeowners.

Madikizela said some people who didn't want to give information about the homeowners might be occupying those houses illegally.

"In 2002 the government took a decision that the houses could only be sold after eight years. But that law doesn't apply here because it was an old project," he said.

Resident Nico Mzalisi accused Madikizela of not having a plan for informal residents and backyard dwellers.

"You knew from the beginning when you took office that informal settlements and backyard dwellers are on the agenda. But it seems you don't have a plan for us," he shouted.

Nceba Tshanda accused the MEC of being a puppet of the Democratic Alliance.

"You (Madikizela) are here only for election campaigns. Stop making fools of us," an angry Tshanda said.

- Sowetan