The City of Johannesburg has failed to respond to two petitions lodged a year ago by residents regarding the K206 extensions 9 and 10 settlements in Alexandra asking for a revision of the feudalistic housing allocation system that was devised in 2010.
The allocation, done by the City’s then-Alexandra Renewal Project (ARP), was the establishment of a tenant and landlord system in the allocations of flatlets built on K26, which was land earmarked for a major road to link Alex and Midrand.
On completion of the housing development, ARP allocated the flatlets to former shack dwellers from the Jukskei River bank settlement. Most of these residents were unemployed.
Employed members of the community were then allocated outside rooms on the ground floor of these flatlets and had to pay a monthly tenant rental of R300 to the ‘landlord’ which served as a source of income. This was enforced for a period of five years in the hope that in that time, ARP would have built more houses for these tenants.
The arrangement, though, never worked and expired last year. The reason why it never worked was that tenants later refused to pay any money to their former shack counterparts-turned-landlords and, instead, insisted they should be allocated the outside rooms as RDP houses.
They claimed that it was unfair for ARP to allocate the flatlets as RDP houses to the landlords and the tenants then asked to pay monthly rentals. Bitter squabbles erupted as the landlords wanted to enforce the rental payments or evict the defaulters.
Alex News has in the past five years reported on numerous violent incidents between the so-called landlords and tenants and has asked the City of Johannesburg to intervene in the conflict, with no success.
Democratic Alliance councillor Shadrack Mkhonto intervened in the conflict and, in May last year, asked the residents to petition the City for a review of the feudalistic allocation system, but up until now the City has not responded.
In one petition, the landlords demanded the City help them evict the tenants; while in the other petition, the tenants demanded to be given title deeds to the outside rooms.
Despite numerous meetings between Human Settlements MMC Dan Bovu and residents, no amicable solution has been found.
Comment is still awaited from the City of Johannesburg on this matter.
