The development of inner Alex will not materialise until the land and property ownership issue has been resolved.
This was said by councillor Adolph Marema as protests for housing and demands for other rights seem to normalise in Joburg’s oldest settlement and only township where Africans owned title deeds during the apartheid era. A township that also nurtured revered global political figures, artists, sports luminaries and criminal gangs in its two-square-mile confine.
Last year’s victims of the flooded Jukskei River retrieve what’s left of their household items.
Marema said this to Alex News at a time of intermittent land invasions and skirmishes between residents and the police and fights between residents over housing, allegedly allocated fraudulently and sold to non-citizens, when hundreds on the housing waiting list have been in transit camps for many years. Also, at a time when some blocks of high-rise housing structures have remained incomplete and other completed ones have been vacant for years.
Marema said the housing saga was compounded by the influx of migrants into the township, preferred for its centrality. He further attributed the failure of city officials to enforce relevant bylaws, resulting in limited services from mushrooming shack dwellers, compromised health and safety, overcrowding and crime, deriving from high unemployment and lack of social cohesion.
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The challenge he said should have been resolved by now if the local and provincial authorities had the political will to expedite the implementation of proposed initiatives for the township’s development. These, he said, include expediting the conclusion of a 2005 court interdict on developments on claimants’ land and re-issuing title deeds to all of them.
“There won’t be any concrete engagement between the government and the claimants on development options including their willingness to part with the land if all of them aren’t first given the title deeds,” Marema said adding that several of the claimants have already died. He said part of the development options was the implementation of a master plan on various housing models and other services suitable for the overcrowded area, which the landowners are willing to engage in.
Alex’s shack land will mushroom if the housing issue continues.
Marema said the problem was compounded by government’s failure to acquire nearby land identified for housing, including the victims of last year’s flooded Jukskei River, who are still kept in churches and halls. “Without this, the residents who see development taking place elsewhere feel neglected and react through protests and land grabs. Also, crime will fester and shacks on pavements and servitudes will mushroom, blocking roads and making it difficult for ambulances to access the sick and maintenance crews to effect any repairs when bylaws aren’t adhered to.”
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Marema urged Alex councillors to submit a collective motion to council on these challenges in order to get council’s attention on the urgent development needs of the township.
Details: Ward councillor Adolph Marema 079 617 1957.
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