Residents of L&J informal settlement in Olifantsfontein went on a protest and barricaded the M57 road on the night of 3 May demanding solutions to an ongoing land issue.
The residents are demanding that Ekurhuleni Municipality provide them with land where they could build houses and have access to basic services. According to the residents, the informal settlement has been existing since 1982 and used to be occupied by factory workers who worked for the manufacturing plant at plot 19 where the informal settlement is located.
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When police arrived on the M57 road on 4 May morning, the road had been barricaded with burning tyres, stones and trees. Captain Bernard Matimulane speaking on behalf of the Ekurhuleni North Police Cluster said that the police together with the Ekurhuleni and Tshwane metro officers cleared the road after pleading for calm with community members.
“When we arrived a Mercedes Benz belonging to someone from Piet Retief was set alight but the owner was nowhere to be found. We are still establishing the cause of the incident. The road has been cleared and a municipal official will address the crowd,” he said.
A resident Solomon Nkwana said they had exhausted all avenues to get assistance from the municipality. He said on 10 March they marched to the municipal offices and delivered a memorundum of understanding at the mayor’s office.
” This was after we marched to the union building in 2012 and on all occasions we were promised that our grievances would be addressed but that never happened. On April a child died after a shack caught fire because there’s no electricity. Our children can’t go to school because the owner of the land blocks the road. We are tired and we think this is the only way we would be heard,” said Nkwana.
Sunnyboy Masinge, service delivery manager at Ekurhuleni Municipality said the community’s concerns have been known for a long time and the municipality was working on them. “The problem is that we are working with an issue of private land and we must first buy land for them. We understand their impatience because the process of buying land is long and there are many other issues to deal with including infrastructure and housing,” he concluded.
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