Woman tells how family bathes, sleeps, and cooks in the toilet

For most people in South Africa, a toilet is a place to respond to the call of nature but to a 49-yearold Tzaneen mother of five, her toilet doubles up as a bathroom and a bedroom.

This is so because since 2013, Rebecca Sekgobela and her five children have been hopping between the dilapidated two-room shack and her toilet for bathing, sleeping and for responding to the call of nature. For the family, this happens often during rainy and windy days. Asked why, the distraught mother said the shack in which she is sleeping was aged and dilapidated and was endangering her family’s life.

“During the windy and rainy season, we abandon the shack for the toilet. We sleep there until the rains stop. We fear for our lives because the planks are rotten and the shack is shaking violently,” said Sekgobela during a visit this
week to her house in Kop Village in the Lephepane area, outside Lenyenye-Tzaneen.

The shack, according to Sekgobela, was built in 2013 with the little money she got from doing errands in the village.
During a visit by The Citizen, it started raining, with light showers. The rain was accompanied by soft wind, with indications that it might blow even harder later in the day.

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At the time, Sekgobela was moving clothes and other vitalities in the house to a corner, where it was usually not leaking. She was also taking school uniforms for her children and blankets to the toilet. I am doing this so that if it
rains, these blankets will not get wet. If it gets much worse, my last born child and I will sleep in the toilet and my other children will ask for refuge from our neighbours,” she said.

“It has since became a habit for us to live like this because my pleas for a RDP house from the Greater Tzaneen municipality always fell on deaf ears.”

Sekgobela said she applied for an RDP house in 2013, but claims she was baffled that instead of the house, the municipality built her a toilet.

“When I asked why, they gave me the run-around,” she said.

“Out of desperation, I ended up turning the very same toilet into a bedroom and bathroom during rainy days. That is when locals started calling me Ms Toilet because I bath, sleep, sometimes cook and relieve myself in the same toilet.

“I begged for help everywhere, including from the local councillor, Mmasodi Letsoalo, without any success. I even went to Thobela FM and Vision FM asking for intervention but no help seemed to come my way,” she said.

“All we are asking for is a roof over our heads.”

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During an interview with Human Settlements Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane and her counterpart MEC in Limpopo, Basikopo Makamu, at Seshego during an assessment of the construction and allocation of RDP
houses in Limpopo recently, the two officials said sanitation was a right for everyone.

Makamu said his department has a budget of R900 million for the construction of RDP houses this financial year. He said about 1 520 sites with water and sanitation infrastructure and about 1 413 housing beneficiaries were issued with endorsed title deeds. Kubayi-Ngubane said since 1994, the government had built more than 200 000 RDP houses.

She said more houses were still to be built for the poor. Contacted for comment on the Sekgobela problem, Greater Tzaneen municipality said the matter was new to them.

“We are going to investigate as to who is this woman and her family and what happened to her house,” said municipal spokesperson Neville Ndlala.

– news@citizen.co.za