People desperately need houses – Let’s build, not demolish

Today, a 47-year-old mother and her family have no house, no roof over their heads, in this weather, and it was all apparently a mistake by the human settlement department.

Right here is a classic example of the status quo in our country in terms of housing (or more precisely, the lack thereof).

And I’m afraid it seems to be the case in virtually all the other government departments.

Inefficiency at play. Budgets are allocated only to be squandered, misused or not used at all.

Sinqobule Maphosa’s house – which she built brick by brick from her own pocket – is in Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg.

It’s a large mixed area of bonded houses and sprawling informal settlements that crop up in the areas around a koppie.

There are many such areas in Gauteng and around the country.

South Africa’s housing crisis

People are increasingly settling informally on open fields; abandoned farms; even derelict buildings and shuttered schools, closed because of negligible numbers of pupils.

The message here is crystal clear: people need houses.

People are desperate for homes to call their own; homes in which to bring up their children with some dignity and comfort.

On the Golden Highway, just after Devland, people have settled so precariously close to the very busy road that one wonders how it is even allowed to happen.

This is a disaster waiting to happen

A terrible accident (God forbid) and running battles between the residents and law enforcement when the government decides it is time to act could happen anytime.

That will be too late.

People have demonstrated, and many have said in the media, that they need permanent abodes, preferably near where they work.

Because they cannot get loans from the banks and earn more than the threshold to qualify for a free RDP house, this section of our society is prepared to save enough for a humble home for their families.

Maphosa’s house demolished

Aptly describing her situation as traumatic, Sinqobule Maphosa’s story is heartbreaking.

On 25 March, all of the R100,302 this mother had spent on her house went crashing down into rubble. She was not notified.

Watch: Council demolishes home ‘by mistake’ at Ennerdale’s Lakeview informal settlement

She received a call from her neighbour notifying her that her house was being demolished. How devastating.

Maphosa rushed home to find, she says, people from the Gauteng human settlement department, escorted by Red Ants demolishers, along with Joburg Metro Police Department officers.

They continued to bring the woman’s house down. Why?

It was a mistake.

Government’s failure

Why does the local government let people put up shacks on stands they “bought” from unscrupulous people, only to evict them once they have settled on the stands and built brick and mortar houses?

What’s even more curious is that Maphosa says she is not sure whether allowing neighbours to connect to her main water pipe could be the reason she was targeted.

Yes, you read that right.

Her neighbours do not have water.

We continue to read such stories of evictions, which are against the constitution, which states that authorities should provide alternative accommodation before evicting anyone.

“I thought the department of housing would build us houses, not demolish them,” Maphosa said.

Indeed.