RDP confusion angers East Rand residents

While some residents of Extension Three are registered as RDP beneficiaries with the metro, others are getting restless, African Reporter reports.

Corrugated iron houses are a common site in South Africa. And their owners are ordinary South African citizens who are waiting patiently for the state to build them houses.

READ MORE: All you need to know about RDP housing

Ruben Zungu, Princess Mgedezi, Simon Koma, Joseph Sebopela and Florence Mabhengu and their families are no different.

They are residents of a section of Ext 3 known as Emavageni, located on the East Rand, because of the temporary structures.

They have all lived there since the 1990s.

Mzingisi Stemela, who is part of the ANC area committee, says these families have been treated unfairly in the registering for RDPs.

“For many years we have been waiting for the metro to give us ownership of the land we on, as we wait for the houses,” Stemela explains.

“And most of us have been registered.”

Stemela also lives in Emavageni.

“We realised that there was a problem when some of our neighbours where not on the database, but people who don’t live here were beneficiaries.”

He says that in July last year they were helping seven such families.

But they have only been able to resolve two of these cases.

“We have been going to and fro, pillar to post trying to do this the right way,” Stemela says.

“But these people are tired now and we are not getting a clear indication of what the real issue is.”

Ruben Zungu says his greatest frustration is that when the toilets were built and the electricity installed, he was the one who signed for them.

But now the stand he lives on is registered under someone else’s name.

Princess Mgendezi says she is now registered as the beneficiary of the stand that Simon Koma and his family live on.

“It does not make sense why I have to move from my house to his,” she adds.

Koma says he fears that one day he will get a call from his children, while he is at work, to tell him that they are being evicted.

Frustrated, the group now believes that there are some corrupt officials who are trying to get rid of them.

“Last year, the metro admitted that there was something wrong with the database.

“That is why they had to redo the whole thing.”

All these residents want is the security of knowing that they now own the stands they have lived on for the past 20 years.

The metro failed to respond to African Reporter’s inquiry by time of going to print.

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