Woman scared out of her RDP home
“My life has been turned upside-down. Imagine receiving a house and then years later being told that it is not yours and you must move out. I did all that was required, filled all the necessary documents and even received a ‘happy letter’, which is a document that shows that this house is mine. I do not understand why I must give it up,” Maribane said.
SEBOKENG. – Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and laughter never ends!
Three years after she was allocated an RDP house in Golden Gardens near just across Zone 17 in Sebokeng, a woman is being removed from the house with claims that she was initially not on the recipients’ list.
Like all beneficiaries of RDP houses in Golden Gardens, Cynthia Maribane moved into a four-roomed RDP house after a meeting was called by housing officials together with the local ward councillor in 2015 to allocate the houses to owners who were being moved from the nearby Kwa-Masiza Hostel.
Maribane tells Sedibeng Ster that following the meeting she was allocated and moved into the house after ploughing through a raft of strict and strenuous paperwork. According to Maribane, in 2017 two officials from the Gauteng Department of Housing apparently came to her house and told her that she must vacate the house as she had been living in it illegally because her name was not on the list of recipients and that there was something wrong with the information on her application form for an RDP house.
“My life has been turned upside-down. Imagine receiving a house and then years later being told that it is not yours and you must move out. I did all that was required, filled all the necessary documents and even received a ‘happy letter’, which is a document that shows that this house is mine. I do not understand why I must give it up,” Maribane said.
“Something is amiss, perhaps the housing officials want me to ‘pay’ for the house, maybe they want me to bribe them, but for what? Why is it that there is a problem with my house long after I have been living in it, this is my home. Why now?”
Maribane asked, adding that she moved out of the house almost a year ago after the officials (known to her) had been constantly ‘harassing’ her with demands that she move out, but she continues to go to the house to clean it as though she lives there.
The house has been empty since. Maribane said that all she wants is to expose what she terms ‘corruption’ on the part of the Housing Department officials. “I have reported this matter to the senior officials at the Housing Department in Vereeniging, to the Emfuleni Local Municipal Housing MMC, to the Housing Anti-Corruption Unit and even went as far as the Housing Department in Johannesburg, without success.” Maribane said. At the Housing Department in Johannesburg, Maribane was apparently told that she needs to apply again and be registered for the same house.
“This is my house but I fear living in it because of this harassment from the officials. I want this house and nothing else,” she said. At the time of going to print Sedibeng Ster could not reach the regional Housing Department Director at the Vereeniging offices as he was said to be in a meetings in Johannesburg.
Maribane has since taken her case to Gauteng Human Settlement MEC, Uhuru Moiloa’s office.
