WARNING: SENSITIVE VIDEO – Wembley residents live in squalor
This arrangement was supposed to take only six months but now it has been years.
SOME residents are still living in dilapidated tents next to Wembley Stadium years after they were moved from the burnt flats in Johannesburg CBD.
They were evicted from Fattis Mansions and Cape York in 2017.
Since then, some have been living in tents and others have since been placed in the prefabricated units nearby.
Recently, Ward 124 councillor Mongameli Mnyameni visited the area and expressed shock when he saw the conditions.
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The conditions in the tents are inhumane and unbearable.
“This is shocking that our people live in such conditions. Since they were moved here, I have tried to engaged the City’s Housing Department to help them, but in vain.
“I have asked them (Housing Department) to come here to have a meeting and they haven’t honoured my invitation. The service delivery is poor here,” he said.
Portia Mchunu, who lives in one of the tents, said, “I have had an operation in my stomach and I have been living in this tent since we came here.
“When it is raining, we have nowhere to go other than this porous tent. Please, we are begging for help.”
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Mohammed Mohamud, another resident, said, “I have been here more than three years. I am very sick, constantly in pain. I got injured at Cape York.
“I am suffering because sometimes I get critical, sometimes I don’t even have R1 to go to a hospital because I’m not working.
“All my documents were burnt in that fire. I thought the City would take us to Home Affairs for new documents; however, nothing has happened.”
Delayed for years
This arrangement was supposed to take only six months but now it has been years and despite what the residents have been experiencing, they are still waiting for better services from the City.
The COURIER asked the City’s take on this matter and posed the following questions:
• How long will the people have to wait until they get positive feedback?
• How is it possible that some people are placed in the prefabricated units while some are still in the tents?
• The tents are torn and some are flooding, is there a temporary master plan to assist in such respect?
Buntukazi Xuba, from the Housing Department, said: “The people currently residing in tents at Wembley are undocumented foreign nationals (illegal immigrants).
“The City has, on numerous occasions, approached Home Affairs to assist in this matter as some claim to have had their documents burnt when the building they stayed in caught fire.
“They have, however, chased away officials who had come to assist them in this matter of getting them new documents, which then casts doubt on their claim.
“So the deportation of illegal immigrants is outside of the City’s mandate as this is a duty of the Home Affairs department.”
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