A THICK cloud of smoke bellowed at the corner of Austerville Drive and Goede Hoop Street in Wentworth on Friday, 21 February. Residents were up in arms in defiance of an eviction of a family, who out of desperation, occupied a vacant flat on Block G.
The community in Wentworth rallied behind the Warren family of two women and an 8-month-old baby, saying that while they understood that the flat was occupied illegally, their sympathies were with the family who had nowhere else to go. Residents took to the streets to vent their frustrations by blockading Austerville Drive with fire and rubble.
Twenty-two-year-old Casey Warren, said moving into the flat with her baby and mother was their last resort as nothing came of her mother’s applications for housing. She said she and her family had been living in a rat-infested, dilapidated Wendy house and had to leave for growing health concerns of her baby.
“EThekwini Municipality security guards arrived and explained to my mother that if she doesn’t vacate the premises, they will lock her up and take legal measures.”
“My mother asked them where they wanted her to go and they said they didn’t care – she should go back to where she came from. She told them that the reason she moved from where she was, was because the Wendy house she was staying in was leaking,” she said.
“The security guards took my mother to the police station and told her that they could charge her because she was in the flat illegally. We then moved back into the flat because we have nowhere else to go,” added Warren.
The community rallied behind the Warren family and helped to carry the furniture in the house. They said that they will ensure that no one got the flat if the family was evicted and threatened to burn it down instead.
Among the community’s grievances where the alleged unfairness at which the housing department handled vacant flats by placing people from outside the community.
Ward 68 councillor, Aubrey Snyman, said the family was in actual fact enticed by the residents to move into the empty flat last week.
“This was actually not an eviction, the woman and her family moved into the flat because they were pushed by the community after the previous occupant passed away about a month ago. The housing department was readying a new candidate to move into the flat,” he said.
Snyman added that the family was allowed to stay in the flat over the weekend which restored calm in the community, but a meeting held by the housing department on Monday, 24 February, would determine the family’s fate.
Spokesperson for Wentworth police, captain Mbuso Gumede, advised residents to go about things legally so as to avoid forceful removal. He said that there was no case opened and that the police were present for peacekeeping.
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