These children have been living in the Masiphumelele Community Hall for months following a fire in late November 2015 that left thousands homeless. Photo: Thembela Ntongana
4 March 2016
Walking into the Masiphumelele community hall, the noise of children crying and chatter between their parents welcomes you. The room is cold and also dim. The people staying there do not know whether the lights work or not. There are mattresses laid on the floor.
In one corner the residents have packed black plastic bags where they keep their clothes. A woman is searching through a plastic bag looking for something to sleep in.
GroundUp reported in January that there were 250 people living at the community hall. They lost their homes in the fire of late November 2015 that destroyed 1,000 shacks and left 4,000 people homeless.
Since then the City has provided shacks for 18 people and others have decided to look for alternative places to stay. Some moved in with friends and families, tired of sleeping on the cold community hall floor.
There are just under 40 residents still living in the hall. They have nowhere else to go.
Lulama Jack has handed her eight-year old twin boys to a relative. She says she would rather not have them stay with her and live in the cold community hall. Jack doesn’t have a full time job. She is sometimes called a few times a week to work as a domestic worker.
“I do not like the fact that they are not here with me but this place is not safe and some people are sick. We had to force someone to go to the hospital just last week because he had TB and was not treating it. There are kids here as young as four months.”
She said the mattresses are so thin you can feel the cold floor. The door of the hall is always open, so people walk in and out continuously. Jack says that on weekends drunk people walk in to use the toilets. “This is no place for anyone and it is definitely no place for children to stay,” she said.
Jack says that if the City only provides them with a place to build they will move out of the hall.
“We are not here because we like it. We want to move out to our own places so we can stay with our children. This has divided many families,” said Jack.
Another resident, Singalakha Nongawuza, believes the City has forgotten about them. “We have to remind them that we are here. I have been going to the councillor’s office to remind her that we are here. This is not a good place for anyone to stay,” she said.
“Every time they say ‘next week’. It’s been three months now. There are 39 people here but the City tells us that they only have 13 people. We do not know whose name is not there. We are worried what will happen to the ones whose names are not there because we are all fire victims,’’ said Nongawuza.
She adds that some of them have been told they are not fire victims and that they are backyarders who are there to benefit.
“Who would want to live like this if they have a place to stay? Every day that goes by some of us lose hope of ever getting a place,” said Nongawuza.
The hall residents described how even people from the community are angry with them because they are unable to get their social grants from the hall and have to go to neighbouring Ocean View township to get their grants. But on Tuesday morning they were woken up at 5am by people from social services so that grants could be distributed. Vellem Vutha says they had to go sit outside to wait for the grant distribution process to finish.
Vutha says his shack was demolished by the City who took all of his building material. He says he was told that he had built in a place where he was not supposed to.
“I am not asking for much. I just want a place to stay. We have been here for too long. I am scared to put up a shack because it might be demolished again,” said Vutha.
City of Cape Town Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements Bennedicta van Minnen said city planners are looking at various options to see how residents can be accommodated. She says when ready, the proposed layout will be discussed with Masiphumelele’s leadership and the affected households.
The fires occurred in Masiphumelele’s areas D and E, which have since been rebuilt. Van Minnen says these areas are now occupied to capacity. “The City tried to reorganise the layout to accommodate all of the original fire-affected residents to improve the walkways between the structures for the provision of basic services and also to establish fire breaks to enhance safety,” she explained.
“No further erection of structures can be allowed as this leads to increased density, which will make access to basic and emergency service provision challenging. It will also increase health, flood and fire risks,” said van Minnen.
She adds that currently the remaining wetland areas around these sites are dry, which is enticing the erection of structures. But this cannot be allowed, she said, as the area is flood-prone and it will be disastrous for these residents when the rains come.