Fed up with promises of housing: Langa residents march to Cape Town Civic Centre

Langa residents marched to the Cape Town Civic Centre on Thursday to demand housing. Photo: Mary-Anne Gontsana

Langa residents marched to the Cape Town Civic Centre on Thursday to demand clarity on who is to benefit from a planned housing development in their ward – ward 51.

They sang on the steps of the Civic Centre, waiting to handover their memorandum. Placards read: “Backyard dwellers deserve homes” and “We protected this land now build our homes”.

Most of the demonstrators live in apartheid era hostels or are backyarders.

“Residents are fed up with promises from the City,” said Sonwabo Nana. He said they had chosen Thursday as they understood the mayor would be at a council meeting in the Civic Centre.

Nana said in 2015 the City had promised residents that phase 2 of a housing project would commence after the construction of the Hamilton Naki Square flats, but to date nothing had happened.

He said they had now heard that people from other wards would be relocated to the open site behind the Guga S’thebe Arts and Cultural Centre.

Resident Queen Mhayi said, “We have protected and safeguarded that land, sometimes under difficult circumstances, making sure that it is not occupied. There is no way now that people from a different ward can benefit. What the City is doing is ultimately going to cause tension between wards and residents.”

Mvuyisi Komsana, who has lived in Langa’s New Flats hostel since 1986, said the rooms are small, in poor condition and getting worse, and have up to three families living together.

Ward councillor Lwazi Phakade read out the memorandum, calling for a timeline for the permanent housing development, a halt to plans to relocate residents from other wards, and for the City to engage directly with Langa residents on the housing crisis.

Mayco member for human settlements Carl Pophaim accepted the memorandum.

He expressed sympathy with the demands of the Langa residents, who had “been made many promises over the last 20 years”.

In an email, Pophaim said there were residents of 46 structures affected by a fire in 2020 near an unstable Eskom power line tower who needed to be relocated. He did not directly say relocated to ward 51, but did say, “The support of residents is important for the success of the relocation.”

“Beneficiaries of all City housing projects are allocated in accordance with our allocation policy and the date of registration on our Housing Needs Register,” he said.

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