Mandelaville 2002: The informal settlement near Diepkloof is destroyed after the city of Johannesburg wins a legal battle to forcibly remove nearly 2 000 families from their homes. Residents are transplanted to Sol Plaatje township near the abandoned Durban Roodepoort Deep mining compound. Far from social amenities and employment opportunities, people are crammed into disused mining hostels, a world away from the place they had lived for generations.
Sol Plaatje 2007: Relocated Mandelaville residents still live in shacks clinging to a hillside facing the Durban Roodepoort Deep mine dump — an aged, yellowing scar on the landscape. There is no electricity here, no direct access to clean water and no municipal services such as rubbish collection. But after five years, the view from Sol Plaatje is finally looking up.
Evidence of construction is everywhere. A large swathe of land, formerly covered by shacks of tin and wood, has been cleared for development. Men in hard-hats swarm across the shells of new houses being built by the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Joshco).
”We’ve waited for so many years, since the heyday of apartheid,” says Brownly Krwece, a former Mandelaville resident who was forcibly removed from his old home. Now Krwece is employed as a community liaison officer (CLO) for Joshco, ensuring residents are kept informed of the developments and progress of Sol Plaatje’s rejuvenation.
This slow rebirth has its challenges, however. For starters, residents had to move into a transit camp to make way for new houses. Bright silver shacks stretch out alongside the settlement — proper, temporary shelters while Joshco erects brick-and-mortar homes.
Joseph Letjoko, another CLO, says the residents’ response to the upheaval has been overwhelmingly positive. ”A little half loaf is better than nothing … people are so happy about it,” he says, gesturing towards the houses springing up on the hillside.
Continuing communication with the community has been key to progress, says James Maluleke, programme manager for Joshco, despite the difficulties of working in an already built-up area with a complex social environment.
In addition to the new RDP houses, Joshco is constructing roads, installing street lighting and facilitating the township’s connection to electricity and running water.
It is also renovating the old single-sex mining hostels, turning them from five-by-five-metre nightmares into small double-storey family flats.
Work at Sol Plaatje began in January this year. To date, 140 apartments have been completed and a further 290 units will be finished shortly. Joshco aims to have 2 259 units finished by 2009.
Although residents who earn less than R1 500 will be given ownership of their houses or apartments, they will still need to pay for water and lights, which will be installed using pre-paid meters.
But problems such as chronic unemployment won’t be solved by a subsidised home. The CLOs estimate that unemployment is about 70% in Sol Plaatje, with many residents working as security guards on a piecemeal basis.
Many people in search of work still travel back to areas around DiepÂÂkloof, such as Mulbarton and Glenvista, that were traditional places of employment before their eviction.
Fortunately the construction process is yielding employment for some. It is Joshco’s policy to require all contractors on its projects to employ local people who have the skills to fill jobs. But the work in Sol Plaatje offers other benefits for residents.
Paulinah Molefe was one of the first people allocated a place in a refurbished hostel unit. She supports her unemployed husband and her four children by selling snacks from the front room of her apartment. Beside her living room table is a shelf stocked with goodies, such as kiep-kiep (brightly coloured popcorn) and vegetables.
She also runs a thriving business cooking meals for construction workers who eat on credit, paying her fortnightly when they receive their wages.
Makoekie Tsotetsi, of Impota Trading, a contractor working on another development in City Deep, says part of the success of the Joshco approach is that skilled resiÂÂdents living in the area of a development are employed to work on the project. Impota is contracted to build a guard house with CCTV, install an access-card system and build a boundary wall with palisade fencing. ”For the last three to four months people have had food on the table, because we are there,” she says.
Joshco chief executive Rory Gallocher says Joscho legally requires contractors to hire unemployed people from the community in routine maintenance, such as cleaning and upkeep of developments. He says that since Joshco’s inception 775 jobs have been created across Joshco projects either through construction or managed maintenance services.
Housing solutions
Joshco is owned by the City of Johannesburg. It is funded the provincial department of housing, the Development Bank of South Africa and private financial institutions.
Its establishment in 2004 was met by an overwhelmingly negative response: the mammoth task of taking over and managing public housing stock, huge rental arrears and repair of major structural problems seemed doomed to fail. But slowly its ambitious projects began to yield fruit. This year the company won a United Nations Habitat award for its innovative and sustainable housing solutions.
Joshco also runs inclusionary housing projects such as one in the Roodepoort CBD. Inclusionary housing is designed to create housing opportunities for poor people in desirable locations, close to amenities and places of employment. Once the Roodepoort CBD project is complete, comfortable two-bedroom flats will be available for rental from between R1 300 and R2 000.
The idea is to give people earning between R3 500 and R7 500 access to affordable living space, says James Maluleke, programme manager for Joshco.
