Drew Forrest
THE number of shack dwellers in the Johannesburg municipal area has trebled in the past year, and the first shacks are starting to rise on golfcourses and parkland in the city.
A year ago, according to Johannesburg’s director of urbanisation, Cedric de Beer, there were 2 000 shacks in the city housing 8 000 people, concentrated on the south-western borders near Soweto and Eldorado Park.
Council statistics now report 10 000 structures in Greater Soweto alone, 4 000 in Thembalihle, south of Lenasia and 1 100 in Devland/Freedom Park, near Eldorado Park. Seventeen other shack settlements are listed, on state, church and private land.
In Johannesburg proper, shacks have appeared in Jack Mincer Park in the CBD and on open ground in the affluent suburb of Houghton. Settlements providing hostel-dwellers with services ranging from sex to alcohol have attached themselves to the Denver and George Goch municipal hostels.
A further sign of rampant land hunger is the emergence of the Soweto Property Seekers Association, claiming 8 000 members, whose aim is to procure land for informal settlement.
Council officials say the great and growing pressure on land is clearly linked to political transition. “There’s a sense that formal housing delivery is going to take time, and people are jumping the queue.”
Concern at all levels of government is rising on the issue, they say.