Illegal occupants defiantly laid claim to vacant homes in a Lenasia suburb this week. Mapula Sibanda spoke to them
OVERGROWN shrubs surrounding the houses testified to desertion, but there were newspapers pasted up to serve as curtains and white crosses marked on the windows to show that people were living there.
On Wednesday afternoon, this was a common sight at Lenasia Extension 13, where a week earlier residents from Eldorado Park and Thembelihle — a nearby squatter camp — had broken down the doors of more than 200 of the 1 000 state-owned houses and taken illegal occupation.
The houses have stood empty since last August, while the provincial ministry appoints an allocation committee.
The police tried to stop last week’s invasion in response to a charge laid by the housing ministry and wounded three people with a single bullet.
On Wednesday, there were people standing at their front doors with determination on their faces, as if to institute a stronger claim to their new territory.
“When I heard over the radio that people were occupying this site, I rushed out here to claim my share. Now people are flocking here and trying to force us out, so that they can also occupy these houses illegally,” said Seipati Hloele, one of the illegal occupants.
Moving from the nearby squatter camp into the house, she said, symbolised that people like her have as much right to own a house as everyone else. “I was born in Senaoane, Soweto, but my mother and us” — including her nine siblings — “have always stayed at various squatter camps.”
She was sitting on a make-shift chair: a used paint tin. Two paint tins and a winter army jacket placed on a cardboard box to be used as a sleeping pallet constituted the only furniture in the three-bedroomed house. Dust had accumulated since building ended.
In bold letters outside, the legend “Occupied already” was standing guard against any other potential occupier.
With her pensioned mother the only source of income in the household, supplemented by the salary she gets from voluntary community nursing services, Hloele maintains the family is prepared to pay a fair amount for the house, once they are given the opportunity to register it as their own.
When Hloele realised that it was a quarter to three, she said time was running out for their illegal occupation: “(Gauteng Housing MEC) Dan Mofokeng gave us until 3pm today to vacate these houses. He says people who had applied before can only be given the houses. Everybody is asking the same questions. Why did these applicants wait all those months before claiming that the houses belong to them?”
Lenasia ANC secretary Neesham Balton offered an explanation for the vacant houses: “Allocation of the houses was suspended last year, as we complained to the provincial housing ministry that it had been conducted by previous allocation structures in line with pre- election government structures. As a result, a new allocation committee was finalised early this year, to see to further allocations.”
* Police began arresting the illegal occupants at 7.30pm on Wednesday night. Most of the occupants streamed out of the houses to avoid arrest and by 9.30pm the houses were vacant, two people were being held, and police were keeping a watchful eye on the premises. About 150 policemen were used in the operation.