Gustav Thiel
CRITICS of Cape Town’s 2004 Olympic bid who say housing should come before sports would find fuel for their argument in the sports hall in nearby Paarl.
For the past three months, the tiny hall has served as a temporary shelter for more than 400 homeless people, over half of them children. They live without running water or toilets. Disease is rife, particularly influenza and gastrointestinal illnesses. Children run around naked, while adults spend much of the day mopping up waste.
It is without irony that the sports hall squatters explain how they got into this situation. Until late last year, they had lived in a squatter camp in Mbekweni, outside Paarl.
The municipality of Paarl, located in the heart of the Cape’s wine region, evicted them from the camp because it wanted the land. The reason it wanted the land was to build low-cost housing for homeless people.
The squatters are facing eviction a second time, because the municipality wants the hall to be returned to its intended use, for indoor sports such as netball. The municipality is adamant it wants them off the premises by this Sunday.
The squatters have obtained legal help. With every resident chipping in R50, they hired lawyer Keith Sheldon. He has approached the national housing ministry, the provincial housing ministry and the municipal housing authorities, each time without result.
The national ministry said it did not know about the squatters; the provincial ministry said the case was not within its jurisdiction; the municipal authority said it did not care what happened to the squatters, as long as they were out by Sunday.
“We didn’t vote for Nelson Mandela to find ourselves homeless,” a representative of the squatters, Miseka Sifumba, told the Mail & Guardian. “Nobody cares about us, and I plead with Mandela to come and see for himself what our situation is.”
Late last year, the municipality couldn’t get involved fast enough. It sent 500 police into the squatter camp, with predictably violent results: the shacks were burnt down, some by the police, some by the squatters themselves.
The settlement had existed for three years, its residents were mostly local, but the municipality wanted the site for a new low- cost housing development.
The eviction order, municipal housing department head Ronald Brand said, specified that the authorities “had no obligation to provide alternative housing”.
The municipality did allow them to use the sports hall, only about 200m down the road, and they crammed in to wait for “some people in power” to find them permanent shelter. When it became clear that the wait was going to be a long one, the sports hall squatters hired Sheldon to represent them.
“What is certain is that the people cannot carry on living in these appalling conditions,” Sheldon said. “Something must be done to prevent serious illness.”