Lizeka Mdacity limits
To create room for visitors to her home, Noluthando Mrasi takes out a bucket filled with soiled diapers and a laundry basket. Then she pronounces the place ready.
It isn’t really. You step in and then don’t know where to go, and step out again. Mrasi’s 3m-by-2m shack is home to her family of five.
She has done all she can to make it habitable, and there is every evidence of how house-proud she is. The shack is spotless. The red linoleum on the floor is shining, and all the kitchen utensils – pots, plates and canisters – are new, because this is Mrasi’s first-ever home of her own.
A single bed takes up half the shack. Suspended over the bottom end of the bed is a television set, tuned to children’s cartoons, but through the walls of the shack come sounds of a different channel next door.
There’s no window, and with the Highveld temperature a scorching 29C, the heat is unbearable. Even the portable fan at top blast makes very little difference.
Sweating it out on the bed are two identical tiny bundles in vests and yellow waterproof pants, their underdeveloped chests puffing laboriously in the stifling heat. A third bundle is sleeping in the arms of a neighbour, who is sitting on the floor, squeezed tight behind the door.
The two girls on the bed, Sisiphiwo and Sisipho, and their brother Isipho were born to Mrasi and her boyfriend, Michael Sadike, on February 27. A month later they still weigh less than the average birth weight: Isipho is 2,6kg, while his sisters each weigh 2,3kg.
Mrasi’s home is in Diepsloot, an informal settlement to the north of Fourways in Randburg. About 30 000 people are crammed into this area, a world away from their more affluent neighbours in plush Dainfern just over the ridge.
Three years ago the owners of farmland in Zevenfontein, to the west of Diepsloot, obtained an eviction order against several thousand squatters who had been living illegally on the land for several years.
Alternative land was found in Diepsloot West, where 1 112 plots were allocated to families, but only a limited number of squatters could move there. There are still 3 000 squatters living illegally in Zevenfontein.
A year later more squatters were brought to Diepsloot from the far east bank in Alexandra, where they had illegally occupied land earmarked for low-cost housing.
Very tiny plots were made available for them in what was seen as a temporary arrangement until land became available to house them. Two years later, they are still in this reception area called Number One, and housed in 3 500 shacks.
Because the reception area was supposed to provide temporary accommodation, the infrastructure at Number One is extremely poor. There is no electricity and no plumbing. Water trucks come around every day and residents have to fill buckets with water to last until the next day. As many as 10 families share one toilet, those temporary structures that have to be emptied. At Number One, they are emptied once a week. The residents do not pay for any of these services.
Diepsloot Number Two, the informal township, inhabited by the people who came from Zevenfontein, has better infrastructure. The stands are big, and each has a tap and toilet.
The owners of these stands are the upper class of Diepsloot and tend to be much better off than anyone else. There is no rent for the stands, just a fixed minimal amount for services – R1,15 for refuse removal, R5 for sewerage and R8,75 for water. Value-added tax of R2,09 brings the monthly bill to R16,99, plus electricity from Eskom which is supplied with prepaid cards.
But these enterprising shack dwellers take advantage of the land hunger that Johannesburg is experiencing, and rent out what they do not pay for. Practically each stand has three families on it, and stand owners charge exorbitant rentals for shacks that tenants have to erect themselves, at a cost of about R1 500.
There are lots of problems emanating from this overcrowding, says a council worker.
“Every day there are electricity blackouts and toilets blocking,” says Jan Mahlangu, an African National Congress activist and adviser to the council. “That is to be expected when more than 3 000 families live in a place that was meant for 1 100 families.”
Mrasi and Sadike belong to the most disadvantaged class of people at Diepsloot, the sub-tenants. They were fortunate enough to tap into Mrasi’s network of home girls and found accommodation with Princess Nyathela who, like Mrasi, comes from Idutywa in the former Transkei. Nyathela allowed them to erect a shack attached to hers, and for the tiny room and electricity they pay her R100 rent.
Since the triplets were born, Mrasi has been hounding council officials for a stand of her own, but there is no more land. A bigger shack was available on another stand, but the rent there would have been R200.
Mrasi, who got a senior certificate in economics, business economics, accounting and mathematics in 1994, is unemployed. In 1996, after failing to find a job in the Eastern Cape, she left her daughter, now six, in the care of her grandmother and came to Johannesburg, where she lived with a woman from her village who worked in Bryanston.
A year later she had not found a job, but the next best thing – a boyfriend. They moved into the Diepsloot shack last June, and eight months later the triplets were delivered by Caesarean section at Coronation hospital.
Finances are tight as Sadike is a part-time taxi driver and only works when other drivers are indisposed. And there’s another matter, which Mrasi was not aware of when she moved in with him: he has a wife and two children to support back home in the Northern Province.
The Northern Metropolitan Local Council has plans to upgrade Diepsloot into a proper township with the necessary infrastructure and facilities to deal with current problems.
There is one overcrowded primary school at the moment. High school pupils have to travel to other areas, and this is a sore point to parents because the R511 is a very busy road and there are regular accidents. To avoid the Ben Schoeman freeway, traffic from Brits, Atteridgeville and Mabopane uses this narrow road to get to Johannesburg or Randburg.
The nearest police station is in Erasmia, 40km away, and the satellite station 3km away is understaffed and under-resourced.
Thulani Nkosi, an executive officer for project support and facilitation in the housing department of the council, says title deeds for ownership of Diepsloot stands will be available before the year is over.
“The council is in the process of trying to get more land and money from the [Gauteng] province,” he says, “because we have a financial crisis at the council.”
The land is needed to relieve the density of Number One. The stands would be reallocated so their size meets the conditions for the R15 000 housing subsidies. Water and sewer pipes would then be laid.
The community is willing to pay for the services they currently receive, but the council has not worked out a system to bill them, though Nkosi says it is under a lot of pressure to move on that.
It will not be much help to Mrasi and her family. The people who will benefit are those who already own stands in Number One.
Other people are being encouraged to apply to private developments in the area, like the township being built on land owned by Karos Hotels. Unfortunately, that is no solution for unemployed people like Mrasi.
The council may be relieved, as Nkosi says it seems that only existing informal settlements are increasing but no more land invasions are taking place at present. The hunger for land and the overwhelming need for housing are sure to make that relief very short-lived.