Phola Park’s economy
Sechaba ka’Nkosi
A housing project that started as part of the Reconstruction and Development Programme in the one-time battlefield of Phola Park on the East Rand is paying dividends to the community.
The project – a joint venture between low-cost housing contractors Ecodev, the Gauteng Department of Housing and Land Affairs and the community – has turned an otherwise small and very limited entrepreneurial base into a vibrant local economy.
The houses are available to locals for less than the R15 000 government subsidy, which means most of the new owners move in without paying a cent. For the biggest – a 44m2 house – the owners only have to pay an additional R4 000.
Some people employed on the project have opened businesses like spaza shops, while others have purchased knitting machines to supplement the family income.
But most importantly, residents say, the Ecodev project has not only resulted in the employment of a few locals but has increased the buying power of the community.
Spaza-shop owners say since the project kicked off about three years ago, their profits have been climbing – albeit slowly.
Local councillor Simo Ngwangwa says the most crucial part of the venture is the preferential employment status it offers residents. At the same time it has opened up opportunities in Katlehong, Thokoza and Vosloorus – communities equally ravaged by violence in the early 1990s.
Says Ngwangwa: “The project involves 4 395 sites constructed under state subsidies for low-income earners and the unemployed. This means a lot of money for Ecodev. But we also benefit because we have agreed that even when it comes to sub-contracting elements of the project, the first preference rests with Phola Park and Kathorus.”
Since the project began, it has employed at least 300 of the estimated 30E000-strong population of the settlement, mostly women.
In the words of Ecodev employee Nomthetho Mathola, the R475 she receives a fortnight for plastering up to three houses every day is better than nothing.
Mathola, a single mother of five, says it helps her support her school-going children and her mother back home in Transkei.
“If things get really bad, I use some of the money to buy vegetables from the farm produce and sell them during my spare time and weekends,” she says.
Most of this close-knit community’s business leaders are retrenched employees who once worked in the private sector. Now they provide jobs, with some employing up to 10 people.
Whitey Gabede is the proud owner of a makeshift “butchery” in the area. He sells mainly offal and tripe. In the early hours of every morning Gabede travels nearly 60km to Vereeniging to buy his R1 000 stock. The father of nine children makes up to R500 profit a day, while his wife knits and sells jerseys.
Says Gabede: “Survival is the name of the game here. Even though most people don’t earn much, they survive on the little we all make out of the butchery.”
Community leaders and business people say Phola Park has become a self-sufficient community which uses every available opportunity to make ends meet.
The only problem is that the emerging entrepreneurs have few skills and little assistance from small business development organisations.