Wonder Hlongwa
The absence of street names and house numbers in some townships and informal settlements is a permanent inconvenience for both residents and service providers.
Companies like Telkom and ambulance services rely on locals for directions to their destinies. It can be a dangerous dependency in criminal- infested townships.
For residents, the inconvenience is often extreme. When people call an ambulance to the Easton site squatter camp in Sebokeng, for instance, they have to push the patient in a wheelbarrow to the nearest identifiable point.
David Shabalala, representative of the Department of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development, says it is busy planning a strategy which will be unveiled early next month to deal with the issue. He adds the department has already named and numbered streets in many townships.
The post office’s Ben Rudman says it needs street names and numbers to provide its services efficiently. It has installed seven million postboxes countrywide, and in terms of the posts and telecommunications White Paper needs to add another four million this year.
New recruits in the ambulance services have to learn the geographic positions of different sections in townships as part of their in-service training. “It’s basically understanding the structure of the township,” explains Tulwana Vuyo, Jabulani station manager.
Telkom is encouraging people to name their streets and number their houses, and the parastatal has sponsored some identification projects in townships like Khayelitsha. It is also engaging schoolchildren to collect oil tins to be used as postboxes.
But, says Telkom representative Fanus Bothmas, “we still mostly rely on locals to give us directions”. The price has been high: Telkom has lost more than 10 vans in the past two years, and one of its technicians was shot at last year.
In Easton site, some street-naming campaigns have gone terribly wrong: because of the lack of proper administration by street committees, various houses have ended up with the same number.
“The residents across the road still don’t have electricity because there are more than four number 25s, so electricians don’t know which is the right one. House numbers in this street have been changed several times because they don’t follow,” says resident David Hlali.
Getting goods delivered is often disastrous. Sekolla Sedumedi, a construction worker, bought himself some second-hand furniture in town and claims to have properly directed the deliverers.
But the furniture never arrived, and he heard it had been delivered to a house used by local thugs as a “smoking ghetto”. After a heated debate between Sedumedi, police and the store, the goods were recovered.