Ann Eveleth
A white Hartebeespoort landowner staged a hunger strike this week to force the conservative local council to kick-start low-cost housing for about 50 000 black residents of this picturesque getaway outside Pretoria.
Broederstroom smallholder Roger Roman launched his lone hunger strike and sit- in in front of the Hartebeespoort council offices on Wednesday. He is demanding that the council suspend the housing forum and tourism committee he blames for stalling development. Roman said he would not eat “until our demands are met”.
Hartebeespoort mayor Pieter Rautenbach admitted the council had failed to build a single house for landless blacks since 1995. But he said this was because the North-West provincial government had turned down several requests for money that would allow the wealthy holiday town “to buy land for low-cost housing where it won’t affect the tourism market”.
Rautenbach, who claims that only 1 300 families need housing in the area, said the forum had also failed to entice a single housing developer to invest in low-cost housing due to the high price of land in the area. Defending the forum, Rautenbach said it had “done everything in its power to establish low-cost housing in the area”.
But Roman, who bought a 13ha farm he calls “Po Land” – for the Po tribe that once lived in the area – shortly after the 1994 election, says the council is standing in the way of a local land reform initiative that would help solve the problem.
“When I bought this farm, there were already five permanent wattle-and-daub structures on this property. Some of the people have been living on this land for generations.”
Pensioner Katrina Mchuna is one of the residents Roman found on the farm. She can’t remember how old she is, but says she spent 36 years working in the kitchen for three successive generations of the “Baas Els” family. Her parents built her home when she was a small child. Her grandparents lived on the other side of the farm before that.
Roman says negotiations with Mchuna and other residents prompted him to put his farm into a trust through which the land will be shared equally among all the residents – including himself.
“We are negotiating with private-sector companies to invest the money to develop housing, which they will claim back from the government’s housing subsidy programme,” he said, adding that the project would also include a tourism development to create jobs.
Several surrounding landowners have joined forces with the Po Land Community Project, offering some or all of their adjacent farms to the trust so that black residents on these farms may also benefit.
Roman says this “landowner to landless” process is a better path to land reform and housing development. “We can’t just sit and wait for the government to do it. There are huge benefits for everyone to gain from a voluntary process,” he says.
But shortly after Roman launched this project, the local council accused him of “supplying informal housing” on his property and “causing a health nuisance”.
The council ordered Roman to furnish housing, water supply, toilet facilities and refuse removal for the residents of Po Land within 30 days or face legal action over alleged infringements of the National Building Regulations and Standards Act.
Roman says the letter arrived shortly after a neighbour complained he could not sell his property for the value he sought due to “squatters” living on Roman’s land.
Rautenbach also pointed to “illegal occupants”at Po Land. He said: “We are only allowing certain numbers of structures on a property. No government can allow degrading of their property values by illegal occupation.”