Thuli Nhlapo Taiwan Buddhist Compassion Relief, a charity organisation, has come to the rescue of scores of Alexandra residents who have been homeless since the February floods while the government dallies over how to spend R557- million set aside for flood relief. The flood victims have been living in squalid conditions in a transit camp, in tents provided by the Rhema church, while the National Command Centre, established by the president to deal with emergency reconstruction, is involved in a court battle over the site it has chosen for another temporary settlement, where the Alexandra homeless will be moved. Meanwhile the tents at the resettlement camp in Marlboro, near Alexandra, were replaced this week by the Taiwanese-funded easy-huts. There were mixed feelings and the situation was tense when the Mail & Guardian visited Tzu-Chi village in Marlboro. “The Chinese have offered us something. It is better to be crammed here than outside in the tents,” said an occupant who refused to identify himself.
Said Grace Mabasa, also occupying a house donated by the organisation: “The government is full of lies. They have been promising to move us to Leeuwkop but nothing has happened – except for telling us that white farmers do not want us to live near them. Why couldn’t they find us another place?” The government agreed in April to find accommodation for the flood victims, but the command centre has instead become embroiled in a legal battle with the Kyalami Ridge Environmental Association (Krea) over the establishment of a transit camp on state- owned land in Kyalami, near Leeuwkop prison. A command centre representative says it is the only land they are looking at for resettlement.
Krea chair and University of the Witwatersrand law lecturer Cheryl Loots says residents were not informed of the command centre’s plan for a transit camp in their area. When their pleas to the Department of Public Works to stop its development fell on deaf ears, the association resorted to the legal route – and won a temporary interdict in the Pretoria High Court. Last week command centre CEO Collin Matjila said the government is going to oppose the interdict. Loots has confirmed that Krea will seek a court order forcing the minister of public works to reconsider the establishment of a settlement on the site, to hear representation by local residents and to consider the environmental impact of such a camp. It is not only the Kyalami residents who think it’s a bad idea to move the flood victims to Leeuwkop. Former Alexandra residents with school-going children say they do not look forward to being uprooted and rehoused there. “The government does not care about us. We told them that our children were attending school in Alexandra. A taxi fare from Leeuwkop will cost R9 per child,” said one newly housed occupant. Three generations of disaster victims live in the transit camp, now renamed Tzu-Chi village, at Marlboro: those whose shacks in Alexandra were destroyed by a massive 1997 fire, Doornfontein residents who were evicted for failing to pay rentals, and this year’s flood victims. Anthony Blandford, representative of the Eastern Local Metropolitan Council, says he does not know how long they will have to stay at Tzu-Chi. Meanwhile, they will be paying R58 monthly rentals while the council establishes whether they qualify for subsidies. Those who do will be moved to Reconstruction and Development Programme houses – still to be built at a site Blandford cannot identify. Tzu-Chi village consists of 69 walled easy- huts. Each hut has a separate flush toilet, heated water and a shower. The size of some of the huts is 4m2x3,5m2 that, according to the council, would be enough for a family if they did not have to share accommodation with their neighbours. On Monday, outside the village, vacated tents were unbundled and unused items loaded into the council’s lorry. Flood victims who were darker in complexion than those inside the village sat outside, next to their belongings.
A young man said they were not allowed into the village because they were said to be from Maputo. Even though the group was part of the Jukskei River flood victims, they were left in the street and told to “see where they could find another place”.
By Monday afternoon the police, who had been informed of their status by the council, had not arrived to fetch them. At the Rhema Care Centre in Marlboro, 17 flood victims staying in the church hall missed out on the move because no one remembered they were there. Women have been sleeping in the area used as a day-care centre while men sleep in the main hall, where church services take place on Sundays. These arrangements have forced couples to remain celibate for the past six months.