Henrietta Mqokomiso is taking on the City of Johannesburg after she was evicted from her home
Nawaal Deane
The Legal Resources Centre is preparing a landmark legal battle on behalf of Henrietta Mqokomiso, who was evicted from her house in Alexandra township three weeks ago.
The Mail & Guardian reported last month on Mqokomiso’s plight when, on June 20, bulldozers demolished the brick house she had lived in for 12 years. She was relocated to a piece of land in Diepsloot, a new township.
Veteran human rights activist Helen Suzman, who is providing support to Mqokomiso, suggested that she seek advice from the Legal Resources Centre on the grounds that the eviction was unconstitutional.
“I have a right to access to adequate housing, the council has now deprived me of that right,” says Mqokomiso.
Mqokomiso’s lawyers will argue that her relocation did not take into account that she lived in a fully serviced home with three children and was then dumped on a piece of land in Diepsloot. They will also argue that the grounds for relocation offered by the council are inappropriate.
On March 8 the City of Johannesburg went to the Johannesburg High Court with an urgent application for the eviction and relocation of residents on the Jukskei river.
The council alleged that the homes that were to be demolished were at risk from flooding of the Jukskei river and that the removal was necessary on health grounds as there was a threat of cholera. This led to shacks in the area being demolished and its residents relocated to Diepsloot, where they were given a piece of land and corrugated-iron to build new shacks.
But houses surrounding Mqokomiso’s were not demolished. “I do not live in the area which is potentially under threat from the Jukskei river,” says Mqokomiso.
She does not understand why her house was singled out for demolition when it stood in an area where there were other houses that were left standing.
Her case will also focus on whether the council was correct in making its March application urgent depriving Mqokomiso and others of the opportunity to effectively challenge the application in court before it was carried out.
Lawyers say the case will set a crucial precedent for the way the state deals with relocations and evictions in future.
Suzman points out that the intention behind the relocation was good, “but the manner and process that has been utilised is open to strong criticism.
“They did not take into account the human costs involved when these people were relocated. The idea should be to improve things, not to make it terribly destructive for people.”
Mqokomiso says that it is not the intention behind the relocation that they are criticising, but the manner in which it was carried out.
“If there is a legitimate need to evict me and demolish my home the council can only do so if it provided suitable alternative accommodation, equal to what I have lost.”
Mqokomiso wants her house to be rebuilt in Alexandra and wants to be compensated for the ordeal she and her family have suffered as a result of the relocation to Diepsloot.
“If the council does have a legitimate need to evict me and demolish my home, it is not entitled to do so in the manner which is unconstitutional, which it did, on very short notice and in the middle of a bitter winter,” says Mqokomiso.
Dumisani Zulu, head of communications at the Gauteng Department of Housing, says: “As a non-qualifying beneficiary, Mqokomiso was entitled to be relocated to alternative land in the Diepsloot area.”
He maintains that the reason for Mqokomiso’s removal was that her house was susceptible to flooding and sinkage; but did not address the fact that it was nowhere near the Jukskei river.
Zulu said Mqokomiso was not on an official waiting list for government housing, although her husband was.
“In terms of the rules and procedures any applicant is required to give information that includes his or her marital status because that is one of the criterian used to determine whether he/she qualifies or not.
“This is a clear case of failure to disclose personal information as required by the rules of government subsidy scheme. If this information had been provided to council officials during the registration process, Ms Mqokomiso and Mr Langa [her husband] would have been treated as qualifying beneficiaries.”
@No power
for fraud probe
Mungo Soggot
The Cape Town City Council’s commission of inquiry into fraudulent petitions drawn up to support the renaming of two streets has been afforded no powers of investigation and will rely on people coming forward to volunteer information.
The council set up the inquiry after the Mail & Guardian reported on June 8 that the council had collected fraudulent petitions and form letters in favour of the renaming of Adderley and Wale streets after former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk.
But senior counsel Joe van der Westhuizen, who is heading the probe, says he has yet to receive any information. The deadline for written submissions is July 16. Van der Westhuizen says his job is not to “actively play the detective”, but instead to evaluate any information he receives. He is not actively seeking out Democratic Alliance organisers or council officials who might know who organised the forgeries.
Following widespread negative responses to his renaming scheme, Cape mayor Peter Marais called for public submissions in April and later claimed overwhelming support. Marais’s office has denied any involvement in the forgeries, and has also denied canvassing for the name change plan.
According to the public notice announcing the inquiry, Van der Westhuizen is also supposed to be investigating the “selective leaking of documents to the M&G” as well as the “integrity of the public participation process”.
Asked this week whether his inquiry, which starts sitting on July 23, runs the risk of finding nothing, Van der Westhuizen says that if he receives no submissions, he will report that to the council. It will then be up to the council to work out “how to get to the bottom of it”.
The probe will take place in parallel with a commission of inquiry set up by the DA’s provincial management committee. That committee has said it will await the outcome of Van der Westhuizen’s probe before proceeding.
James Selfe, chairperson of the DA’s National Management Committee, said that, if it was true that Van der Westhuizen’s inquiry had no powers of investigation, he was “deeply concerned and will take up [the matter] directly with the mayor”.