/ 24 June 2005

On the banks of ‘shit river’

You could say Mbijane Ngubane lives on a golfing estate. In fact, her neighbour, Sibongile Jiyane, has a stream running past her front door.

Yet both women cannot wait to move to a new settlement.

Life at this golfing estate is nothing to envy. Property prices are rock-bottom and it has been too long since the grass was cut. They use portable toilets and a communal tap. They call the stream running in front of Jiyane’s house “shit river”.

Ngubane and Jiyane live in Mshenguville, an informal settlement built on one of two Soweto golf courses.

Mshenguville — named for the clan name of a former Soweto mayor and populist, the late Ephraim Tshabalala — is one of the oldest informal settlements in Soweto. Ngubane does not recall when she moved to the settlement, but remembers that her 15-year-old cousin Bonangani Ngubane was born there.

Last week residents of Mshengu heard that they were to be moved to another settlement, Vlakfontein, about 30km south of Johannesburg.

They are not too excited, though. They have heard such talk before.

The Johannesburg Metropolitan Council has on several occasions promised that relocation was on the horizon. The delay then, as now, was that they would wait for school holidays so as not to disrupt their children’s education.

The council had not responded to requests for comment by the time of going to print.

“They have been telling us that we are leaving this area since 1986,” says Mbijane Ngubane.

“Last year they told us to register our names. We went to Zondi to do that.We have filled in the C forms [stand number forms] as we were told. We will see if anything happens this time,” she says, as she and a group of other residents wait for the fahfee (Chinese numbers game) man to announce the morning’s winning number.

“We really want to go. This place is bad and unsafe. Recently an old woman was attacked and killed in her shack. Only people who live here would know that there is an old woman who lives alone in her shack,” she offers as an explanation for why she thinks the crime was perpetrated by fellow residents.

“The [mobile] toilets are far, sometimes we wake up to find that some have been stolen. Some people just mess them up and behave as if they own them.

“Our children play in shit river. And because the toilets are far, people use the stream as a toilet. Some people throw dead dogs into the river. You can imagine the stench,” she says.

Unlike other communities that have taken to the streets in protest against poor service delivery, the Mshenguville people have been extraordinarily patient.

Like many here, Lindiwe Vilakazi thinks the council placates their unease with frequent announcements of imminent departure.

“Sometimes people at community meetings suggest that we stand up for our rights like other communities are doing. But then we get notices that we will be moving to a better place and we put things on hold.”

Like many of her neighbours, pessimism about the possibility of a new home runs high. “I will believe it when it happens. I don’t know how many times they have told us the same story. Earlier on they said October, now I hear they are saying December. I will only believe it when I see trucks loading our things to take them to the new place,” she says.

Mabhunwini Hlophe is optimistic that the move will happen. He points to a sticker put on his door by the Gauteng housing department as a sign that good times lie ahead.

Hlophe hopes that the trek to Vlakfontein will mean a better life, which, for him, means a clearly demarcated yard with a tap and a toilet. A bonus would be electricity, he says.

Meanwhile, the fahfee man has come and announced that three — which signifies big water — is the winning number.

His announcement is ominous — no one has won the money — and, while there is no relevance to the number three signifying big water, it is clear that this is bad news for a community that lives in fear of water washing away their meagre shacks.