‘This is the land of sand,†says Ishmael Hendricks, one of the District Six squatters who was moved from Cape Town to Tsunami, a temporary settlement of one-roomed Wendy houses in Delft on the Cape Flats.
Although he is 35km from his usual job opportunities, including car-watching, begging or collecting papers and cartons, he is one of the lucky ones who has secured a casual job building cold-water showers.
‘They pay R30 each day. It’s not that we don’t appreciate it, but — I have a wife, a young daughter and a boy of six,†says the 45-year-old, who grew up in District Six and the Bo-Kaap.
Three weeks ago the Cape Town city council removed 30 families who had squatted on District Six land for several years. Their ID numbers have been forwarded to the provincial Land Claims Commission office to verify if any of them are claimants. If not, the council has promised, they will be ‘accommodated in the housing programme that is being provided by the cityâ€.
The District Six squatters have joined about 200 Joe Slovo informal settlement families who lost their shacks in a blaze in January and lived in communal tents in Langa for months before they were finally moved to Delft. The remaining 3 000 families made homeless by the fire live in similar temporary settlements such as Pholile (meaning it’s cool) in Langa, or in a disused, renovated building at the Tygerberg hospital.
They were promised they would be among the first recipients of N2 Gateway Project homes. The planned 22 000 homes — double the number the city builds on average every year — are part of the government’s pilot initiative to eradicate slums. However, construction is running months behind schedule.
However, compared with the District Six squatters, the former township shack dwellers have better prospects of receiving houses. They have been vetted and verified and were issued official documents with the number of their destroyed shacks, the number of their current Wendy houses and their ID numbers.
The squatters, meanwhile, are woken almost every night by the settlement’s private security guards’ request: ‘Waar’s jou papier? [Where are your papers]?â€
But, the squatters argue, they don’t have the required documents. The council officials who moved them from the city, and those visiting the settlement, have failed to keep them informed, they say.
High on the list of grievances is the lack of electricity and street lighting and the fact that there are only six blocks of six toilets and showers for the 236 houses. â€We are running out of toilets,†says Michael Solomons, whose wife is heavily pregnant, before adding: ‘In town I ate every day, but here I skarrel [scramble] for everything.â€
Delft’s location is a bugbear in itself: a trip to the city costs R7 and that sort of money is not available.
‘This place, it’s like we’re thrown away — They just wanted us out of District Six, but we belong there,†insists one man, who wanted to be known only as Justice.
Trying to do what they did in Cape Town, including begging at nightclubs to raise money, simply doesn’t work in Delft.
Unemployment in Delft stands at between 65% and 75%. Crime is high: two months ago two pre-teen girls were raped, murdered and dumped in the bushes — the only vegetation that grows in the sand.
Delft is part of the Eastern Metropole policing area, which recorded 506 cases of neglect and ill-treatment of children, 2 158 rapes and 934 murders this year, according to the latest crime statistics.
‘The Mongrels [a gang] stole the laaitie’s [young person’s] watch at the school,†recounts one Delft resident who, after four months without a job, now works at Tsunami.
The man and his family, like hundreds of backyard dwellers in surrounding areas such as Belhar and Elsies River, moved to Delft when reconstruction and development programme houses were built in the late Nineties.
Tsunami’s newcomers, comprising squatters and fire survivors, will continue to experience difficulties.
‘People have a hard time themselves [in Delft]. They will slam the door in your face, saying you must find a way for yourself,†the man shrugs.