The residents of Imizamo Yethu emerge from corrugated iron shacks every day to one of the breathtaking natural sights that make Cape Town South Africa’s top tourist attraction.
From the squalor of their overcrowded existence, the shantytown inhabitants share a spectacular view of the Hout Bay harbour and surrounding mountains with millionaire neighbours in one of the city’s most valuable property markets.
But living within a stone’s throw from each other, the communities have little else in common and tensions are rising as squatters grow impatient with delivery of government housing and threats of land grabs make headlines.
”I see the same old apartheid divides,” says Tony Ehrenreich, Western Cape provincial secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) — an ally of the African National Congress (ANC), which has ruled the country since the end of the racially oppressive apartheid regime in 1994.
”It is ridiculous that the horses down in the valley … their stables are better-looking than the houses that people live in. It doesn’t make any sense in the new South Africa that this is happening,” he said.
Inhabitants of Imizamo Yethu — up to 20Â 000 people on 18ha of land — are black and poor. The majority live in permeable shacks offering scant protection from the elements and share a few dozen public toilets.
Stray dogs patrol dirt roads lined with car wrecks where children play and women gather around communal taps to do laundry under a criss-cross of illegally connected electricity lines.
A few hundred metres away, swimming pools and tennis courts are commonplace and mansions can fetch prices in excess of R20-million.
”Hout Bay is a microcosm of the problems in South Africa,” Ehrenreich said.
The government aims to eradicate shantytowns, currently housing about 2,4-million families, by 2014.
Nomxolisi Mgedezi (26), who has lived in Imizamo Yethu for 15 years, is among thousands on a waiting list for a government-subsidised brick house.
”It is cold here,” she says, inviting Agence France-Presse into her neat single-room shack.
The inside hardboard walls are painted a calm green and enclose a single bed, a crate for a bedside table, a two-door cabinet with a two-plate stove and a television set.
”I want a proper house, a toilet, water and electricity,” Mgedezi says — a wish echoed by neighbours.
”Life here is difficult,” laments Maphelo Skade (23). ”It is difficult to keep out the wind and rain. When it’s hot it’s really hot and when it’s cold it’s really cold.”
‘There has to be a balance’
Ehrenreich warned land invasions were inevitable if the government did not speed up housing delivery.
”On one hand, you have people who have too much land; in fact they have so much they probably don’t get to sections of it for a year, and on the other you have people who live in desperate overcrowding.”
”People are starting to understand they are being deprived because other people are holding on.”
He called for state-owned land to be made available urgently, failing which unused private property should be expropriated.
About 40ha were needed for Imizamo Yethu’s residents.
Hout Bay Ratepayers’ Association chairperson Graham Kelroe-Cooke said land invasions would be resisted, denying racism was behind affluent residents’ concerns about the mushrooming of Imizamo Yethu.
The proximity of the sprawling shantytown threatened property prices, ”but that is not our main concern”, he said.
”Our concern is the inhumane conditions, the health situation, the crime situation. People are unemployed, there is no public transport and many resort to petty crime for survival.”
Negotiations were under way between both sets of residents, the government and city council to find alternative accommodation for the squatters who have threatened to resist attempts to move them.
But the city council fears there may be no option, saying overcrowding made it impossible to delivery basic services.
”Pursuing any programme to upgrade and improve living conditions in the settlement will require some simple maths and some hard decisions,” said a statement by Cape Town mayor and main opposition party leader Helen Zille.
The council was conducting an audit of unused land in and around Hout Bay, much of which belonged to the national parks board, the Defence Department and private owners.
Ehrenreich said it was natural for the haves to protect their interests.
”But there has to be a balance. Black people have so little because white people have so much,” he said.
”These inequalities will come back to haunt us and will tear apart our country. It is not sustainable.” — AFP
