The Kliptown Concerned Residents group on Wednesday took the media on a tour of the area to highlight the damage caused by recent heavy rains.
Organiser Sipho Jantjie said the settlement in Kliptown had no electricity and used the bucket system.
As the media walked around the settlement, raw sewage was seen flowing out of a manhole near the doorsteps of many of the houses.
”Children get sick because of the living conditions. When it rains we can’t sleep. When it’s hot the toilets stink,” said Jantjie.
Residents emptied the pit toilets into the portable toilets because municipal workers insisted they were told only to empty the portable toilets.
”For five days sewage sits in the toilets before the municipality cleans the toilets,” said Jantjie.
Sello Tladi, Johannesburg regional secretary of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) said : ”Houses are falling down. We were promised a better life but this is a bitter life.”
”The Freedom Charter was adopted in Kliptown in 1955. But within sight of the Freedom Charter monument, children play in between houses that are collapsing and rubbish that is swept back into people’s houses from the heaps next to the railway,” said Jantjie.
”We were promised manna and heaven but today we show the media and organisations the horror film that is life in Kliptown.”
There was no electricity in Kliptown, no paved roads and people used paraffin lamps and stoves.
When houses caught fire — because of paraffin lamps or candles falling over — fire trucks could not reach the burning houses because there were no roads, said resident Susan Jantjie.
She said that she had been born in and had lived in Kliptown for 54 years.
”The councillors don’t come here anymore. They don’t come to see our houses. I want the top African National Congress people, Mbeki and Zuma, to see what these houses look like,” she said.
Mike Moriarty, Johannesburg Democratic Alliance leader, said it was cruel for any government to allow people to live in this manner.
He said that it was the responsibility of the government to distribute resources to those who needed them, those who could not afford a car, a house, private schools and those who were without work.
Selumko Radebe, national organiser of the APF, said the walk around Kliptown had intentionally been done just before the opening of Parliament — so that parliamentarians discussed the year ahead against the backdrop of Kliptown and its squalor.
Jantjie said: ”We need a victory for Kliptown. We will not be silent in Kliptown. We will go back to protesting on the streets if government will not listen.”
Meanwhile, Kliptown residents will have new houses, roads and new stormwater pipes before the end of the year, the Gauteng department of housing said on Wednesday.
”We are working on plans to address the housing situation in that area — that includes the construction of roads [and] the installation of basic infrastructure such as sanitation and stormwater pipes.
”The plans are in the final stages and they will be finalised and implemented before the end of 2008,” said department spokesperson Mandla Sidu.
He said the department was aware of the housing situation facing the people of Kliptown, and they had met residents’ representatives in November last year to discuss their plans for development. — Sapa