Pavement politics

The housing war raging in Delft between about 2 000 homeless backyard dwellers and the government’s housing agent, Thubelisha Homes, the city and the police, has manifested as a racial fight between African and coloured people. But the cause of this war can be traced to the decision to build the controversial N2 Gateway housing project and the political fights between the ANC and a city led by the DA.

This week police fired rubber bullets at hundreds of families who occupied empty houses in Delft near Cape Town in December after they refused to adhere to a court ruling ordering them to leave.

On Tuesday morning before 5am security guards and police woke resi­dents and ordered them to leave the occupied houses immediately. In the ensuing chaos, people’s belongings were moved — without their owners — by trucks to a shelter in Blackheath. Their meagre possessions and some houses were damaged. Now families are sleeping on pavements outside empty houses that are patrolled by hundreds of baton-carrying security guards.

As Cape Town’s temperature climbed to 38°C this week, policemen were chasing mothers with small children from the shade of these houses.

Housing company Thubelisha has been building houses in Delft since 2002. The deal was that 70% of the 11 600 houses would go to residents of Joe Slovo, in Langa, and 30% to the thousands of homeless backyarders living in Delft and surrounding neighbourhoods.

The fact that Joe Slovo residents are African and the backyarders from Delft predominantly coloured has not been an issue for many of the residents — some of whom have intermarried and have been living together for many years.

But politically skin colour plays a big role. The residents of Delft overwhelmingly support the DA, whereas the ANC has a firm foothold among the homeless in Joe Slovo and Langa.

The beneficiaries of these houses in Delft are all people who have been on the city’s housing waiting list, called the integrated database, for many years, irrespective of whether they are African or coloured.

When the Joe Slovo shack dwellers were moved to temporary houses in Delft in 2002 they were promised by the then-ANC led city that they could move back to Joe Slovo once flats had been built. These promises have proved to be false, residents say.

Phase 1 of the N2 Gateway Housing project cost the government three times its original budget, which made these units unaffordable to all but one original Joe Slovo shack dweller.

As a result their stay in Delft became permanent and some of the people were moved from the temporary houses to the permanent houses. At this point the tensions started surfacing among the backyarders who have been eyeing these ready-built houses for many years.

Mayor of Cape Town Helen Zille says the crisis has had a long preamble: ‘I have made appointments to see Minister [Lindiwe] Sisulu to discuss the looming crisis with her and to offer help in resolving it. She did grant me one appointment and when I arrived, she did not pitch up. Thubelisha Homes has had three or four different senior management structures in the past year — there is no continuity. Thubelisha interfered with the allocation process, unaware of how critically sensitive it was and sparked massive resistance in the process.”

For Zille, the core problem is policy. ‘I cannot condone land invasions or occupations and have said so repeatedly. However, I have also said the core problem is the policy approach. All the rest are symptoms. The only way it will be possible to improve the situation of shack dwellers sustainably and appropriately is through in situ upgrading, where they are living. Removals must be kept to a minimum and only where the densities are so great that they prevent us from installing services. If we take another approach, the problems become unmanageable.”

Backyarders have been on a housing waiting list for up to 29 years. Some of them are now sleeping on the pavements and making the surrounding bushes and sand dunes their toilets.

While the community is preparing to take its case to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein in the next week, the DA councillor for this ward, Frank Martin, who is regarded by the community as a champion, is preparing his own fight for survival.

He is seen by the ANC as the native who has caused all the trouble and has been charged by the police with ‘incitement, fraud, some misdemeanor under the Riot Act as well as contravening the mass action law”, the councillor says.

‘I didn’t incite people to do anything illegal, but I did tell them that they have followed the correct processes that government told them to follow to get a house and still they’re getting ignored in favour of people from Joe Slovo who have not been on a waiting list for as long,” he says.

Martin is not only facing criminal charges and possible prison time, he is also being investigated by the Council’s Speaker, Dirk Smit, who might institute disciplinary charges against him.

Martin has been sleeping on the pavement with the community since the eviction on Tuesday and people here say they will ‘kiss his feet because he cares”.

‘I realised that those being allocated houses are not those on the waiting list. Some people’s names even disappeared off the waiting list. Thubelisha has made people beneficiaries of houses even though they’ve never been on a waiting list — I have proof of this. Thubelisha is playing a political role in the city, while it should rather just focus on providing houses,” Martin says.

When the Delft backyarders learned that 100% of the beneficiaries of the Delft homes would be people from Joe Slovo, some decided to occupy the empty houses.

Prince Xhanti Sigcawu, regional general manager of Thubelisha homes, calls Martin a liar. ‘He is misleading people — Thubelisha has nothing to do with the allocation of houses. Martin enticed people and if it weren’t for him, nobody would have invaded those houses,” Sigcawu says.

He says that Thubelisha is not involved in trying to find alternative accommodation for the people now living on the pavement.

‘The court didn’t order us to find homes for the people evicted. It’s not our job,” he says.