Three mass land invasions in Khayelitsha prompted the City to serve a court interdict on those who have earmarked plots for their shacks.
Most of the aspirant shack dwellers said they are backyarders within Khayelitsha and had been promised access to vacant land by community leaders.
The lands in question, erf 74967 and 75818, are believed
to be meant for housing development.
Last week, hundreds of people carrying corrugated-iron sheets and other materials streamed on to vacant land in Kuyasa, where they started building their shacks.
The City’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit dismantled the shacks and removed the pegs and police dispersed the unruly crowd by firing stun grenades, but as soon as the law enforcement presence left the backyarders continued where they left off.
Retaliating against the Anti-Land Invasion Unit’s move, those whose structures were removed set fire to a Golden Arrow Bus Service (Gabs) bus yesterday.
Gabs spokesperson Bronwen Dyke-Beyer said the bus driver was being treated for shock.
She said it was a great concern that buses were targeted when residents were dissatisfied with service delivery.
“We have already diverted our buses when this happened in an area that was quiet at the time,” she said, adding that buses were no longer operating inside Khayelitsha.
Police spokesperson André Traut said police were on the scene of the land invasion to assist the Anti-Land Invasion Unit. He said police would remain in the area to monitor the situation.
City director for safety and security Richard Bosman said on Saturday they had obtained three interdicts for three areas in Khayelitsha. He said a total of 106 structures were dismantled.
In a letter, the Khayelitsha Development Forum (KDF) chairperson Ndithini Tyhido asked mayor Patricia de Lille to intervene.
Tyhido noted “with a great sense of disappointment” that it took the City more than 72 hours to respond, whereas it takes less than 30 minutes to stop a land invasion in affluent white areas.
Tyhido wrote: “It beats the mind how the City of Cape Town, through the manager of Sub-Council 10 (Clifford Sithonga) have not co-ordinated a strategy to stop the land invasion in that black township’s central business district, (which we) hoped when fully developed would uplift Khayelitsha and its people.”
The leader of the group invading a piece of land close to the Kuyasa train station, Sindile Gaji, said it was agreed at a meeting last week that the land should be invaded.
“The land is meant for backyarders. The City is slow in developing it, so people decided to invade it to pressure the City to act. We live in overcrowded families and some of us pay rent and we deserve places of our own.”