Xolani Koyana
RESIDENTS of the Marikana and Rolihlahla Park informal settlements in Philippi marched more than 5km to municipal offices in Gugulethu to demand basic services yesterday.
About 300 residents, many in ANC T-shirts, made their way to the Fezeka municipal building to hand over a memorandum of demands.
They sang and toyi-toyied as they proceeded along New Eisleben Road and later Govan Mbeki Drive.
Traffic came to a standstill along the route because of the procession.
The residents occupying the land wanted the city to provide communal flush toilets, refuse collection and running water, said Philip Mvundlela, chairman of the Rholihlala Park residents committee.
The mayoral committee member for human settlements, Siyabulela Mamkeli, said that the Municipal Finance Management Act did not allow the city to provide services on privately owned land.
The city would not comment further because the matter was sub judice, Mamkeli said.
The land, along Sheffield Road in Philippi East, is the subject of a court case because of continual invasions by backyarders – more recently in August. Despite a series of evictions, residents have resettled on the land.
The landowner, Oscar Saundors, approached the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court for an interdict preventing people building homes on the property, which he has been wanting to develop for industrial use.
Mvundlela said that residents’ demands and the court case were different issues.
“Basic services have nothing to do with the court case. We are in court with the owners of the land and not the City of Cape Town. We don’t have water right now. We can’t go to court dirty,” he said.
“People were using the bushes to relieve themselves, but all those bushes are gone now because most of the land is occupied.
“Now we have to go to the other side of the road in Lower Crossroads to use the toilets and we have to pay.”
Mvundlela said that many of those who lived in the areas were paying residents in formal houses R30 a month for water and to use their toilets. Some house owners were charging similar amounts for 20 litres of water, said Marikana and Rolihlahla Park residents who took part in yesterday’s march.
Some said they could no longer afford to pay because they were unemployed.
Mvundlela said the residents would wait to hear from council representatives regarding a cancelled meeting that was to have taken place yesterday.