Cape Town - The tragic deaths of four children trapped inside their burning home in Khayelitsha has sparked a debate around the risk of fire faced by residents living in informal settlements.
While the mothers have been left reeling, distraught and grieving after discovering the bodies of their children dead in the doorway of the still-smouldering shack on Monday night, residents are fearful the next blaze might gut more than just four homes.
The ANC has been quick to blame the deaths of the children, two of whom were infants, on the local government.
But the City of Cape Town’s mayco member for Safety and Security, JP Smith, said the city was making strides in its efforts to battle blazes in informal settlements, halving the number of fire deaths since the DA took over from the ANC.
It’s little consolation for Lungiswa Vensile, the mother of two of the children killed in the fire. She sat at her home in Makhaza, her face wet with tears, her body shuddering with grief.
“They tried to open the door,” she said. “They tried to get out but they couldn’t do it.”
Her daughters Azizipho, 3, and Zanele, just over a year old, had been staying with their aunt and cousins on Monday night in the township’s Site B. Vensile was supporting her extended family with a full-time job, so it fell on her unemployed sister, Zukiswa Vellem, to look after the young children and her own son and daughter, Alwaba, 1, and Ayakha, 6.
Vellem had been looking after the children for two weeks. On the night of the fire, she fed them before slipping out to go to church for a few minutes. The children had been left alone, said their uncle. The infants were sleeping while the older kids sat in front of the television.
At 8pm, the neighbours smelled smoke. Still dressed in her “gown and pyjamas” Thumeka Fusa, a neighbour, rushed into the street to find a tower of flames looming over the neighbourhood.
She said people had run to help, but were driven back by the flames, which spread quickly, gutting the homes around the shack. She watched as a rickety double-storey dwelling fell in a spray of yellow sparks, the crash whipping the rest of the residents into a frenzy.
“We started taking all our clothes and mattresses to the street,” she said. “We thought it was all going to burn.”
None of the residents heard any children call for help - not even a neighbour who lived directly opposite the burning shack.
“All I could see was flames,” she said.
By the time Vensile arrived to save her children, the firefighters had already begun extinguishing the flames. The children were found lying at the door to the shack.
She screamed as she recounted the horror of the deaths, the dog at her feet jumping to sniff at her knee. Her aunt ran to hug her, whispering calming words as the grieving mother shook all over.
At the site of the fire on Tuesday, residents were puzzled about what caused the blaze. The shack was a gutted ruin lying in a yard of scorched debris. The heat had disappeared in the cold autumn air, but a sweet burnt smell still hung over the wreckage.
“It wasn’t a candle or a gas stove,” said a neighbour. “They had electricity. We don’t know how this would happen.”
Smith said blazes in informal settlements were most commonly caused by unattended fires. This could include anything from leaving a stove on and going out, to falling asleep while braaiing.
While residents suggested it was an electrical fire, Smith said these were rarer. Police are investigating the cause of the fire, which destroyed four homes, but had not released a report at the time of going to print.
In a statement, the ANC said the deaths were “senseless” and were part of a “mad season in Cape Town, when (the) winter season reveals the unyielding historical confinements our people are subjected to”.
The ANC said the fire was a result of the conditions the city forced on those living in informal settlements.
A statement by ANC provincial secretary Songezo Mjongile, said: “Cape Town’s history of urban fragmentation with regard to land use service provision has spatially intensified the concentration of poverty within the city’s historical confinements. The highest population density is on the Cape Flats where African and coloured townships are located. The reality of Cape Town is that 60 percent of residential land by value, is occupied by 20 percent of the population.”
He added that “black people have already compromised too much to make this country work. They are busy stitching their lives together with no form of solidarity or support from the other side, except an occasional title deed to a little wooden shack that will be flooded come next winter”.
Smith said the statement was devoid of any substance and pointed out that fire deaths in informal settlements had dropped from 7.9 per 100 000 people, from when the ANC was last in charge.
Cape Argus