Land invasions: KZN wants security team

File photo: Dumisani Sibeko

File photo: Dumisani Sibeko

Published Mar 2, 2015

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Durban - The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Human Settlements is planning to follow the City of Cape Town’s lead by having its own anti-land invasion squad.

These plans are detailed in a January 16 Government Tender Bulletin, in which the department invited “suitably qualified and experienced service providers to provide specialised security services for anti-land invasion within KZN for a period of three years”.

The successful applicant should display an in-depth understanding of land invasions in the South African context and KZN in particular, including the causal factors of land invasion, and the social and political costs.

They should also “understand social dynamics that trigger violent service delivery protests and the influence of political opportunism in such situations, and be able to develop counter-measures”.

The department’s spokesman, Mbulelo Baloyi, said land invasion had been a challenge for years.

“The department owns a significant number of properties which are planned for housing development. It wishes to have a monitoring and preventative capacity for these pieces of land,” he said.

While they had police assistance, Baloyi said the SAPS had other priorities and the tender was an attempt to be proactive rather than reactive.

“We want daily monitoring and the ability to intervene with speed. We should not overstate the scale of this intervention. It is a relatively small support service to assist us in the management of the challenge,” he said.

Responding to the negative reception to the tender by shack dwellers’ lobby group Abahlali baseMjondolo, which believed the squad would be wasteful expenditure, Baloyi said: “We believe that NGOs have misinterpreted the thrust of the tender. However, we welcome their comments. That is the purpose of a publicly advertised tender. NGOs alert us to risks, which we must guard against. No tender will be awarded until it meets legal and constitutional compliance.”

Abahlali is highly active in the province, especially in eThekwini, and has had several clashes with the city’s land invasion control unit, which falls under the metro police.

“Illegal occupation is a service delivery challenge rather than a security matter, so it makes no sense to us to have an external security agency coming on board,” said Abahlali’s spokesman, Thembani Ngongoma.

He disputed that shack dwellers delayed or obstructed housing projects, saying they were not against “legal evictions”.

“People illegally occupy someone’s property out of desperation because they have nowhere to go. The shacks the government wants to demolish are our homes, where we raise families,” he said.

Ngongoma conceded that some people living in shacks could afford to build proper houses, but said the government should provide the land.

In October, the eThekwini land invasion control unit’s senior manager, Skhumbuzo Vilakazi, said the municipality had about 600 new shacks to deal with and 10 were being built every day. He said municipal staff were being attacked when they tried to stop invasions.

Among the new settlements identified as hot spots were Marikana in Cato Crest, Mini Town in Hammarsdale, part of Mount Edgecombe, Lamontville and Matikwe in Inanda.

He said shack lords “sold” land earmarked for development and people moved in to stall the project until they were given priority for low-cost housing allocations.

Meanwhile, the EFF’s newly elected KZN leaders said on Sunday that they would occupy vacant land in the province as part of the party’s land occupation programme.

Asked if they would occupy state-owned or private land, the EFF’s provincial deputy chairman, Jackie Shandu, said the party was not worried either way.

“We have identified land that is vacant and nothing has happened on it. Irrespective of who owns it, we will occupy. Historically, the issue of title deeds was brought in by colonialists. Before that, African people owned all the land,” he said.

The Mercury

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