Cape Town - Cape Town is regarded as one of the best places to live - unless you stay in a place like Isiqalo informal settlement near Mitchells Plain.
As with many other informal settlements, Isiqalo residents face challenges such as overcrowding and lack of available land for housing.
Speaking to the Cape Argus on Sunday, resident and committee member Noncedo Madwanya, 40, said: “I have been here for 10 years and feel that is quite a long period to suffer, seeing no change whatsoever, yet we vote.”
Madwanya, from the Eastern Cape, moved to Cape Town to look for a job. She worked briefly as a domestic worker, but is currently unemployed. She has been on the housing waiting list for a number of years.
She said the community approached the Ses’khona People’s Rights Movement, only to find out they were on private land and that houses could not be built here.
Madwanya said the city had provided hardly any services for them and that nothing had changed since the last elections.
Phumza Ntlekiso, 35, a mother of three, described their living conditions as “appalling”. What would help improve their lives, she said, would be electricity, toilets and houses. “Those are my major concerns. There are toilets built for some people but only in the upper sections. This is a big area, and one consisting of many sections, so to walk all the way up to the toilets, especially at night, is unsafe for us women.”
She said they were using buckets.
Ntlekiso says she suffered from arthritis and had also had a stroke. She signed up for housing in 2005, but has heard nothing since.
Lundi Silolo, 49, a father of six, has been living in Isiqalo since 2012 and said the place had seen no change apart from a hall that was recently built.
He said the city hadn’t done much. “The only thing they did was to bring plastics to cover our shacks on rainy days and sometimes provide blankets and food. Those things don’t bring any solution to our suffering,” Silolo said. “I can only say that I hope we will also get proper houses and while in the waiting process, toilets and electricity too.
Cape Argus