Homes for votes allegations have come to haunt the Mogale City Municipality after failed attempts to move poor white families to RDP houses in Kagiso without following proper procedures in an alleged plan to garner votes for May’s local government elections.
The ANC-led municipality fuelled racial tensions when it allegedly tried to give priority for RDP houses to poor white families from Coronation Park in Krugersdorp, over poor black people who have been waiting for years.
The ANC has been working on luring white and coloured voters in a bid to unseat the opposition DA, especially in Cape Town and parts of Gauteng.
The ANC in Gauteng is on a drive to reclaim ground lost to the DA, and a similar drive is planned for Cape Town.
President Jacob Zuma has previously met poor whites in Pretoria on a charm offensive.
According to Hugo van Niekerk, 48, leader of the Coronation Park residents, the municipality allowed them to apply for houses in Munsieville without having to fill in C4 forms which are mandatory to apply for housing subsidies.
“We do not support what they are trying to do. Yes, we desperately want houses, but we want to get them lawfully, we want to follow procedures because if we do not do it the right way we will never have peace wherever we live. We might even be killed,” he said.
Department of Local Government and Housing’s Motsamai Motlhaolwa confirmed that applicants could not apply for a subsidy if they did not fill in the necessary forms and were then registered on the database.
“If you are on a database you should have a C4 form or what is now just a receipt, to say that you are on the database,” he said.
Adding more suspicion to the move is the fact that David Letsie, a member of the mayoral committee for human settlements, recently approached the residents of Coronation Park, promising them RDP houses in Kagiso near Azaadville, which the residents wanted two years ago when the municipality wanted to relocate them to Munsieville.
“Now they want to relocate us to Kagiso when they refused two years ago… but why now?” asked Van Niekerk, who has been living at Coronation Park for more than eight years and was part of the march for houses in 1998.
The housing council had previously offered the group RDP houses, complete with electricity, in Munsieville Township, but Coronation Park residents rejected the offer, saying that if the municipality did not follow protocol they would not be able to live peacefully and safely with Munsieville residents.
“It’s not that they do not want white people in their community. Black and white people live together in most parts of the country anyway, and we also can live in harmony if the houses are allocated following procedure,” explained Van Niekerk. “What they have done is wicked, twisted, and if we did not stand up, this could have resulted in tragic fights over the RDP houses.”
He accused the municipality of playing off white people in need of houses against black people who were also in need of houses, for political gain.
“It is not right, and the consequences of these acts could be bloody.”
Van Niekerk and the 300-plus households living in Coronation Park will tomorrow go to the housing department with all the forms needed, including the C4 form, to re-apply for housing subsidies.
“We want to live in harmony with the residents of Kagiso. We want to live in a safe and peaceful environment and that’s why we want to follow all procedures,” he said.
Luyanda Njomane of the People’s Civic Organisation said race was not an issue for them as a community or as an organisation.
“We are not saying we do not want white people, but proper procedures must be followed and the process must be transparent,” he said.
Njomane said a lot of people who were on the list had been registered and had been waiting since 1995, and it would be unfair if anyone was given preference because of race or political motives.
“We are over the whole race thing, we will not throw people out of the houses simply because they are white but we will throw out anyone who is given a house unlawfully,” he said.
There are 725 houses in the new settlement and more than 600 have already been allocated.
The municipality’s spokesman Nkosana Zali said the municipality only played a facilitating role in the Department of Human Settlements plans, but he argued that the housing project was an opportunity to include the white people in what is traditionally known to be a black area.
“We cannot let an opportunity that can help us shape our future together in this manner slip away.
“Having started to do this in Kagiso, we will look at land in traditionally white areas for this sort of integration,” he said.
ANC provincial spokesman Dumisa Ntuli said giving people RDP houses was part of their ongoing agenda to deliver on their promises from the 2009 manifesto, but that everything should be done according to the book.
“The ANC was not aware that people were asked to apply for houses without following procedure. We will look into the situation to make sure that the allocation is fair from here on,” he said.