Cobus Coetzee
RESIDENTS of an informal settlement in Philippi East tried in vain to block roads and prevent members of the city’s anti-land invasion unit from evicting them and tearing down their 135 homes.
Sections of tree trunks, chunks of concrete and burning car tyres were placed in the road to try to prevent trucks getting through to the Mangaung informal settlement, established on Western Cape government land.
Residents said they had been given no warning.
Human Settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela said the province did not need to give notice or secure an eviction order.
“The structures had been there for less than 24 hours, so we did not need an eviction order.
“The anti-land invasion unit noticed the illegal occupation and we moved in.”
Told that some residents had said they had been there for two weeks, Madikizela said official records showed they had been there for less than 24 hours.
Women and children watched in despair as trucks drove over barricades and a group of workers, accompanied by the SAPS, metro police and provincial government officials, began to demolish houses yesterday morning.
The workers, armed with crowbars and hammers, began with the homes from which owners had begun to remove their possessions. The materials were loaded on to four trucks parked in the road. It could not be established what had become of the materials.
The land is flanked by rows of government-built houses.
Zintle Mfazwe, 63, said she had moved two weeks ago from the Eastern Cape in the hope of finding work.
Residents whose shacks were torn down first moved their possessions into her single-roomed home for safekeeping, but a few minutes later men began to demolish it.
The four walls fell in on to Mfazwe’s double bed. Working roughly, the men pulled the corrugated iron sheets to one side to load on to a truck. Silently, Mfazwe began to assemble her possessions.
Asanda Bangani, 23, said she and her year-old son, Kwando, had nowhere to spend the night.
“Where will I go now? What will I do?”
Bangani said she had borrowed R2 500 for the materials to build her wood-and-iron room two weeks ago.
Not only had she lost her home, she was worried how she would repay the money. “I am angry. This is not the end.”
Most of the corrugated iron loaded on to the truck was new.
Ntuthuzelo Lumani, 32, said she did not know the authorities were planning to raze the settlement.
“This is not over, we are going to fight. We will all vandalise.”
Siyabulela Mamkeli, the mayoral committee member for human settlements, said the city had removed 135 “incomplete and vacant structures”.
He said the eviction was in line with the city’s constitutional mandate to prevent illegal occupations.
Madikizela said the land had been earmarked for homes in phase two of the N2 Gateway Project.
“These people are not victims. The real victims are those disadvantaged communities who have been waiting for land and houses. We cannot allow a situation where people think they will be prioritised if they invade land.”