Pretoria - Hand over RDP houses to their legitimate owners or face the might of the community - that is the warning from residents of Atteridgeville Extension 7 to those who are living in RDP houses belonging to other people.
The leader of the Stimamollo Community Policing Forum, Jack Phahlane, said illegal occupants of the houses would be evicted next weekend.
This would be a continuation of previous campaigns where more than 50 houses were given to their rightful owners.
Phahlane, armed with an eviction order, has been leading the community on a campaign to forcefully evict people staying in RDP houses whose title deeds reflected someone else’s name.
Last month, they removed a man from a house he took over from his late uncle, despite the title deed indicating that his son was the owner.
They removed all his items from the house, cleaned it and handed them to the rightful beneficiary.
Phahlane said the next round of evictions would take place on May 10. He said there had been no problems whatsoever in the houses they had previously given to the rightful owners.
“The illegal occupants have not posed any threat to the rightful owners,” he said.
“The only problem has been municipal services as some of the accounts for these houses were unpaid.
“The rightful owners could not pay for the services as they had not been living there.”
Phahlane said most of the houses had illegal electricity connections.
“We disconnected them, thus leaving the owner with no electricity,” he explained.
He said they had a list of more than 8 000 people in Atteridgeville and the surrounding areas who had complained that RDP houses allocated to them were occupied by other people.
“And one by one we will evict them. We will not stop until all the houses are occupied by their rightful owners,” said Phahlane.
“For as long as authorities do not address complaints of irregularities in the housing sector, we will take matters into our own hands.
“For example, there are lots of houses whose title deeds reflect the City of Tshwane as the owners, and this matter has never been addressed.”
Phahlane said RDP houses could not be occupied by people with no right to be there while title deed holders had nowhere to stay and were paying thousands in rent just to have roofs over their heads.
He added there were people who did not qualify for RDP houses as they owned properties in affluent areas.
“But they have RDPs and have rented them out, collecting large sums of money monthly for houses they should not be owning,” Phahlane explained.
The City of Tshwane has said it remained committed to cleaning up the housing sector, but was uncertain how and when the eviction order was issued.
Pretoria News