Melanie Gosling
THE weak winter sun shone on the puddles at Wolwerivier where a group of men hammered plastic sheeting over the roof of their shack.
They hoped it would sort out the leaks. On the gravel lay planks of wood and metal sheets, some new, some rusted, waiting to be assembled into homes on the old Wolwerivier farmland, off the N7 north of the Vissershok dump site.
Women in beanies huddled around a fire, a pot of potato peels and scraps simmering on the coals. Food for their dogs. The animals were tied up and straining at their chains.
“We must tie them otherwise they run away because they don’t know this place. Even we don’t know this place. The council just moved us here.”
Desire Blaaws is among 26 families that were moved from the informal settlement of Richmond Park last week to make way for the development of a R1bn light industrial complex on the land where they lived.
The council has promised them houses at Wolwerivier and the earthworks have begun, but it will be a long time before the new township is ready.
The Richmond Park people say the council should have left them where they were until the houses had been completed and until a school, clinic and transport had been established.
“There are some sick people here. In Richmond Park there was a clinic nearby and a day hospital. Now where must the people get their medicine here in the bos(bush)?” Blaaws said.
They have been given some building materials by the council. Gerald Page said they had been told the council would organise a taxi for them.
“But we’re still waiting. If you want to go to Checkers the taxi charges you R100. We don’t have that. They said there were more services here, but there is nothing. You can’t use services if they are not built,” Page said.
Blaaws has a job as a domestic worker in Bothasig, but since last week she has not been able to get to work and she does not know if her employer will keep the job open.
Latiefa Claasen and Mercia Fontyn work at a crèche in Bothasig, but they too have not been able to get to work.
“We’re going to lose our jobs. And where will we find work here stuck in the bush?” said Claasen.
The families have sent their children away to friends and relatives in Atlantis for the school holidays while they rebuild their dismantled shacks at the new site.
“But when school starts, how will they get to their school in Bothasig? There are no schools here. The nearest towns are Melkbosstrand and Atlantis and how will they get there?” said Blaaws.
At the cold water tap a woman fills a plastic tub and starts on the washing, making the most of the sunshine after the cold front that brought days of rain. The two taps and a row of portable lavatories are the sum of the services.
Claasensaid: “At Richmond Park we were also plakkers(squatters) but there the rain didn’t come into our houses. Here we swim in the rain.”
There were earlier removals from Richmond Park during the apartheid years when landowners and tenants were forced to move in terms of the old Group Areas Act, and were relocated in Atlantis and on the Cape Flats.
In the late 1990s others moved on to the land – including the 26 families – and built a shanty town. Later those who had been forcibly removed in the apartheid days lodged a land restitution claim to get their Richmond Park land back. Once they had succeeded they entered into a partnership with a development company to develop the industrial complex. That meant Blaaws and the other families had to leave.
Said Page: “We were squatters at Richmond Park, but our kids could go to school, we could get to work and to the shops and to the clinic. Here we’ve just been thrown away.”
The city council was asked to comment on Monday, but had not replied by yesterday.