Johannesburg- An Ekurhuleni grandmother has for some time been engulfed with anguish over a services bill of more than R20 000 despite her home being demolished as the city’s housing corruption scandal rages.
In 2004, Leah Hlatshwayo, 66, received a city-issued stand in Tsakane Extension 21, where her daughter spent more than R40 000 to develop a house on the land as a retirement gift to her mother.
However, in 2015, Hlatshwayo’s daughter Keke was told by neighbours near her mother’s stand that a white van, allegedly with an Ekurhuleni logo on it, had arrived at night to destroy the two-room house under construction.
Keke said she had saved up more than R40 000 for building material to build the house and believes her mother was sacrificed and her home demolished in order to sell the stand in a supposedly corrupt transaction.
“There were no houses on either side of the home I was building for my mother,” Keke said.
According to the City of Ekurhuleni, Hlatshwayo owes it R27 049.65 for services.
Ekurhuleni spokesperson Themba Gadebe confirmed that the housing project in Tsakane Extensions 19 to 21 was riddled with “challenges of illegal occupation and selling of stands”, but that the city had not demolished any house.
He said the provincial government had audited the occupancy of the Tsakane project, where beneficiaries who were swindled out of their homes and stands were allocated houses in Extension 22.
People who were illegally occupying houses and stands but qualified for government assistance would be regularised on those properties, Gadebe added.
However, Hlatshwayo insisted that she would not move to Extension 22 because it was far from transport and other amenities, she was still stuck with an exorbitant services bill and that no one was offering to repay Keke for the hard-earned money she spent building the home.
Ekurhuleni did not respond to questions regarding the money spent to build Hlatshwayo’s house.
Hlatshwayo said she was livid at the manner in which city officials had treated her during her queries about her flattened home, including “the cruel manner” in which authorities handled her alleged debt owed.
“This whole ordeal has affected me terribly.
"I can’t stop crying every time I think of how I have been hoodwinked out of my own place because of greedy city officials, who swore at me as if I was nothing,” Hlatshwayo said.
Gadebe said: “The city’s administrative processes will be undertaken for our human settlements department to provide a confirmation letter to the finance department that Gogo Hlatshwayo has never occupied the said property, and once that process is complete, the said amount will be waivered.”
@khayakoko88