Residents in uproar over RDP houses

People tired of ‘empty promises’

FED-UP with what they claim are empty promises from government, Dimbaza residents yesterday marched to a municipal building demanding structural repairs to their two-roomed RDP homes.

About 150 residents, mostly women, marched from Phola Park to the rent office demanding their houses built in 1996 and 1997 be rectified.

They said most of the houses had cracks and leaked when it rained.

The department of human settlements has on several occasions said its priority was building new houses – not rectifying existing houses.

This has resulted in government and residents being at a stalemate in parts of the Eastern Cape, for example in New Brighton, where angry residents, demanding their houses be rectified, closed down the Red Location Museum in Nelson Mandela Bay municipality for more than a year.

Speaking on behalf of the marchers, Msimelelo Magadu threatened that if need be they would make Dimbaza and Buffalo City Metro (BCM) “ungovernable”.

The National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC), a regulatory body of the building industry, had deemed the houses unsafe to live in, he said.

Magadu said while on the campaign trail last year, ANC national chairwoman and National Assembly speaker Baleka Mbete had promised their plight would be given urgent attention.

The community leader said residents felt they were being treated like voting pawns and had been neglected for years.

“Politicians always come here and make big promises but nothing ever gets delivered,” Magadu said.

“Baleka Mbete left teary-eyed when she was here because of the conditions we live under.”

The residents had expected mayor Xola Pakati to receive the memorandum himself, but he sent a representative.

This infuriated the group, saying this was proof the metro did not take them seriously.

“We want the mayor here – not his delegation. It’s not nice staying in a leaking house while you have TB or you stay with someone who is HIVpositive. Enough is enough.

“These people are living a life of luxury at our expense,” Magadu said.

He later told the Daily Dispatch they would regroup and plot a way forward, which would result in “the mayor not having a good Christmas day”.

“You can never predict what Dimbaza residents will do when they are unhappy.

“If it comes to it, we'll make Dimbaza ungovernable and that’s not a threat but reality,” he said, adding that their action might include staging sit-ins at the legislature.

Human settlements provincial spokesman Lwandile Sicwetsha said the national department was still reviewing the rectification policy.

All houses built before 2004, before the introduction of NHBRC, were eligible for rectification, he said.

“The project has been assessed by NHBRC and it is being considered for the 2017-18 financial year pending the decision from national [government] whether to go ahead with rectification or not. We appeal to people to be patient,” he said. —