Hammanskraal evictions: ‘There was war here’
Dora Tlobatla (30) knew the forced removals were coming. But she knew they weren’t coming for her home so on Tuesday morning she locked up and went to work. When she got back, it was demolished.
“At 5 o’clock in the morning, the first group of Red Ants arrived. They said they would only go to Suurman and next door to Kanana Park, not Sekampaneng and Greenfield.
“When I got home, my shack was destroyed, my furniture damaged and all valuables stolen. My neighbours told me there was war here.”
This is how Tlobatla recalls the forced evictions in Hammanskraal settlement north of Pretoria. They were carried out in two phases by two private companies.
The provincial government contracted the Red Ants to evict people from municipal land in Suurman. About 500m away, in Greenfield, a contractor hired by the City of Tshwane evicted people from land that falls under the Kekana Tribal Authority.
Some 16 000 people were targeted for eviction from the Greenfield and Kanana Park informal settlements, situated on a large piece of flat land.
Red Ants chief executive Johan Bosch says: “We were contracted by the provincial government. We broke down about 2 000 structures and had a bit of resistance but there was mutual respect between the crowd and us.
“At about 11:30, a contractor supported by Tshwane metro police arrived in four buses and started pushing people’s structures down indiscriminately with heavy machinery.”
Earlier this month the city successfully applied for a high court eviction order. Spokesperson Blessing Manale said this is because the city has “the jurisdiction” to do so.
The city says it was clearing the land on behalf of the Kekana royal family. But Flora Kekana, spokesperson for the tribal authority, said the city went ahead with the eviction without the family’s permission.
She says: “We are surprised by the evictions. The municipality didn’t contact us to tell us they were going to evict the people. Even though the municipality is right, we are worried that we are not informed. The squatter camps are distracting our plans. We had plans to develop the land to create jobs to help the government.”
Although the evictions continued undisrupted in Suurman, residents of Greenfield were less welcoming to the workers contracted to rid the land of illegal occupants.
One young man, who refuses to be identified out of fear that he will be targeted for speaking to the press, says: “I saw them coming with buses and their machines and immediately started running away. I thought they would arrest me because there was no notice given to us.
“When I saw them tearing down shacks, I joined my friends to confront them. Then they started shooting rubber bullets,” he says.
A group of his friends sat around him, drinking beer and smoking dagga while relaying the details of the confrontation. During the protest, two contract workers were shot and killed and three buses and a truck were torched. The men quieten down and ignore repeated questions about what happened, only pointing to the site where the body of one contract worker was burnt.
Bosch says: “All hell broke loose and the public attacked them. My guys had to re-form and go in and try to save them from the community. We saved about six guys. If we weren’t there, the community would have killed them all.”
The day after the protest, roads in Hammanskraal remain barricaded but evicted residents begin to rebuild their shacks. The unrelenting sound of hammers knocking against the steel frame of a municipal bus rings out as dusk creeps in.
Young men, their hands blackened from working with the charred metal, worked in small teams to dismantle large pieces of corrugated iron, to be used to rebuild shacks, and smaller pieces to sell as scrap metal.
The residents seems divided over who the land belongs to and how the occupation was sparked. Many who moved on to the property at the beginning of the year claimed it was occupied during a free-for-all on a first-come-first-served basis, but the Kekana family blames ward councillor Abraham Marobane.
Kekana says: “I know Marobane, he’s a proud man. I went to him before and he claimed it is municipal land. I disagreed and showed him a 1916 title deed. He said as councillors they have a right to the land. I just said okay, because I couldn’t argue with him.”
Community leader Jakes Maleka concurred they were given permission to occupy the land by Marobane. He has a letter of agreement signed by the councillor to prove it.
But Marobane denies this. “It’s not true. They are blaming me for things that are happening outside of my ward. Someone seems to have forged my signature on the letter of agreement. We are investigating that at the moment,” he says.
Greenfield residents expect the evictions will resume next week. The Tshwane metro police say five people were arrested for public violence and another arrest was made in connection with the two murders.