Discarded lives of the Jo’burg CBD
delivered more tents, sponge mattresses and blankets to the Wembley temporary camp.
Beside a heap of discarded beds and cupboards that once helped to shape homes, most at the camp complain of a lack of food and water. But mostly, it’s the bitter highveld cold that dominates their thoughts.
“There are many people who are young here, but we are weak. It’s because the cold at night and in the morning hits our joints. We eat once a day at night, so we have no energy,” said 34-year-old Tanzanian Abdullah Sulieman.
There are 24 toilets and two water tanks to service the camp.
The toilets, Sulieman said, are full within three days and the water tanks run dry before the end of each week. The sewage is collected every four days and the water tanks replenished every Monday. During the days in between, the camp residents use buckets or the field to relieve themselves, and collect water from a hosepipe that’s connected to a tap at a house next door.
The tents were set up in the yard next to the stadium because the building on the relocation site is already packed, explains Naboth Madoro from Zimbabwe, who was temporarily moved there more than a year and a half ago.
“It’s totally full inside, almost four to five people in one small room. And to make it worse, they are bringing more people,” Madoro told the M&G.
A recent court order compels the City of Johannesburg to provide alternative accommodation to anyone who is rendered homeless as a result of eviction.
With all of its temporary housing sites packed, and the high court granting more eviction orders, the tented camps have become the city’s only option.
The South Africans who were moved to Wembley from Fattis Mansions last week are housed in a bigger tent. The women have attempted to create a semblance of privacy, using curtains and mattresses to create small rooms.
Twenty-six-year-old Amanda Booi was among the residents evicted from Fattis, and now shares a small tent with five women. Her desperation for privacy and relief aid has grown over the past week while she has been menstruating.
Most of Booi’s possessions were damaged or destroyed in the move and she’s now been left at the Wembley camp with only her clothes, a few appliances and official documents. Without any toiletries or pain medication, she uses toilet paper as sanitary towels and huddles between the other women as temperatures drop to two degrees in the middle of the night.
“They gave us one roll of toilet paper each when we arrived here. I use that for my period, but mine is finished so I’m using my friend’s roll,” Booi said.
Whereas Booi and Sithole hope that the government will deliver an alternative and improved place to stay, men like Rahman Maulid, without passports or customers to continue their businesses, face the prospect of a slow demise. The only option left is to risk going into the city to find another building to occupy or a way to make some money.
“You go to the city, the police stops you and asks: ‘Where’s your papers?’ You end up in jail or you can die quickly. Here, you are getting thinner every day while no one is coming to help. It’s more like a slow death,” Maulid said.