Homeless freedom fighters battle
Many Umkhonto weSizwe veterans find themselves living on the streets, abandoned by the country that they helped to free
Every night Moses Mboweni sleeps between perfectly pruned shrubs next to a busy Pretoria intersection. “But only when it is not raining,” he says. The space, little more than 1m in length, seems too small for the 63-year-old’s 1.7m frame. Pointing to a tiny open space between two shrubs, he says: “Ah, I just put my legs there and I can sleep okay. I know how to do these things. I am a soldier. I am trained. I can take care of myself.”
A former Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) freedom fighter, Mboweni spent seven years in exile before returning to his home in Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga. Diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, Mboweni found it difficult to hold down a job. For the 20 years since his last job, the father of two has been homeless.
The Military Veterans Act 18 of 2011 stipulates all the benefits military veterans are entitled to, including pension, access to healthcare and housing. Under the Act, the minister has the responsibility, “subject to available resources and any regulation”, to ensure that benefits are provided.
Zakhe Majozi is a former freedom fighter who, like Mboweni, has had to make the streets of Pretoria his home.
“My cardboard and plastics, that was my home.” He uses the past tense because he has recently managed to put together enough money to buy himself a shack. “I paid R500 for it. It is mine,” he says with pride.
Located a short walk from an abandoned building in a tiny informal settlement, the shack is little more than a wooden frame covered with canvas. The precariously built structure’s two rooms accommodates about seven or eight people.
“I invited some other homeless guys to share my shack with me, because I know what it is like to have to live on the streets,” says Majozi, who has been homeless since 2006.
Originally from KwaZulu-Natal, the young Majozi joined MK because “my family was always very poor and I always blamed apartheid for that”.
“When my mother had to leave our house to find work, I asked her, ‘Why are you leaving me like this?’ I was angry. That was why I ended up fighting the apartheid regime.”
His dream of coming back to a country in which he could enjoy the freedom he fought for was shattered as soon as he set foot back in South Africa.
“I was among the last of the MK soldiers to come back in late 1994. When we came back into the country, we were searched by the SADF [South African Defence Force]. Something clicked in me. I remember thinking, ‘Is this the freedom we fought for?’”
Vuyo Mabija was studying to be lawyer at Fort Hare when he realised “joining the struggle was a priority over and above education, because our people were dying”.
Crossing the border into Botswana in 1978, Mabija remained in exile as a freedom fighter until 1992. After his return to his hometown of Port Elizabeth, he realised “there was no home no more”.
“I discovered when I came back home that my mother had died and we had lost our family home. There was sorrow. In abundance. It was a very sorrowful time,” the 69-year-old says.
Moving to Pretoria to find employment, he soon found himself trying to survive as a casual labourer.
“I did not have a home. I became homeless because there was no home for me in Port Elizabeth and here in Pretoria I knew nobody.”
Mabija remained homeless from 1992 until late 2016 when, because of a special pension grant, he could finally afford to put a roof over his head. His impeccably neat secondfloor flat in central Pretoria is a world away from the living conditions of Mboweni and Majozi. But it is furnished with little more than a single bed, a chair, a two-plate stove and a side table on which a small plastic radio is placed. “I like to listen to SAfm,” he smiles.
“I’m happier than what I was before. But it is still not ideal. I would appreciate, you know, a house. Just to be well accommodated in a house. To be able to enjoy a normal life.”
Sibongile Khumalo is the head of Pan African Genesis, a nongovernmental organisation that addresses the military veterans’ problems.
“Let me tell you something,” she says. “There is nothing as dangerous as an angry soldier. Because they are sitting on a powder keg that is ready to explode. These ones are calm,” she says, referring to Mboweni, Majozi and Mabija. “Those other ones that are conducting protests, they are angry.”
Anger and frustration with the slow delivery of housing for military veterans saw a group of former freedom fighters occupying the Aloe Ridge housing complex in Westgate, Pietermaritzburg, earlier this month.
Siyabonga Mndaweni is KwaZuluNatal’s provincial chairperson of the Azanian National Liberation Army and the organiser of the occupation. A soft-spoken man, Mndaweni speaks in measured tones about the “anger and frustration” that led the 330 military veterans to occupy empty units in the low-cost housing complex.
“The reason for us taking over this place is based on the reality that our government is failing us. Since 2008, the provincial government has promised that they would build houses for us; that they have secured money from the department [of military veterans]. But there has been no construction. Nothing has happened. We only have the foundations laid for 11 houses, but this region — the Umgundlovu district alone — has more than 700 members. Twenty-four years into this democracy and we are still homeless,” he says.
Mthokozisi Ntuli is a former MK member who occupied one of the