For a place called ‘home’
Aloe Ridge units. The two-bedroom flat he now lives in has nothing more than the blanket on which he sleeps, a fold-up chair and a kettle. A small packet of tea, a half-empty jar of sugar and a tub of peanut butter is all the food there is. For Ntuli, however, it is a marked improvement in his life before joining the occupation.
“For three years, I was homeless. But, luckily, because of this, I have another chance at life now. I have a shelter now.”
Recalling the first day he moved into his flat, Ntuli smiles. “That feeling … ja. I was over-happy. It’s hard not to have shelter. I have a daughter. I have a son. Now, I can focus on getting a job. Before it was hard, because you need to find a place to sleep.”
Pleased as he is at finally having decent shelter, the day of the occupation was “very hard”.
“There was a large number of armed police. We thought they were going to shoot us but we told them we are here for shelter, not to harm anyone. We negotiated until early that evening.
“But it was not violent. It was hard, but not violent. It was hard for us, ja, because we didn’t know what would happen. But we knew that what we were doing was not wrong, uyabon’. They could shoot us, they could hurt us but what we were doing was not wrong. Because they keep postponing, keep postponing. It’s frustrating. It’s painful. Uyabon’?”
Menzi Mkhize is the KwaZulu-Natal regional secretary of the MK Military Veterans Association. The unit he occupies has even less furnishing than Ntuli’s. A curtain serves as his mattress. Patting his jacket, he smiles. “And every night, this is my cushion.”
Despite this, he says: “We are going to stay here until our houses are built. Once they give me the key, then I can move from this place, because I … I mean, where … where can I move? If they remove me from here, they must give me a key, show me the house that it is complete. We are not resisting to move. And we are not fighting our government. We just want the officials to fast-track the building of our houses.”
According to Mkhize, the MK vets and other organisations representing former liberation fighters have been meeting the province’s department of human settlements since 2009 in an attempt to speed up the delivery of houses.
“You know, when you walk out of a meeting, you always say it was a productive one. But then, a while later, no implementation. So we took a decision, because we were just tired of these people with their empty promises. We then targeted this area and found, ukuthi, there are lots of spaces here which are empty.
“We are veterans. Other countries have done these things for their war veterans. It’s not that we are demanding ridiculous things. No, it is our right. We left the country uneducated, angithi, because we wanted to fight for the freedom of the country. We are just frustrated.”
Kebby Maphatsoe, the deputy minister of the department of military veterans, appears to be equally frustrated.
“For us as a department the problem with providing houses for military veterans is we can’t build houses
Mbulelo Baloyi, spokesperson for the KwaZulu-Natal department of human settlements, said that the main reason for the delay was that military veterans had insisted that companies belonging to them were brought in as implementing agents in the construction of these houses.
“The first 18 months is the planning stage. We could not even complete this stage because of all this toing and froing,” says Baloyi.
“Then, when we requested the details of these companies, they did not initially meet the necessary requirements,” he added.
Maphatsoe adds that, because “we have been taken for a ride so many times”, the department has decided to withhold the top-up funds from underperforming provinces from the beginning of this financial year “until we see the houses finished”.
The provinces that have performed well are Mpumalanga, the Free State, the Eastern Cape and Gauteng. “The rest are really not performing well,” he adds.
He says his department has not yet met Nomaindia Mfeketo, the newly appointed minister of human settlements, “because we want her to get settled into her new position”.
But his hope is to have his department ultimately take over the building of houses from human settlements.
Until then, or until the provision of houses is expedited, homeless former freedom fighters must fend — or fight — for themselves.
Forced to spend another cold Highveld winter in the Pretoria streets, Mboweni says: “Me, I don’t care about my suffering, but my children … I must take care of my children. I don’t see them because it’s a long distance for me to travel. You need money to travel. That’s why I need a house, so I can bring them to me, to my house.
“But all we hear are promises. Just promises, promises and more promises.”