Foam party

Hundreds of people in Mfuleni, Cape Town, have no nearby place to relieve themselves after heavy rain turned a vacant piece of land normally used for that purpose by the residents of Burundi informal settlement into a lake.

The heavy rain caused a nearby canal to overflow, flooding the vacant land and nearby shacks.

Community leader Masikholwe Madyongolo said the shack dwellers had been using the land for that purpose since 2004, because public toilets were blocked and located far from their shacks.

They also have to stand in queues before they use the community toilets.

“Residents avoid the toilets and use the land because they fear catching coronavirus when they are standing in a line.”

Or the residents have to walk about 20 minutes to use the toilets at a shopping centre. Alternatively, they have to go to nearby RDP houses to beg to use the toilets, Madyongolo said.

Some residents near the canal have left their flooded shacks and slept at relatives, acquaintances and friends, Madyongolo said.

“When they return in the mornings, their shacks have been burgled and their belongings stolen.”

Community leader Nonceba Ntshanka said some people have nowhere else to go.

“Flood victims now [use] buckets inside their shacks and empty them into the dam. I do the same,” she said.

Ntshanka wants the City of Cape Town to move the residents to a drier area. She said the water normally takes weeks to recede.

Baxolele Nqevu’s wife “wades through the water and makes food for me and my kids. We sit on the bed while we eat because the shack is flooded.

“We can’t go elsewhere because we have no money to hire trucks and pay rent,” he said.

Lumka Zibi, who stays with three children and her husband Erick Nyathi, said her flooded shack was cold.

“I scoop the water out with a bucket, but ... there is water everywhere,” she said.

Avuziwe Mpiti’s one-month-old daughter now has a cough.

Mpiti strengthened her floor with cement and bricks in January to prevent water from filtering through. “But the water coming from outside has caused the cement to crack. Now my shack is full of water,” she said. – GroundUp

Picture: EPA-EFE A man walks his dog through thick sea foam blowing ashore during a storm in Seapoint, Cape Town, yesterday. The third in a succession of powerful cold fronts have swept over the peninsula, causing extensive damage. Waves in excess of 10m have been crashing into the Cape’s west coast with gale force winds and flooding.

Picture: Vincent Lali BAILING OUT. Erick Nyathi tries to empty water from his shack.