Displaced residents’ battle to survive
Access to housing, which for many living in the Motherwell region means a vicious cycle of land invasions and evictions, remains one of the area’s most pressing economic and political challenges. Hendrick Mphande explored the impact of recent evictions o
FOR three days, desperate mother Thobela Timakwe, 42, and her three young sons did not have access to water to bath themselves, as she wondered around each day looking for somebody to take them in for the night.
“I simply drop my three boys at the nearby dumping area where I feel they will be safe for the day while I move around from house to house asking whether they could accommodate me and my boys just for a night.
“I do not know what the next move will be,” Timakwe said.
She was interviewed on a street in an area where it is believed about 300 families are displaced after being evicted from the Phola Park area in Wells Estate on Port Elizabeth’s northeastern boundary, a little more than a week ago.
Evictions, all from municipal land, were also carried out in the Ikamvelihle, Ramaphosa and NU29 areas, which, along with Wells Estate, fall within the greater Motherwell area.
Timakwe and her three boys, like many other evictees, have been in dire straits since the demolition of their shack.
Appearing dishevelled, Timakwe called the evictions inhumane, and said she was at her wits’ end.
The unemployed single mother was searching for her children in Phola Park.
She said she and her boys used to live in Qaqawuli, New Brighton, in a house owned by her brother’s girlfriend.
But they were kicked out when the couple broke up.
She said when she heard of vacant land in Wells Estate about seven months ago, she thought that it was the answer to her prayers.
But just six months after occupying the land which she and other land invaders had thought would solve their housing problems, they found themselves literally out in the cold in the middle of winter.
Timakwe believes the local authority should have made alternative arrangements to resettle people who were evicted from shacks in Phola Park.
“I am absolutely devastated. I have lost everything. I often spend the night here and there. People cannot afford to accommodate me for long.
“They complain that I have a big family. They fear their water and electricity would be used up. I have nowhere else to go,” she said.
Passing a dirty, littered road, Timakwe called out to her children in a broken voice. But there was no immediate response.
“But I left them here,” she said in a shaken tone, pointing to a heap of rubbish.
“It is much safer for them. But I do not know where they might have gone.”
Suddenly the youngest of her boys, Sithembise, 3, appeared from a house on a corner, with tears running down his cheeks. “His brothers left him and he thought I would not come soon enough,” Timakwe said as her son held her tightly.
The pair then joined other displaced community members – including elderly and disabled people – who had gathered at a spot, just a stone’s throw away from where they had been evicted.
Still battling to piece their lives back together, some residents gathered there told of the difficulties of having to spend the first night out in the cold, while others spoke of the kindness of residents who had opened their RDP houses to accommodate them and had “packed them into their homes like sardines in a tin”.
Pensioner Nosisi Ngxelo, 62, was one of the kind-hearted Samaritans who opened her heart, and the door of her two-bedroom RDP house in Wells Estate, to accommodate 10 destitute families.
“I do not have enough space in my house. But the reason I took them in is because these are my fellow human beings.
“Some of them [are] the same age as my mother. I cannot simply fold my arms when they are in distress,” she said.
Nokwamkela Ngumbela, 75, who lost her shack, was one of the evictees given shelter by Ngxelo.
“What is happening is very painful. They demolished my shack and in the process, my building material was destroyed,” Ngumbela said.
“On top of that, I had to dodge [rubber] bullets when the police began to shoot at us,” she said.
While dozens of families claim to have been left without a roof over their heads, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has defended the evictions.
“Eviction notices are issued which allows people to first voluntarily vacate a piece of land, failing which they will then be evicted,” municipal spokesman Mthubanzi Mniki said.
“They invaded the piece of land in winter, so they had to be evicted with speed to prevent escalation [of invasions].
“Remember, land invasion is an illegal act, irrespective of the season in which it is done.”
Ward 60 (Wells Estate) councillor Mvuzo Mbelekane blamed the municipality for the situation evicted residents now found themselves in.
“What is happening here is that people have lodged complaints, which include, among other issues, that the housing list was riddled with corruption,” he said.