Thousands of backyarders wait for City to provide services

A NEW settlement was born in Khayelitsha in less than a month after people, mostly backyarders, invaded a large piece of land along Spine Road.

The area, which is yet to be named, is home to more than a thousand families.

They occupied the land after no longer being able to afford paying rent to landlords, and have been waiting for the government to provide them with houses.

Khayelitsha and other areas across the city, including Vrygrond, Gugulethu, Philippi and Gugulethu, have seen an escalation in the number of land invasions.

Mayco member for informal settlements, water and waste services, and energy Xanthea Limberg said that between January 1 and the end of March, the number of structures the City’s anti-land invasion unit had demolished had ballooned by 1 800%.

Limberg said the unit had removed 18 700 illegal and unoccupied structures this year up to March, compared to 1 030 structures in the same period last year.

Asked how long it would take for the City to provide basic services such as water, electricity and communal toilets, and what the procedure the occupiers should follow to access these services would be, Limberg said the question was “very difficult” to answer.

“It is dependent on factors such as, but not limited to, legal processes, land ownership, the location of the closest council-owned land (if applicable) and density.”

“Conditions on the ground can also prevent the City from installing services in terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act, for instance, if the land is located on a flood plain,” said Limberg.

Khayelitsha resident Lumkile Beya, who is among the people living on the piece of land, said: “We won’t wait for provision of water or toilets; hence we decided to make plans on our own by digging holes for toilets, getting water from a nearby settlement and connecting electricity from the neighbouring community.

‘‘The most important thing for us now is to have places to live in. Things like electricity will be dealt with later,” he said.

Another resident, Bantu Noheku, said living in a tworoom shack with his family was the reason he decided to occupy the land.

“Everyone else is invading open spaces, and when I saw after a week that law enforcement agencies were not demolishing, I decided to join the other families. Many people here desperately need houses,” he said.