100 families get new houses
Stallholders take on Ballito market boss
TRADERS at this year’s planned Ballito Christmas market claim a bogus event planner has duped them out of thousands of rands, and allegedly tried to flee the country when she was about to be exposed.
Traders said the event planner, who cannot be named as she has not been charged, still owes them money and stock after the market only ran on four of the nine days before Christmas.
Traders from across the country saw the series of scheduled events as an excellent trading opportunity.
The terms and conditions of the event stipulated that traders either pay a stall fee of R1 500 and have their stall manned by someone appointed by the organisers, with goods bar-coded and a 20 percent commission payable to the organisers, or, alternately, traders could pay R2 500 and run their own stalls and retain all the profit.
When there was not enough foot traffic and no bar coding to keep track of items sold, traders became suspicious and confronted the event planner.
Traders who spoke to The Sunday Tribune alleged that the event planner was at the airport ready to catch a flight to Namibia when she was arrested by police last Friday.
But they said she was back at the venue an hour later to continue the event. Traders confronted her and she told them she would be paying back the money that was missing and that she would sort out the bar-coding system.
But traders have not heard from her since.
One of the traders, Dina de Freitas, said she saw the market as an ideal opportunity for her new company, Pie House.
“I was happy to use it as a launch pad for my business.
“It was set in an ideal area and the advertisement seemed genuine. But the event location did not meet my expectations and I knew something was wrong when other traders started to complain.
“This issue has had serious ramifications for my business. I have lost the money I invested and my pies have reached their expiry date,” De Freitas said.
Another trader from the Louwveld, Jacki van Zyl, who owns a beading company, said she had lost almost R10 000.
She opted for the R1 500 option as she was in another province and said she had had to pay courier costs and some of her stock had gone missing.
“The advertising appealed to me and I knew that my beads would be a hit with Ballito holidaymakers. This is my livelihood and I am bitterly disappointed, but I will use this as a learning opportunity.”
Attempts to contact the event planner were unsuccessful. CHRISTMAS came early for over 100 families from the Polokwane Transit Camp, near Newlands East, when they were handed the keys to their new homes in Cornubia this week.
Many of them have moved in and are elated to have a roof over their heads after a long period in transit. Most are hoping to save enough money to buy furniture and other appliances for their new homes.
The process of allocating houses to beneficiaries started on December 17 and municipal trucks, as well as friends and family, helped the new homeowners move their belongings to Cornubia.
Wandile Khumalo, 20, who suffers from a spinal malformation, and his mother, Ntokozo, were overjoyed to have their own home.
The past three years have been “hell”, said Ntokozo. They were kicked out of a family member’s house in 2013 and had to live on the streets until they had enough money saved to rent a place.
They lived in Amaoti in Inanda this year, before hearing the news that they had been allocated a house in Cornubia specially modified to accommodate Wandile’s disability.
This was a fresh beginning. They had decorated their house and were proudly basking in its beauty when the Sunday Tribune spoke to them.
“I am very glad that my mom and I got this chance. It was challenging living in informal settlements because of my disability,” said Wandile.
“There were times when I fell in the bathroom and hurt myself badly and I often had to stay cooped up at home out of fear of getting hurt while outside.
“That is something of the past, now that we have a house we can call home. We have running water and electricity, which is a great blessing.”
Hlenge Dube, 42, may not have much in the new home she shares with her sister and three children, but she could not be happier.
She was surprised at first, she said, as she did not expect to move into her house so soon.
“It is a surreal feeling to know that I am a new homeowner. I was so excited that I did not eat for a day or two after I heard,” she said.
“When I got to my new house, and after all the unpacking was done, I looked around and said to myself, ‘what an amazing blessing’.”
Dube, who is unemployed, has to wait until she has the money to buy furniture for her house.
She said she had lived at the transit camp for seven years and “could not live in circumstances where we worried about whether there would be water, electricity and whether there would be damage to our property.”
Dumisane Luthuli, 58, received his new house three days before Christmas.
He said it was a breath of fresh air from the “bad conditions we previously lived in”.
Luthuli will share it with his four children.
“Now I feel equal to other South Africans. People looked at me different because I was from a transit camp and often did not give me the time of day. Now I can be respected,” he said.
Mayor James Nxumalo said that he had kept his promise that beneficiaries would get their new houses by Christmas.