Shanty-dwellers look forward to houses
STEPPING UP: FROM A SHACK AT ERASMUS FARM TO A HOUSE IN MARIKANA
Conditions in the shanties are difficult, with no lights, running water or toilets.
It’s Wednesday, 12 noon, yet women are sitting in the sun, still wearing their pyjamas and doeks, chatting with their male friends. Hearing we are from The Citizen, people of this community of Erusmus Farm, now an informal settlement, cluster around to share their past and present challenges. Some of the women emerge from their small, dilapidated shacks, barefooted, to take part.
This is a community that is deeply familiar with poverty. Some community members are over 30 years of age, yet they have never owned a shack or any kind of decent house.
Never in their lives have they used a pit toilet, let alone a flushing toilet. Plastic bags are used at night, while during the day they relieve themselves in the bushes.
They fetch water from a nearby farm or from a water tank – though this has been empty for some time, they say.
For light, they use candles and they cook on paraffin stoves. The local government gives them each 20 litres of paraffin a month.
But their everyday problems will soon be a thing of the past.
Members of this community will be moving to reconstruction development programme (RDP ) houses in Marikana Extension Two.
And it’s a place they think of as paradise.
Palesa Kibi, 26, and her sister Lebogang, 28, are among a group who will be moving into the RDP houses when they are completed.
“I’m happy because I’m going to live a better life. I live in this shack with my child and sister and I pay R150 every month for rental. I am not working, my boyfriend gives me money to pay for rent,” says Kibi.
“I was born in a shack and I am not happy that I live here. We don’t have toilets, or electricity and water. It feels like we are lost. We have to go to the bushes to relieve ourselves and anyone can see you. It is embarrassing.”
Lebogang chips in: “We are struggling. We don’t have jobs. I survive with my child’s grant. We can’t even dig a pit toilet because we cannot afford it. I am happy that I will be moving in to my own house.”
Their neighbour, Kenneth Dube, will also soon be occupying one of the new houses.
“I was born here in a shack and I grew up here. I have never lived in a proper house where there’s electricity, flushing toilet and running tap water. Life is hard because we don’t have jobs.”
Dube was lucky to inherit his shack from his parents, who have since died. Some of the mineworkers will however not benefit from the project.
A mineworker who preferred not to be named said: “I don’t qualify to live in one of those houses because I earn more than R3 500. I pay R850 to rent in a backyard. It hurts because we fought for this land, but we are not going to benefit from this project.”