The sad demise of poor Pomfret
RAVAGED: LOOTERS RAN AMOK AFTER POLICE STATION CLOSED IN 2005
About 3 000 of the original 5 000 inhabitants remain in the North West town.
As the midday sun beats down on the desert town of Pomfret in North West Province, 29-year-old Marcela Viemba pushes open a crooked metal gate and walks across a barren yard towards the front door of a forlorn red brick bungalow with a terracotta roof.
“This used to be my home,” Viemba says, turning to look at the varying states of collapse of other properties on either side of the tree-lined street. “It used to be so nice here in Pomfret, but it’s not a place to live anymore.”
Viemba moved to Pomfret, a former asbestos mine camp, at just three months old. Her father was among a group of Angolan soldiers who fought for apartheid South Africa’s notorious 32 Battalion. They were settled here with their families in 1989 at the end of the conflict in Namibia and Angola, when Namibia gained independence and Pomfret became a South African military base.
Although residents still consider themselves Angolan, and Portuguese remains the lingua franca, they are all South African citizens and many have known no home but Pomfret. Only a handful of the 100 or so remaining military veterans have ever returned to Angola.
But the future of this uniquely homogenous community has become increasingly uncertain since the military base was closed in 2000 and ownership was transferred to the Department of Public Works.
Various departments of local and national government have stated their intention to relocate residents and demolish the town, citing the alleged risk of asbestos-related illnesses stemming from the old mine, which is visible on a hillside just beyond the perimeter of the town itself.
Most recently, an October 2017 report by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation stated: “The discovery of asbestos contamination in Pomfret renders the environment unsafe and unclean. Allowing the community to remain in such a condition is a fundamental violation of their human rights.”
Some current residents told GroundUp there were rumours they’d all be moved out by the end of 2018.
It has been 13 years since Pomfret residents were first made aware of a relocation plan and approximately 3 000 of the original 5 000 inhabitants remain, almost all of them black Angolan familes and descendants of the original veterans.
The few white military families who once lived here have long since departed. Those left behind have watched their town gradually deteriorate around them.
Much of the town was ravaged by looters after the local police station was shuttered in 2005. In 2008, scores of families, including Viemba’s, were moved to RDP houses in Mahikeng.
Viemba comes back to Pomfret to visit family once every year or so and is still visibly upset by the dereliction. Among the ruins are three empty public swimming pools and a dilapidated sports club that was once equipped with plush squash and tennis courts and a grand hall for hosting concerts and film screenings.
A 2008 court interdict put a temporary halt to the relocations and the accompanying demolition of the town, but it hasn’t stopped the steady erosion of services. Eskom shut off the electricity in December 2014, which subsequently interrupted the water supply. Residents have since had to fill water containers from rain tanks or the few public boreholes scattered across town.
The combination of socioeconomic woes and military heritage has led many Pomfret veterans and their male descendants to join controversial private security outfits in conflict zones as far away as Kosovo and Iraq.
“If you’re from Pomfret you aren’t really exposed to another way of life,” says Martin Antonio, a former resident who now owns businesses in the security sector in Pretoria.
“So there will always be people from Pomfret going into that kind of job because they don’t see any other option.” This story has been shortened Republished from Ground Up
It used to be so nice here