Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Diep River families forced to move from homes
THIRTEEN Diep River families will lose their homes of 30 years to make way for a lowto middle-income housing development.
Houses owned by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) in Avondale Terrace and Massinger Road are due to be demolished to make way for a new housing development project which, according to the agency, is envisaged to commence in early 2020 and be completed 18 months later. According to the Prasa application, no changes to the current railway infrastructure are proposed. Earlier this week, Weekend Argus visited some of the affected families in the Prasa-owned homes. They said they were furious with Prasa as they had not been informed of the developments and only saw notices on lamp poles on December 9.
Pensioner James van der Merwe lived in Plumstead with his family before he was afforded an opportunity to move into his own property for a rental of R126 a month, beginning in 1989.
“I raised three children in the three-bedroom home, had many family gatherings and have also done some renovations to the property out of my own pocket,” he said.
Van der Merwe said he and his neighbours had been promised an opportunity to buy the houses five years after they moved in.
“At the time they (Prasa) was selling off the houses in Plumstead, but after those sales they suddenly stopped and we were told we would not be sold the houses anymore,” he said.
Similarly, Venecia Thomas moved into her home 30 years ago with her two sons and her husband Peter, who was a train conductor at the time.
Following an injury on duty in 1998, Peter was medically boarded.
“He was shot at Lansdowne train station while opening the ticket office in the morning; three men approached and shot at him,” Thomas said.
After his injury, the Thomas family lost all hope of owning a home. “In 1991 we wrote to the Spoornet Housing Scheme requesting to buy the house. We had already received bond approval of R83 000 and the house was R62 000 at the time.
“The then assistant manager, Deon Scheepers, wrote back to us saying our application was not approved. Then they said they would sell to us after five years but that too never materialised,” explained Thomas.
While the residents believe that 87 units would be built on the erven, Kaparo Molefi, the acting executive manager at Prasa Corporate Real
Estate Solutions confirmed to Weekend Argus that there are in fact 212 units planned.
“We are in the process of finalising the best model between sale and rental stock,” Molefi said.
He added that due to the “market demand, the preferred market for Diep River is rental housing for low- to middleincome people.”
“The number will be finalised post town planning approval of this proposed development,” he said.
“Our regional office will be in touch with the tenants and notify them timeously,” Molefi added.
In 2015, 26 families living in South Road, Retreat, were evicted from their councilowned homes to make home for a MyCiTi trunk route from Khayelitsha to Wynberg.
asanda.sokanyile@inl.co.za