The government to go ahead to build houses in Shallcross for flood victims despite protests Shallcross community members protested this week against a project to build houses for flood victims.
Image: Thobeka Ngema
In an attempt to appease tensions in Shallcross a ward councillor has indicated that fifty percent of houses to be built in Shallcross community for flood-affected victims, will go to people who are already living there, although they were not affected by floods.
This, according to local councillor Sibusiso Khuboni, was to calm down tension from protestors who were refusing to have victims from around the city moving in.
Khuboni of Ward 17, which incorporates part of Shallcross, located in the South of Durban, told this reporter on Wednesday that some of the people who participated in the protest, have accepted the generous offers and agreed to have new neighbours moving in.
However, a member of the Shallcross Civic and Ratepayers Association (Scara), who declined to be named, said the offer has not been formally communicated to the association and the community.
“He (Khuboni) has never formally engaged Scara,” she said.
It was reported that during the protest on Monday, multiple gunshots were fired allegedly by certain people who were unhappy about having additional members in the community.
The chaos led to Human Settlements and Transport MEC Siboniso Duma calling off a press briefing to announce a new housing project.
Department spokesperson Ndabezinhle Sibiya told Daily News that gunshots were fired “and some community members have advised us to leave immediately”.
He said there were people hell-bent on intimidating officials from continuing with the project, although the people were divided about it.
“Some community members have openly pleaded with Duma to proceed with construction of these houses as they are the victims of the disaster,” said Sibiya.
Khuboni said the situation was calm on Wednesday and also insisted that the construction of 85 housing units, which was allocated more than R20 million, would go ahead.
“This tension was created by people who were complaining about the unavailability of water and mixed this up with the housing development, which are unrelated issues,” he said.
He had brought in officials from eThekwini Municipality's water department to explain the process of fixing the water supply.
He said the capacity of the local water reservoir indicates that there was enough water to be shared with the new residents.
“Others do understand while others will never understand because there is a political influence.
“There was an issue of racism, but I dealt with it when they started by explaining that they are not living on an island; they are living in South Africa and that after 1994, the policies of segregation were buried after we voted.
“The constitution allows everybody to live in the area which the government has allocated,” said Khuboni.
He said since the apartheid times, the area was low-cost housing.
During the state of the province address debate on Tuesday, Duma said the protest was a challenge to the government’s effort to build the houses for flood victims on the identified land as “there was a syndrome and a tendency of saying not in my not in my back yard”.
“Saying people must not build in those areas because it devalues their houses.
“(On Monday) there were even gunshots, people saying there was not going to be a building and they should be built in KwaMashu.
“We are going to build houses for our people at Shallcross,” said Duma.
In the same Sopa debate, Premier Ntuli said: “People of a certain colour do not want houses built for the flood victims because it's going to harm the value of their area.”
Scara chairperson Allan Govender said the government wanted to add new houses to the already collapsing water infrastructure.
“The water goes on and off, sometimes there is no water for 12 or 13 days, it comes out for an hour or two hours, and it goes off again, it is very erratic,” said Govender.
He also claimed to know nothing about the pledge to allocate 17% of the houses to the already existing community members.
Govender said that if the authorities go ahead with the project, the association would approach the court for an interdict.
When asked about racism, Govender said: “We never said anything about race, we don’t have a problem as we have black people living among us for ages.
“None of our documentation has cited anything about race, that is foolish as we are all human.”
bongani.hans@inl.co.za
