Vultures in Quarry Road

Available with Photos from
http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/07/10808.php

Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006 at 8:05 AM

A fire in Quarry Road informal settlement, Clare Estate, Durban, has
been an opportunity for a number of predators.

Quarry Road Fire – 23 July 2006

Christina Khethiwe’s small hands are covered with ash. She rubs them
compulsively, playing with her bangle. It’s the only piece of jewellery she
has left. “Everything that was mine is gone,” she says. “On Friday night, we
woke up at midnight. Everyone was shouting ‘fire, fire’, and we woke up and
tried to pull things out of our house.”

Christina lost her school uniform, all her books, and her shoes. “I don’t
know when I’ll go back to school. On Monday I will absent myself.” Although
she is only eleven, she has the weariness of a woman decades older. “My
brother won’t be going either. He lots everything too. He’s seven.”

The shack fired that engulfed Christina’s world happened in the Quarry Road
shack settlement in Clare Estate. A fire was left unattended. It spread
quickly through the timber-walled and plastic-topped houses. Over 40 shacks
were destroyed, and more than 300 people left homeless.

The local councillor, Jayraj Bachu, had reportedly told the media that he
had provided housing for those who had been made homeless. Those in the
settlement knew nothing about it. Bachu has also said that Quarry Road
shackdwellers had been scheduled for “slum clearance”, and that this should
be an opportunity for the city to enact its plans.

Mnikelo Ndabankulu, 19, of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement, who raised
money and helped carry wood for the shackdwellers in Quarry Road, said “just
because we live in the jondolos doesn’t mean our minds are jondolos.”

The shackdwellers movement has objected strongly to the government’s
apartheid-era legislation for “slum clearance”, which they criticise as
being woefully underfunded, will involve forced removals to areas with few
economic opportunities, and is directed principally by the desire to see
poor people evicted from the city before 2010.

Bachu wasn’t the only one to take advantage of the shackdwellers’
misfortune. Local companies provided free shipping palettes, to be used to
rebuild the houses. But the drivers delivering the crates asked for payment
– “whatever you can afford,” reported one shackdweller – before unloading
them.

Once they’d been unloaded, several bakkies circled around the lumber, like
vultures, taking planks away. They were chased off by some of the older
women from the settlement.