Two Children Seriously Injured in a Fire in the eLindelani Settlement

Monday, 6 January 2020
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Two Children Seriously Injured in a Fire in the eLindelani Settlement

The family of Mazeka in our Lindelani branch started the year 2020 in a very bad way. The family lost everything in a fire that broke out last night, at around 9pm.

The fire was started by a candle that fell on the bed while the eldest child was in the toilet. Two children aged 9 and 17 sustained serious burn in the fire. They have been treated at a nearby clinic where they are being taken care of. However, their lives will never be the same again. Their lives will be divided in to the time before and after the fire. 

The Disaster Management has not arrived at the fire ever since. When the ward councillor was contacted he said that he does not attend to community issues at night as he fears for his life. He asked the community to take photos and send it to him.

This is the everyday contempt with which the government treats impoverished black people. More than twenty-five years after apartheid we are still not counted as human beings, or citizens.

The community does not have electricity which is why the family had to resort to using the candle. Impoverished people are systematically denied electricity when they live in places of their own choosing, and when we are given formal access to electricity by the state it always comes after years of struggle.

Our movement has been insisting that shack fires are political since 2005, and insisting that they be treated as a national emergency and that urgent measures be put in place to mitigate the risk of fire.

It is a norm that when poor people who are already living in inhuman conditions in shack settlements seek for assistance in emergency those who are in power do not respond on time, or at all. However, when they seek votes the very poor people are the ones who are their main target. We have become vote bank for politicians who come to lie to us when elections are coming but treat us as if we are not human beings the rest of the time.

We continue to insist that the recognition of our full and equal humanity is not negotiable. We cannot accept that our children continue to be devoured by fires in 2020.

Zanele Mtshali 062 437 9077
George Bonono 073 067 3274