M&G: ‘They can pack up and go’

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‘They can pack up and go’

by Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian

An oppressive pall hangs over the Motala Heights informal settlement in Pinetown near Durban. It comes not from the dump site nearby the wood-and-iron houses nor from sewage, but rather from the clampdown on basic civil liberties — the freedom of movement and political association.

“Ever since we became more aware of our rights and started fighting for them we have been living with this sense of threat from the landlord [Ricky Govender],” says resident Shamita Naidoo, who lives on a property adjacent to Govender. “He has sent me a letter saying I am prohibited from entering his land — where my mother lives, in the house my parents built and where I was born. I will be arrested otherwise.”

“I don’t understand why we are being threatened. We’re not fighting Govender, we’re fighting the government for houses so that we can move off Govender’s land,” says James Pillay, who has been living in Motala Heights for 37 years and, for the past 16 years, on land bought by Govender five years ago. Tenants say intimidation levels have increased since they joined residents from Lot 49, another informal settlement nearby, who have been resisting the eThekwini municipality’s attempts to remove them to a low-cost development 15km away. Others have been told to get out on to the streets.

The Lot 49 group at Motala Heights managed to obtain a court interdict in November last year to stop the further destruction of informal homes. Naidoo and Pillay — who live in an area of about 300 self-built houses — allege a litany of intimidatory tactics on Govender’s part, including dumping of waste from his glass factory; burning of plastic waste near homes with children; not being allowed to photograph their homes or freely associate; and physical and verbal abuse of residents.

Last week a journalist and photo­grapher from the Mercury newspaper had to be escorted out of the area by Metro police after allegedly being threatened by three people employed by Govender. The men returned the camera memory stick only after police threatened to charge them with theft. Abahlali baseMjondolo activist Richard Pithouse said one man had told the photographer he would “find you and have you killed” if the paper ran a story. “He said he had shotguns and that he had the support of the SAPS and Jacob Zuma. He mentioned Zuma’s name a couple of times.”

When the Mail & Guardian visited Motala Heights a new sign warning that the area was “private property: trespassers would be prosecuted” had been erected. Govender, who is planning a high-cost housing development in the area, is adamant he is well within his rights and that tenants are clinging to their cheap rents, which range from R150 to R200 a month a house. He says he has been trying to evict residents for the past five years, to no avail. “They must put their names on a housing list and take their things and leave. I can’t look after them while they are busy making children,” he says.

But for many residents, the issue goes beyond cheap rent. They feel South Africa’s history is largely responsible — including being left to the mercy of developers. The area was founded by Mohamed Ahmed Motala who, in the 1920s, bought the large tract of land, sections of which were subsequently subdivided and sold to Indian market gardeners. It was declared a “whites only” area after the Group Areas Act of 1966.

Councillor Manilall Naranjee says the “land has essentially been in cold storage since the Group Areas Act”. The area was deproclaimed in 1981 and it was intended that “all land purchased by the public sector during the Group Areas Act … [was] to be acquired by the Development Association” with plans including “the division of the land into 850 plots of 450m2 each”. Naranjee says it took 10 years after 1981 for a restructure plan to be finalised for the area. He says “the erstwhile Pinetown Borough council had given the squatters in Lot 49 written permission to develop their houses in that area”.

Meanwhile, local landowners, such as Govender, have been buying up the property in the area.

Click here to see the digital archive on the Motala Heights struggle.