Land occupation defies a broken system

Visit any black area in the Eastern Cape and you will find a section called eNdlovini. This has a double meaning: the first literal translation is “at the elephant/place of the elephant”. The second meaning is more nuanced and slightly loaded: “the place at which we charged in and settled”.

The Xhosa word for elephant is “indlovu”, so eNdlovini invokes — at least for mother-tongue speakers — a powerful image of resistance.

The second meaning also denotes a unified force, while it also connotes defiance against the establishment.

Although the latter definition is a loose translation, it speaks to a phenomenon that has been prevalent throughout the Eastern Cape: “ukundlova”.

Ukundlova is the act of identifying a vacant piece of land on which to settle. Thereafter, a list of names is drawn up from backyard dwellers, new arrivals in the city and young adults looking to leave home.

Once that is done, residents come together to partition the vacant land, so those in need of space are apportioned plots. Those allocated these plots then buy or source material and start building their shacks.

Basic necessities such as water, sanitation and electricity are often an afterthought and tend to be superseded by the urgent need to have a roof over one’s head.

In most places where this organic form of development takes place, transport is not a problem because the taxi industry is responsive to new routes. So are “ojikeleza”, the local cabs.

There are many such eNdlovini settlements in the Eastern Cape — stretching from Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred and Jeffreys Bay to little Alexandria and beyond.

This is how most new settlements spring up in the province. Or at least this is one of the ways in which they do.

But the process is often complicated by bureaucracy. Officialdom dictates that such settlements are considered illegal because they come into existence without permission from the relevant authorities.

There is a section of Walmer called Airport Valley. In the late 1990s, it comprised mostly shacks built on sand dunes.

The majority of the people who had settled in that part of Walmer now live in RDP houses in Wells Estate near Motherwell.

In sections of Wells Estate, too, there have been moves by local residents to begin the process of ukundlova.

One such attempt was thwarted in June 2017, when residents started building the frames of their shacks.

Another was quashed in a section of bush alongside the M17 to Addo.

A relative called to complain that “uTrollip [Nelson Mandela mayor Athol Trollip] uyawachitha amatyotyombe akahleki.” (“Trollip demolishes shacks, he does not play.”)

But Trollip is not the focus of this piece — ukundlova is, as well as its main drivers. The act is often viewed in a negative light and frowned on, with commentators saying it threatens property rights.

Viewed from a different perspective, however, perhaps residents are being proactive about their rights by getting up and doing things for themselves.

Also, would it not be more constructive for municipalities to use their large networks of councillors to work with communities to determine their spatial needs instead of making their existence a problem?

It is misguided to attribute the spate of ukundlova unfolding in Gauteng — and elsewhere in the country — to the EFF’s utterances on land without talking to the people driving the phenomenon.

Ukundlova predates the EFF and will probably be around for a long time, as long as the conditions on the ground necessitate it.

The real scandal here is that the system has failed, and continues to do so.

For as long as that is the case, people will do whatever it takes to meet their valid needs.