Daily Sun, July 2007

[fsg_gallery id=”378″]Front page of the Daily Sun: Come and Live Here, Mabaso!

Come and live here, Mabaso!

KZN HOUSING ANGER GROWS!

HOMELESS people in KZN are angry – VERY angry.

They re tired of waiting for houses that do not come…tired of not getting answers to their questions.

NOW THEY THINK THAT LOCAL OFFICIALS ARE NOT TAKING THEM SERIOUSLY ENOUGH!

Officials should leave their offices and come and see for themselves, angry squatter leaders said.

The comments of Lennox Mabaso, a spokesman for the KZN Department of Housing, were reported in the Daily Sun yesterday.

He said there was no housing backlog in KZN.

Later he explained further by saying what he actually said was that there were no half-built developments which had been abandoned by developers in KZN – as there were in other provinces.

But that did not pacify angry people.

S bu Zikode, president of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement of South Africa, said I challenge Mabaso and his boss, the MEC Mike Mabuyakulu, to come and spend five days and live in a shack and experience at first-hand the suffering the people have to endure!

Zikode said there were about 500 informal settlements in the province and 80% of these settlements are in the eThekwini region.

The people that matter are never consulted. Decisions are taken at the ICC, Umhlanga and the Sibaya Casino. For a long time we have negotiated with the municipality and asked them to tell us how many people are on the waiting list. But no one can give us a figure!

We want answers to five questions. Where the houses for the homeless are to be built? When? How many? How? And what assurance do we have?

Mabaso told Daily Sun he never claimed that there was no housing backlog.

What I said is that we do not have any housing projects left abandoned by developers. We have checks and balances in place to ensure developers complete projects. Regarding shack settlements, our department has been dealing with a moving target.

People have been allocated houses but rent them out and then return and build shacks. We also have slumlords who own a number of shacks and charge rent for them.

We have passed the Slum Bill and this will ensure that no new slums are created. In the meantime, we will carry out surveys and then get a real number of people that need homes, said Mabaso.

Mabaso said that since 1999 they had built close to 500 000 houses in the province.

Update: In a debate on iGagasi FM this morning Mabaso promised that he would come and live in Kennedy Road for 5 days.

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Daily Sun: Offical to Join the Poor

A TOP local government official has accepted the challenge to live for a week in a so-called informal settlement.

Lennox Mabaso, spokesman for the KwaZulu-Natal housing department says he s ready.

The challenge to come and live in a shack to see what it was really like came from the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement of South Africa which represents shack dwellers around the country.

Mabaso had been challenged to stay for five days in the Kennedy Road shacks on the western outskirts of Durban.

I have no problem going to the informal settlements. In my student days I lived at Cato Crest informal settlement. So this is nothing new to me , said the official.

He added that he still has many friends living in informal settlements – and regularly visits them.

But Abahlali baseMjondolo president S bu Zikode said he would wait and see. I m glad he chose to come and spend some time at the settlement. It will give him a first hand account of our people s hardships, said Zikode.

* Daily Sun will accompany Mabaso to the Kennedy Road shacks and keep readers up to date with how he gets on.

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LENNOX Mabaso, a senior KZN housing department official, said last week that all the developments started in the province so far had been completed.

There were NO examples where projects had been started and then abandoned by developers, he said.

BUT HE S WRONG…HE S TALKING RUBBISH!

That s the accusation from Fred Wagner, the chairman of a community forum in Pietermaritzburg.

He told the People s Paper that the housing department was supposed to build 714 RDP houses at Madiba Park, Ward 14 in Eastwood, Pietermaritzburg.

The department issued 714 subsidies to residents of the area. But developers only managed to build about 500 houses. They then built the foundations for more than 200 houses before vanishing – and that was in December 2005.

Mabaso says no project was abandoned. What is then? asked Wagner, pointing to half-finished foundations.

He challenged Mabaso – and his boss Mike Mabuyakulu, the MEC – to visit the area and see for themselves.

He further said: The concrete slabs that have been abandoned have now become playgrounds for the kids. They play soccer there. The developers also built a very narrow road. It is only 2m wide when it was supposed to be 4 m…for that they were paid R2 million! he said angrily.

This is the SECOND challenge to Mabaso. Last week he was challenged to spend give days in informal settlements by the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement.

He accepted the challenge – but has not yet given a date when he will move into a squatter settlement.

* About his latest challenge Mabaso said he needed time to do his own research before he could comment.