http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=522519

AS HUNDREDS of residents of Soweto’s Kliptown informal settlement burnt tyres and protested over housing yesterday, Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa was launching Public Service Week.

Protesters clashed with police and 16 people were arrested for public violence.

Metro police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wayne Minaar said: “Rubber bullets had to be used to control the crowd as they were getting violent.”

Nomonde Jwambi, who has lived in the area for 16 years with her two children, said: “We want houses.

“The government has been promising us houses since 1994, but all this time we have been told that our houses are coming so we are not going to vote again.”

“We have to live in these shacks with our children and there are rats everywhere.

“We don’t have electricity and crime is rife,” she said.

Residents claim they were promised homes in newly built flats a short distance from the informal settlement.

Jwambi said: “They told us that those townhouses were going to be for us and that we would be relocated in June, but nothing has happened since then.

“We don’t understand , we have filled in all the papers to apply for the houses, and we have been told that we qualify, but nothing more happened .”

The Kliptown settlement is surrounded by state-built flats and RDP houses .

Another resident, who has been living in the informal settlement since 1988, Xolile Gubushe, said: “I live in a shack with my wife and five children. We all have to bath and sleep in one space. We have to put up a curtain as a partition when one of us has a bath.”

While these residents were protesting in Kliptown , Shilowa was launching Public Service Week in the Johannesburg city centre.

Gauteng provincial government spokeswoman Annette Griessel said: “The riots in Kliptown are unfortunate because even though we acknowledge people’s right to protest, we ask that they do it in a peaceful manner.

“As government we are aware that there are housing backlogs. But protests are not going to result in people jumping the queue on housing waiting lists.”

Victor Moreriane, spokesman for the Gauteng department of housing, said: “We are asking residents to be patient because we have a waiting list of over 600000 people in the province.”

To see a video clip of this protest visit http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=522519