Category Archives: Xolani Mbanjwa

The Star: Rich Tokyo spends night among poor

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http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20090804031925973C101871

Rich Tokyo spends night among poor
Xolani Mbanjwa
August 04 2009 at 05:48AM

Tokyo Sexwale, the Minister of Human Settlements and one of the country’s richest men, has spent the night in Diepsloot, north-west of Joburg.

Monday night’s experience was meant to acquaint Sexwale with the hardships faced by millions of South Africans living in informal settlements.

It marked the first of many visits Sexwale plans to make to informal settlements on a nationwide fact-finding mission to uncover the reasons behind the service delivery protests that rocked the country and to assess the massive backlog in housing.

Sexwale will visit Joe Slovo informal settlement and Khayelitsha in Cape Town on Thursday.

He will also visit settlements in Bloemfontein and Durban.

Sexwale’s choice of Diepsloot was in response to the violent protests that erupted two weeks ago when angry residents of the densely populated informal settlement – home to an estimated 150 000 people – torched a police vehicle, stoned cars and burnt tyres in the streets after being told they would be shifted to Adelaide, another settlement nearby.

Although many shack dwellers who met Sexwale on Monday told him they did not want to move to another area, he was adamant that they would have to relocate because their shacks were built on top of a “dangerous” water pipeline.

Sexwale – himself born in an informal settlement in Soweto – appealed to community leaders, including taxi associations, religious leaders and business owners, whom he met in Diepsloot on Monday to be patient with the government’s roll-out of low-cost houses and services.

He told community leaders he wanted to see people’s living conditions and talk to residents himself so that the government could come up with a better plan for housing.

The economic downturn, unemployment, migration from rural areas, corruption and fraud were among the reasons Sexwale gave as causing the proliferation of informal settlements.

“We are on a sincere listening campaign to have a proper discussion about the lives of the poor. I came here to sleep among them (shack dwellers) to experience how they live.”

o This article was originally published on page 7 of The Star on August 04, 2009

‘No shacks in KZN by 2010’ – minister

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Available at
http://www.sundaytribune.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3521376

‘No shacks in KZN by 2010’ – minister

November 05, 2006 Edition 2

Xolani Mbanjwa

Kwazulu-Natal housing MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu slammed the practise of shack-farming at the launch of a multi-million-rand slum-clearance project in KwaMbonambi near Richards Bay yesterday.

Addressing hundreds of people, Mabuyakhulu said his department wanted to eradicate all squatter camps in the province by 2010.

He said his department would pilot legislation giving municipalities more powers to deal with the scourge of land invasion and to stop the proliferation of slums.

The legislation has been presented to the cabinet and he hoped it would be passed in March next year.

Mabuyakhulu said once the Bill had been promulgated, municipalities would be required to come up with concrete measures to eradicate slums and prevent new ones from sprouting.

He also said he hoped that the legislation would help the government to get tough with people who turned the suffering of people living in squatter camps into a money-making racket.

“These unscrupulous ‘shack lords’ practise what we call shack-farming, where they own a number of informal settlements and charge people desperate for accommodation exorbitant rents.

When plans to provide proper and adequate housing are introduced, they lead campaigns against people being moved. In a nutshell, they see housing developments as a threat to their illegal business practise,” he said.

He said the KwaMbonambi slums-clearance project would see 500 families who currently lived in squalid conditions being built new houses. The government would plough R21.2 million into the project.

Mabuyakhulu praised landholder Sappi for making the land available. “The gesture by the company, so we can build houses for our people, is something that should be followed by other companies. We call on those who own land to make it available for the construction of houses,” he said.