Pretoria - The new informal settlement near the Odi Correctional Services in Mabopane is here to stay despite a threat of eviction by the Department of Correctional Services.
This was the adamant stance by community leaders, who said they had been trying since 2016 to establish the ownership of the land. They said they had met with traditional leaders, City of Tshwane and the department and eventually established that the land belonged to the North West government.
Armed with documents to support their stance, they said the North West Housing Corporation was the actual custodian of land JR 701 Portion 33.
Community leaders Tony Somo and Desmond Ndlovu said they had blessings from the North West government to use the land.
They said the prison authorities had a right to be concerned about having a settlement nearby, but that was all they could do because the land did not belong to them. Any talk of eviction could not be successful, they argued.
Somo said out of respect for the work the prison did, they kept a 100m distance between the stands they allocated and the fence of the facility. They also left space between the community and an old collapsed building that used to house the intelligence unit of the former Bophuthatswana homeland.
"To be clear on record here, we are not selling stands here. We are united and paying contributions to hire equipment to help build roads. Contributions started as little as R500, and now the latest recipients contributed R2 500.
"Nobody is buying stands here. We are all children of the pensioners in Mabopane, Lebanon, Winterveldt. But we are also accepting all South Africans who want to join us to build this community.
“The field was just full of vegetation which allowed criminals to terrorise our people by disappearing into it after armed robberies and housebreakings.
"We are adults and youth who cannot continue living in these old four-room houses that were built for our parents many years ago by Mangope. These are people who have been desperate for homes for many years and some have been waiting for RDPs for a very long time," said Somo.
He said the reason they took years to start giving out stands was because they wanted to do it right, so that they build a beautiful settlement that will be to the standard of the neighbouring Lebanon.
He said this would not be a informal shack settlement. The roads are wide enough to accommodate a two-lane tarred road and pavements on both sides. The yards are 20mx20m, and they had already allocated over 400 stands.
The area will be called Desville.
A beneficiary, who asked not to be named, said: "I have been living in my parents' RDP home in Slovoville for a long time, and I am tired of waiting now.
“You can imagine; I have been on the RDP housing waiting list since 2003. Now we are saying it is fine, we will do it ourselves. We will build ourselves a beautiful neighbourhood. We are not going to build mercy shacks. We want to maintain the standard of this surrounding area."
The Department of Correctional Services said it was aware of the situation it considered a land invasion. The matter was receiving the attention and urgency it deserved.
"An urgent application for eviction is in progress to remove all illegal occupants from the land, which belongs to the Department of Correctional Services.
"The department would like to urge community members to refrain from purchasing the land, as the department cannot be held liable for any losses incurred in this regard."
Ndlovu called the department's response bluff, armed with a letter from a North West Legislature Chairperson for the Committee for Premier, Finance, Co-orporative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs, Aaron Motswana, to the Winterveldt police. The letter stated that the land belonged to the provincial government.
In the letter, it says that the North West Housing Corporation was finalising a legal process about the area. In the event that the department had a matter to address, it needed to engage the land owners and not the inhabitants, it added.
Pretoria News