Pretoria - The illegal expansion of the Spruit informal settlement into privately-owned land in areas west of Pretoria have brought a headache to homeowners and frustrated farmers in Erasmia.
The settlement has been in the area for a number of years, but it remained limited to a portion of land owned by the City of Tshwane. But a visit to the area at the weekend found that stands had been sold illegally on land earmarked for development by an Irish consortium.
Residents said this was not the first time the settlement expanded into private spaces. Just last year a large number of shacks were demolished by authorities and the police after land owner Gerrard Rock took the matter to court to obtain an eviction order.
However, he now said he was receiving less or no help from authorities, because this comes at an expensive cost of a couple of hundred thousands of rand every time he has to start a process to evict the people.
Rock said: “There is a group of men from Atteridgeville scamming people and selling stands on the land for anything between R2 500 and R5 000.
“We know the ring leader calls himself Sonnboy, and has even erected a board with all his names on my land to promote himself. We reported him to the Erasmia police, we received a case number but to this day nothing has happened to him.
“When we went there we realised the police are under-resourced. The detective had over 35 cases on his desk at the time. So this is a case of the government also not doing enough to assist. In fact, we now experience between 10 and 20 skip bin trucks coming to dump waste in Erasmia and the City is not doing anything about it.”
Residents of the settlement say the area has become a forgotten place, because they were living in the middle of nowhere, near a mountain. There is no road except the ones the cars forged with traction. Even those are very rocky. Most of the residents are unemployed foreign nationals who live way below the poverty line.
Some farmers and homeowners in the area said they were really frustrated because although some people were good and honest citizens, some criminals were hiding in the community and earning their living by stealing their valuables.
Julia Koutzayiotis said crime had risen significantly in the area over the years and it had at some point affected every homeowner, farmer and other business people. “In just the last two months we have been experiencing a spate of crimes. Last week all my security lights were stolen. Before that my gate was stolen.
“We do not even bother calling the police anymore. My place was broken into three times last year. One time they broke my wall and I called the police. They told me not to do anything until a police officer comes. To this day, that officer has not shown up,” said Koutzayiotis.
Resident of the settlement, Liberty Chauke from Mozambique, said they were aware that the expansion of the informal settlement was illegal, but it was people from other communities like Atteridgeville who were deceived by those who sold the land to them because they were desperate.
Susan Moyo from Zimbabwe said they had witnessed the demolition of many shacks last year but people who did not know any better were still buying stands because they believed those who sold to them would fight for them.
Pretoria News