'Malemaville' invaders move into misery

24 November 2014 - 02:18 By Sipho Masombuka
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OUT IN THE COLD: A 62-year-old woman tries to keep warm on Saturday night after her shack at Nellmapius, east of Pretoria, was demolished. Known as 'Malemaville', the settlement was established illegally on council-owned land by Economic Freedom Front activists. File photo
OUT IN THE COLD: A 62-year-old woman tries to keep warm on Saturday night after her shack at Nellmapius, east of Pretoria, was demolished. Known as 'Malemaville', the settlement was established illegally on council-owned land by Economic Freedom Front activists. File photo
Image: KEVIN SUTHERLAND

A steel bedstead with a wooden door for a base, a supermarket trolley full of clothing, a bag of maize meal, some rice, some vegetables and a salt cellar.

These are what now define the personal existence of Sinethemba Nkosi, a 22-year-old supermarket stock packer, who has been sleeping in the open for the past week.

He is comforted by a single blanket, blackened by the smoke from the burning tyres that keep him warm at night.

The Red Ants tore down the shack he had put up on council land in Nellmapius, Pretoria, on Wednesday.

When he heard that the Ward 86 branch of the Economic Freedom Fighters was giving land away, Nkosi, like many others, carried his shack - one corrugated sheet at a time - on his head from his rented backyard to the stand allocated him by the EFF.

"I took a day off work to move my shack. When I returned from work in the afternoon my shack and mattress were gone. My groceries were strewn all over."

Nkosi's R800 a month rent for his backyard home included running water and a toilet but he can not return .

A large plastic sheet he salvaged from a dump is all he now has to protect him and his groceries from the rain.

"I spent R2500 on that shack and it will take me another three months to save for another. I am from KwaZulu-Natal so this is my home," he said.

Six people who found new building materials worked through the night to erect new shacks, some hidden deep in the long grass to avoid being spotted by Tshwane metro police.

The Tshwane municipality obtained a court order against the invasion of council-owned land. But Eddie Mathiba, the EFF member leading the land grab, said: "I have moved in here myself and I am organising another shack for [Nkosi]."

On Saturday the police came back and demolished more than 12 newly built shacks.

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