Apartheid's gone, but its hostels haven't

The dilapidated women’s hostel in Durban is suitable only for stoics, writes Tania Broughton.

Phumzile Mpontshana's day job as a Durban street sweeper is hot, sweaty and tiring - but it's not as difficult as getting a good night's sleep.

Cramped inside a tiny room in the Thokoza women's hostel, she has to play a seemingly impossible game of human Tetris just to find the space to rest her weary body, alongside her two children, aged three and nine; her sister; her five-year-old niece; and two roommates.

Their room in the hostel, the only hostel for women in KwaZulu-Natal, is the size of a suburban single garage. Apart from the squashed sleeping quarters it contains a makeshift kitchen counter with a two-plate stove; space also has to be found for clothes, linen and other possessions.

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Despite this, it is immaculate. The sisters, from Ndwedwe north of Durban, have lived here since about 2003.

"It's safe and it's cheap. We have 24-hour security. We look after each other. No one can rape my kids," said Mpontshana.

"My children were both born here. This is their home. There is nowhere else for us to go."

The women may not have much space, but the hostel is relatively safe and close to good schools and the city centre.

Some of its residents have jobs as domestic workers or in shops and factories, others sell their wares on the streets, and others stay at the hostel, looking after babies and children when they return from school, feeding them and making sure they do their homework and stay out of trouble.

Access to the hostel is strictly controlled. While it was an open secret that children were living there, a few years ago city authorities enforced a "no kids" rule, forcing mothers to smuggle their children in and out and keep them hidden.

The mothers, supported by the Legal Resources Centre, have lodged an urgent application in the High Court in Durban to challenge the rule. This was after guards threatened to chase any child off the property and call in the police and even the dog unit. The case is pending.

The hostel, built during the apartheid era, was meant for 1,700 people, but Mpontshana estimates there are 4,000 residents now.

She said the rent was R145 a month, but no one was paying because residents were protesting at conditions in the hostel.

The Sunday Times visited the hostel on a typical sweltering Durban day.

Some women lay naked on their beds. Others, wearing kangas and towels, sat in passageways, desperate to catch a breeze. They did each other's hair and read.

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No men are allowed. And there are rarely strangers on the property. Few of the women get to sleep alone. Muke Mkhize, originally from Umkomaas, has also been at the hostel since 2003.

"I came to the city straight after doing matric. I have worked on and off and studied through Unisa and have qualified as a social worker," she said.

There are four people sleeping in her two-bed room.

"We manage. It's terrible in the morning when we are all getting up. But we manage."

Mkhize considers herself lucky. She has a mother "back on the farm" who takes care of her six-year-old son.

"This place is not for children. But I do understand that some people have no choice."

The residents say there is very little theft and very little conflict, in spite of the cramped conditions. But the children issue has caused divisions, with some residents saying they are too noisy and boisterous.

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Friends and neighbours Virginia Mkhize, 70, and Elizabeth Cele, 66 - both retired domestic workers who have been living in the hostel "a long, long, long time" and plan to stay there until they die - choose their words carefully.

They were not saying they did not like children, they said, but children needed a place to play. The government should build houses for families.

Nokwanda Mndaweni, 22, came from Eshowe to live with her mother, Nonhlanhla, at the hostel as a teenager. Now she is a mother herself, and spends her days caring for eight-month-old Tumelo. Her mother has given up her bed for them and sleeps on the floor.

Room 3,464 is the home of the Mngadi family. Seven of them squash in, along with a broken fridge now used as a cupboard, a broken microwave and a small stove.

In many of the communal kitchens there are no working stoves, so residents have to cook in their rooms. Showers and toilets leak. Everything could do with a good lick of paint. There are lots of broken windows. But no one really moans.

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"We just get on with it," said Mpontshana.

• A report by the South African Human Rights Commission in 2014 estimated that in 2010 there were 2,000 mainly single-sex public hostels in South Africa, with more than one million beds.

Few of them have been upgraded since they were built in the apartheid years to house migrant workers.

"A drastic increase in the number of people in cities has resulted in over-occupied hostels and living conditions far from adequate for family life," the report said.

And like most government-owned buildings, whatever maintenance was done, was too little too late.

"They are not appropriate in a democratic society," the commission said.