Suburban shack invasion

Luxury homeowners in Sherwood, west of Durban, woke up yesterday morning to find an informal settlement being built around their pricey properties.

When Sheik Manoo looked through his window he saw about 100 men and women clearing a vacant plot next to his property.

They carried spades and building materials and had already begun marking the land to erect at least 50 makeshift homes.

Manoo and his shocked neighbours rushed out to confront the group.

"We can't have people coming from wherever to start putting up shacks [in] our residential area," Manoo said.

"We pay huge amounts of money in rates to keep this area beautiful and to have shacks nearby will devalue the area.

"Also, crime is likely to go up and this is a situation that we cannot risk. The municipality must stop them before they even start building or else I will take my family and move."

Manoo's neighbours complained that the land invasion would increase noise in the quiet suburb, in which homes are valued at between R800000 for flats and R3-million for houses.

The homeowners shouted at the group of men and women - some with babies on their backs - to leave but they refused and continued building their shacks.

Siphilisele Sithole said he had been renting a shack for the past 15 years in the Bonela area.

"I am unemployed but am expected to pay rent of R300. It's too much. It is month-end and my landlord wants his money, which I do not have. So when I heard that there was vacant land I did not think twice about joining others to start building," he said.

Ntombizonke Mshengu said she has been waiting for a low-cost house from the municipality for nearly eight years.

"We will not backtrack now. Every day we will come here and build our shacks," she said.

But the group was forced to leave when the police arrived. As they carried their building materials away, they told homeowners that they would be back on Monday to continue building.

eThekwini municipal spokesman Thabo Mofokeng could not say whether the land on which the invaders intended building was owned privately or by the council. But he had a stern warning for the invaders .

"We'll act against them. We cannot allow people [to] build on land without permission," he said.

He said that though the city had a problem with the mushrooming of slum areas, "right now we are busy with a programme to accelerate the delivery of houses".