Two years after two members of her family were blown to pieces in a bomb explosion in their backyard, Bellinda Matsane is still waiting for the Tshwane municipality to relocate her and 90 000 other residents to a safer area.
Their homes are built on a World War 2 artillery firing range.
The municipality promised to relocate the Phomolong squatters in Atteridgeville, west of Pretoria, after Matsane's 37-year-old husband, Amos Khoza, and son Njabulo, 4, died in July 2011 when a mortar shell exploded after a bonfire was lit in their yard.
Matsane was severely injured by shrapnel and spent a month in intensive care and two weeks in high care at Kalafong Hospital.
"The municipality has been promising to relocate us for years. But that has come to nothing. It is not safe here but we don't have anywhere else to go," Matsane said.
The ammunition - including mortars, mines, tank shells, hand-grenades and bullets - was dumped in trenches in what was known as the Schurveberg artillery range in the 1940s.
Until the late 1960s the area was used by the then SA Defence Force as a testing and shooting range for mortars.
Though tons of ammunition have been removed from the area after random explosions over the years, it is believed more remains buried in the ground, putting residents at great risk.
Residents say the bombs explode randomly in the nearby hill. The most recent blast took place early last month.
Patrick Ngomane, a resident, said life was a deadly gamble for the residents.
"Earlier this year I was forced to dig a pit for my toilet. It was a terrifying exercise because I was scared I would hit a buried mortar and get blown up."
Ngomane said last year Tshwane mayor Kgosientsho Ramokgopa promised to relocate them by August this year.
"We are tired of their lies. So we continue to wait for our deaths," he said.
In 2011, ANC local ward councillor Mokopo Makola said the squatters would be relocated by the end of that year. But that never happened.
Makola told The Times last week that there were delays but "there is a piece of land that has been identified and there's a council resolution [to remove the squatters]".
The area is not fenced and there are no danger signs.
In October 1991, the then SADF transferred the range to the Department of Public Works, which passed it on to the Tshwane municipality.
Squatters invaded the land a year later.
Attempts to reach Tshwane municipality spokesman Selby Bokaba were unsuccessful.
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