This Christmas, ‘home’ for Sibongiseni is a safe haven in Cape Town

Sibongiseni Nondalana, 38, looks at a healed burn scar on her right arm and starts laughing.

“It was more than a year ago when I got this scar. It will always be a reminder of living in a shack,” said the mother of two while sitting in the lounge in her new home in Eerste River, Cape Town.

“I had boiled the kettle and was going to use the hot water to kill a big rat making a rattling noise in my wardrobe. When I opened the wardrobe the rodent ran towards me and I got scared. I slipped while holding the kettle and the hot water burnt me.”

Until a year ago, Nondalana was one of millions of informal settlement residents who not only lack decent housing but endure social problems including overcrowding, violence and crime.

Many get their only break from this kind of life during the December holidays, when they board a bus or taxi for their annual pilgrimage “home”, mostly to the Eastern Cape.

Nondalana, who used to live in a 20m² shack in Khayelitsha she shared with her daughters, Asavene, 18, and Nikita, 14, would trek to her ancestral home in Balura, a village near Alice. Two years ago the Sunday Times joined her there. 

After getting a degree, finding a full-time job as a teacher and buying a two-bedroomed suburban home, this Christmas she has stayed put.

“Going home is always nice as it is time to reunite with loved ones, but having my own piece of land in the city has made me appreciate my space more,” she said.

“Living in a shack was horrible for me and my children. When it was hot the shack became unbearable, and when it was cold or raining the elements also became harsh. Not to mention the rodents that used to destroy everything.

“After I burnt myself, it made me fast-track buying a house.”

Buhle Booi, head of political organising at Ndifuna Ukwazi, a Cape Town activist organisation and law centre, said Nondalana’s story was encouraging, but access to decent housing remains a pipe dream for many.

“Sibongiseni’s story is one of the exceptional ones that many South Africans don’t get to tell,” he said.

Her situation has been alleviated, but many, including unemployed graduates, are not able to migrate into the middle-class because of the state’s failure to provide access to affordable housing.  

“Even the educated and the middle-class aren’t able to afford rentals closer to the city, and most spend about a third of their salaries on transport to get to work in the city and transport their children to better schools close to the city.”

While education has helped Nondalana to secure a full-time job, Booi said: “Education by itself can only take you so far. It will allow you to manoeuvre to a certain stratum of society, but not enough to take you out of poverty, particularly given the number of unemployed graduates. Only a few make it and escape the grip of poverty.”

While it's taken Nondalana time to get used to paying a monthly bond instalment, she does it wholeheartedly as she has vowed never to take her daughters back to an informal settlement.

“We had to make a lot of financial adjustments to live here, but for what we are getting out of it — the safety, quietness and peace — it’s worth every cent,” she said.

“Here we don’t have to worry about shack fires or health problems due to overcrowding. My daughters can walk around freely without worrying they might be robbed or attacked.”

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