What Frascina Mitsha looks forward to most is a home that offers her some privacy, something her family’s four-room shack in the Winnie Mandela informal settlement on the East Rand sorely lacks.
Now, more than 20 years after housing was approved for her and 132 other families, the high court in Pretoria has finally awarded them a combined R15m in constitutional damages for the delay in getting them proper dwellings.
There is one more hurdle though. With the matter being contested by the Ekurhuleni municipality, the matter will now come before the Constitutional Court on February 18.
Mitsha, her husband, Piet, and their three children have been sharing cramped quarters with two other children, who were orphaned when a neighbour died.
The residents, with the help of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA (Seri), have been fighting to have the metro deliver on its commitment. Some, like the Mitshas’ neighbour, died before seeing this happen.
The building of the homes was approved between 1998 and 2000, but nothing happened.
In December 2017, Pretoria high court judge Mmonoa Teffo ordered the municipality to provide the applicants with houses before the end of 2018 and register them as title-holders a year later. It was also ordered to file progress reports to the court every three months.
Instead, the municipality repeatedly asked for the deadline to be extended. The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) granted an extension to the end of June 2019.
It’s heartbreaking. Some of these children were born here, some started school and are still without a house. We don’t know what privacy looks or feels like.
— Piet Mitsha
In its latest argument, the municipality says Covid-19 has prevented it from building the homes.
When Sunday Times Daily visited the settlement, the muddy roads were strewn with rocks, sewage and rubbish.
Residents have, for years, survived without electricity, water and adequate sanitation.
“We have been fighting for a very long time,” said Mitsha. “Sometimes it feels like a losing battle and we get tired. Some of the people we started with have now died.”
Seri executive director Nomzamo Zondo said five applicants died in 2020.
Mitsha, who lost his job as a welder in 2012, said his family circumstances had deteriorated over the years.
“It’s heartbreaking. Some of these children were born here, some started school and are still without a house,” he said. “We don’t know what privacy looks or feels like.”
Silias Sello, a pensioner who stays in a shack with his six grandchildren, described their living conditions as inhumane.
“Staying here makes you feel as if you are not human enough.”
Sello, who survives on odd jobs, has had to erect two other shacks to accommodate his family.
The metro has, on two occasions, offered to move the beneficiaries to nearby flats, an offer they rejected because of space constraints.
Ezeikel Manaka aspires to live in a decent home that will cater for the needs of his disabled wife, Mariah.
Their four children are forced to share a one-room shack.
“It would be a dream come true and my wife’s life would be very easy,” said Manaka, adding that his family survives on her disability grant.
“It is now seven months after the last deadline and there are no houses. [It is] an appalling disregard for the rule of law,” said Zondo.
Ekurhuleni spokesperson Zweli Dlamini said the municipality had appealed the order because it “did not have sufficient time and financial resources to deliver the houses by the said date”.
The city has offered to give houses to the residents in the Palm Ridge Mega-Housing Complex, alternatively in the Clayville Housing Project, but this was rejected, Dlamini added.
