MyJHB

Stuff from Johannesburg

Widow’s shack demolished six times since September

Advertorial:
Widow’s shack demolished six times since September:

  • Johannesburg metro police demolished shacks in Rabie Ridge for the sixth time over the weekend.
  • About 100 homes were demolished.
  • The occupation of the former temporary Covid camp site started in August last year.
  • Many occupiers have already rebuilt their homes.

On Saturday, an exhausted Tholakhele Nkosi was digging a hole with just the head of a pickaxe for a support pole for her shack. The day before she had watched as the Johannesburg metro police department (JMPD), for the sixth time, demolished her one-roomed zinc home in Phumla Mqashi informal settlement on Rabie Ridge, near Tembisa.

Her home was demolished twice in September, twice in November, again in February and now in April. This time, law enforcement confiscated her materials. She has no money for zinc sheets and will rebuild with boards from a nearby dumpsite.

The 52-year-old widow has learned how to build her shack on her own.

In August 2023, about 100 families, mostly backyard dwellers, occupied land off Modderfonetin Road, where a temporary shelter had been set up and fenced during the Covid lockdown in an attempt to de-densify informal settlements. Later, thieves cleaned the place out.

The occupiers believed the City would accept their settlement and provide services as it is municipal land. They claim that recently, ANC politicians on the campaign trail told them they were safe.

On 18 April, to their surprise, the JMPD demolished 100 shacks.

Ward 80 Councillor Melody Hlatswayo (ANC) told GroundUp it was an illegal occupation by people from as far as Orange Farm, Hamanskraal and Daveyton, who had heard the land was to be developed.

She said flats were to be built for people in Rabie Ridge who have been waiting for houses for over 30 years. She said there were seven informal settlements in the area and the development would alleviate this.

A community representative, Dineo Mokoena, said, “All we want is to be allowed to live on the land because we have nowhere else to go.”

Mhlaliseni Khumalo, his wife and two children moved here when they could no longer afford rent. He has a disability and says the housing department promised to allocate him a flat in ward 45, but it never happened.

“I lost lots of material during demolitions … It is painful that the government is treating us this way, when we desperately need houses,” he said.

Lindelwa Tshoba has three children and seven grandchildren. She registered for a RDP house in 2004.

“I have been voting all these years, hoping to get a house, but to no avail,” she said. “We are not working; what do they want us to do?”

The City of Johannesburg did not reply to our specific questions but in a joint statement on 5 April, the City and Gauteng govenment said, “Members of the public are warned to resist temptations to illegally invade land and any government property as this will only result in them losing their hard-earned money and investments during evictions.”

“Government will continue to work with the courts, developers, and police to execute eviction orders against these illegal acts of land and house invasions.”

© 2024 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.

We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.

Read More at GroundUp

– MyZA

CLICK HERE to submit your news to www.MyPR.co.za.

Click here to submit your South African News – free.

Prepaid Meters: Straton Prepaid

Category: Tag: , , , , ,

The Oriental Plaza: A Phoenix in Fordsburg

If Johannesburg is a city of forced displacements, the Oriental Plaza is its most resilient response. While the Rand Club was built for the elite and Ponte for the “jet-set,” the Oriental Plaza was born from the trauma of the Group Areas Act—a piece of Apartheid legislation designed to geographically separate the races. Yet, in true Johannesburg fashion, what was intended as a tool of containment and financial ruin for the Indian community transformed into one of the most vibrant, independent commercial powerhouses in the country.

The story of the Plaza begins with the destruction of Pageview, affectionately known as Fietas. In the mid-20th century, Fietas was a legendary multicultural hub, centered around the bustling 14th Street. It was the city’s premier destination for textiles, clothing, and spices, where shoppers of all races would rub shoulders in a “jazzy, soulful” atmosphere. However, because Fietas was located so close to the white-only city center, the Apartheid government declared it a “white area” in 1962. The community fought back for decades, but by the 1970s, the bulldozers arrived. Homes were leveled, and the thriving traders of 14th Street were forcibly relocated to a purpose-built, modernist complex a kilometer away in Fordsburg: the Oriental Plaza.

The government’s intent was cynical: by moving the traders into a controlled environment with high state-mandated rents and strict rules on what could be sold, they hoped to break the back of Indian commercial dominance. The early years were devastating; many businesses folded, and the “Grand Bazaar” felt like a sterile warehouse compared to the street-level energy of Fietas. However, the traders refused to vanish. They eventually won the right to purchase their own shops, making the Oriental Plaza unique among South African malls because it is owned by the shopkeepers themselves rather than a corporate landlord. This ownership model changed everything. Without the burden of massive monthly mall rentals, the 360+ independent stores can offer prices that national retailers cannot touch, turning the Plaza into a “bargain-hunter’s paradise” that draws millions of visitors a year.