I want these kids to have a comfortable life and not look next door and wish they could belong there
I want these kids to have a comfortable life and not look next door and wish they could belong there
From where she sits doing her washing in a tub in front of her home, Florence Simangweni can see everything.
To the south, the Cathedral at the centre of the town points up to the Monument and the hotel on Mountain Drive. It all leads up to a blue sky criss-crossed with electrical cables and telephone wires connecting the township at whose edge she lives. Shacks amid older houses throng the valley below Makana's Kop, and crowd its slopes.
From Simangweni's home at the edge of Grahamstown's eastern commonage, the landscape has changed gradually over the past two decades. The ranks of houses in eastern Grahamstown grew as the post-1994 Reconstruction and Development Project started to kick in. The number of trees on the hillsides shrank, as water-conservation projects saw water-wasting wattle and pine removed.
But changes to the open veld further along the dirt track running past her home are dramatic.
A chequerboard of pale squares is rapidly forming as the foundations for rows of RDP houses are laid.
Earthmoving equipment rumbles throughout the day as giant trenches appear for pipes.
This is the site where 1 000 residential units are to be built in the Mayfield Phase 2 housing project.
If ever there were a perfect candidate for one of these homes, you'd think it would be Florence Simangweni.
She built her wattle-and-daub hut there in 1990, when her youngest child was 14.
"He has a wife and children now, you can imagine how long I have been in this mud structure," Simangweni told Grocott's Mail when we visited her on Tuesday.
Today it's home to the five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren she cares for.
But Simangweni has no hope that the building works at the top of the rise beyond her house will help her. Instead, she fears she'll be kicked out of the only home she knows.
Plans for the Mayfield Phase 2 development show a combination of single residential units and semi-detached units. To get a home, a person must submit their name to their ward councillor, who in turn must submit it for addition to a municipal database. The municipality submits a list of beneficiaries to the Department of Human Settlement.
"For a long time I have been registering in that list, even for this new project I registered, but I have never got a house," Simangweni said.
"I built this house myself. It collapses [sometimes]and I rebuild it from scratch, because there is no other home than this. I have been here since 1990 and have been waiting for an RDP house since then," she said.
"I was on the list when they were doing Extension 9 but I never got a house. When they were doing Transit Camp and Eluxolweni I was also on that list – but never got a house in either of those areas.
"It is the fifth time now and I don't want to lie – I have no hope of getting a house."
Simangweni said she had registered on the beneficiaries list, but doubted she would get a home for herself and her grandchildren.
"What happens here is that if you vote [for them]you get on the list – but you never get a house. That has been happening for many years."
The old lady and her grandchildren live on her state pension and her great-grandchildren's child support grants.
"I go to church every Sunday to pray that I get a house," Simangweni said. "We struggle here, but we've learnt to survive with the little we have. I want these kids to have a comfortable life and not look next door and wish they could belong there."
She said because of all the children she is looking after, she can't afford to buy herself clothes.
"Sometimes people come and give me old clothes for the babies and some food, and we are grateful for that," she said.
One thousand houses by Christmas
The Mayfield Phase 2 project will see 1 000 units completed by the end of this year according to Uphahla Construction. The company is contracted by the provincial Department of Human Settlements for this project.
The development will comprise single residential units and semi-detached units. The construction of the project is happening right in front of Simangweni's home.
So far 467 out of 968 applications have been approved.
