{"id":223079,"date":"2022-04-27T07:05:43","date_gmt":"2022-04-27T05:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/you-chose-electricity-instead-houses-rdp-beneficiaries-told\/"},"modified":"2022-04-27T07:05:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T05:05:43","slug":"you-chose-electricity-and-toilets-instead-of-houses-families-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/you-chose-electricity-and-toilets-instead-of-houses-families-told\/","title":{"rendered":"You chose electricity and toilets instead of houses, families told"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Mkhuseli%20Sizani\/hillside_phase_one.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/you-chose-electricity-and-toilets-instead-of-houses-families-told.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Toilets have been standing since 1993 without houses in the Hillside RDP project in Fort Beaufort, Eastern Cape. Photo: Mkhuseli Sizani<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Hillside RDP housing project started in 1993 with the offer of R15,000 each to 600 beneficiaries to build themselves a house.<\/li>\n<li>People rejected the offer as too low to build a house.<\/li>\n<li>They were then told that R13,000 of each subsidy would be used toward bulk infrastructure, and they were given R2,000 in hardware store vouchers as \u201cchange\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>They now sit without RDP houses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>About 600 housing beneficiaries say they have been waiting for RDP houses promised to them in 1993 for Phase 1 of the Hillside Project in Fort Beaufort, Eastern Cape.<\/p>\n<p>The Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality says the beneficiaries chose bulk infrastructure instead of houses.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/you-chose-electricity-and-toilets-instead-of-houses-families-told.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the Phase 1 residents have sat and watched RDP houses being built in phases 2 and 3, although many of these houses had to be demolished later and \u201crectified\u201d, a process which itself has stalled, leaving people back in shacks.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, residents in phase 1 were offered subsidies of R15,000 to build houses. As this was insufficient for most people to build a liveable house, the offer was rejected. The municipality then said it would use the money for infrastructure \u2013 streetlights, roads and water. It also built dozens of standalone toilets<\/p>\n<p>Although some of the beneficiaries have managed to build brick houses at heir own cost, many live in dilapidated mud houses. Others abandoned their \u201ctoilet sites\u201d and went back to their villages.<\/p>\n<p>Zwelakhe Stofile, chairperson of the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) in ward 20, who is also a Phase 1 beneficiary, said that when the R15,000 subsidy was rejected, officials called an urgent meeting and \u201cforced the beneficiaries\u201d to accept vouchers for the local hardware store for R2,000.<\/p>\n<p>Former ward councillor Zwelithini Mpembeni (ANC) says they were told the vouchers were \u201cchange\u201d from the R15,000 subsidies, as the officials said R13,000 of each subsidy would go to the installation of the street lights, gravel roads, electricity, water and sanitation. He says that decision was bad and has left many people without houses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe accepted their offer in fear of losing the vouchers,\u201d says Nobendiba Tshakweni, who is 70. \u201cThroughout that period the local leaders had drinking sprees and braais all over the location.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe officials quickly forced us to accept the R2,000 vouchers \u2026 They said if we don\u2019t accept the vouchers we won\u2019t get \u2018the change\u2019 again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tshakweni says she went to the provincial human settlements\u2019 department offices in Bhisho with other beneficiaries to find out about their RDP houses, only to be told \u201cthat we chose electricity and toilets over RDPs\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe told the officials that we never said we don\u2019t want the houses,\u201d said Tshakweni. \u201cWe were just concerned by the R15,000 subsidies; we felt that the amount was too small to build a proper house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Stofile, many people used the vouchers then sold the materials for cash. Some converted their toilets into storerooms. Most toilets were abandoned and left to be vandalised.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn some of the houses there are two or three toilets in a yard,\u201d said Stofile. \u201cThis project was overwhelmed by fraud and corruption. How can one RDP site have three or four toilets?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have title deeds for these toilets that don\u2019t have water. We are no longer qualifying for houses again, because the housing officials robbed us. Our roads are still impassable and all those streetlights were removed by the municipality, claiming that we were using too much electricity,\u201d said Stofile.<\/p>\n<p>Mast lights replaced the streetlights. Meanwhile, taps dried up six years ago, according to Stofile.<\/p>\n<p>Violet Keke, who was 53 when the project started, is now 82 and still stuck in a dilapidated three-room mud house which she shares with five siblings.<\/p>\n<p>Keke uses a wheelchair. \u201cI want an RDP house that is suitable for my condition. A mud house always needs to be maintained, because heavy rains damage it, and it is cold. The toilet that this government built for me is outside. I relieve myself in a bucket, then ask my family members to empty it in the bushes because we have no water to flush the toilets. But that is not nice because I have become a burden to them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Eastern Cape Department of Human Settlements spokesperson Yanga Funani said, \u201cDuring that period, it was the municipal responsibility to build RDPs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Raymond Mhlaba Local Municipality spokesperson Sivenkosi Mtiya said, \u201cWe have no records of that project in our offices because at that time the municipality was Nkonkobe Local Municipality. But we are aware that the residents chose the street lights and toilets over the RDP houses.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/_versions\/images\/photographers\/Mkhuseli%20Sizani\/hillside_phase_one_extra_large.jpeg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Toilets have been standing since 1993 without houses in the Hillside RDP project in Fort Beaufort, Eastern Cape. Photo: Mkhuseli Sizani The Hillside RDP housing project started in 1993 with the offer of R15,000 each to 600 beneficiaries to build themselves a house. People rejected the offer as too low to build a house. They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-223079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/you-chose-electricity-and-toilets-instead-of-houses-families-told.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}