{"id":231485,"date":"2022-07-15T23:16:14","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T21:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/city-opens-case-against-flood-victims-occupying-community-hall\/"},"modified":"2022-07-15T23:16:14","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T21:16:14","slug":"city-opens-criminal-case-against-flood-victims-occupying-community-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/city-opens-criminal-case-against-flood-victims-occupying-community-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"City opens criminal case against flood victims occupying community hall"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of the families who are occupying the Chris Hani Community Hall in Mfuleni after heavy flooding in June. Photo: Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik<\/p>\n

The City of Cape Town says it has opened a criminal case against people living in the Chris Hani Community Hall in Mfuleni since 14 June.<\/p>\n

About 60 families, mostly women and children, moved to the hall without permission after their shacks at Burundi informal settlement were flooded <\/a>in June.<\/p>\n

Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services and Health Patricia van der Ross said the community hall is the responsibility of the departments of social development and early childhood development. Van der Ross said attempts to negotiate with the residents have been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

Rang Leki told GroundUp that when their requests for assistance during the floods fell on deaf ears, they decided to occupy the hall. Leki said most of their shacks and belongings were destroyed in the floods.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2015 we have been victims of floods but this year it was worse because of the river behind our shack. We were lucky that no one died. Our fear is if we return, we might not survive when it rains again,\u201d said Leki.<\/p>\n

People occupying the hall told GroundUp that they want the City to give them serviced land where they can rebuild their shacks or to move them to safer alternative accommodation.<\/p>\n

Siphokazi Mbi, who lives in the hall with her four-month-old baby, said that it seemed the City and ward councillor were not taking their situation seriously. She said life in the hall was also tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very cold and there\u2019s no privacy here. If this wasn\u2019t our only option, we would go back to our shacks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said they will not leave the hall until the City \u201cgives us a better place to live\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ward 114 Councillor Ernest Madikane (ANC) told GroundUp the City had not discussed opening a case with him. \u201cAs a ward councillor I do not have a mandate to tell the people to vacate the hall,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Community leader Ayanda Mteto said most of the families had been in Burundi since 2018. He said they were still trying to reason with the City to help the residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe suggested the City at least level the ground so the river water won\u2019t flood the shacks again. There is no vacant land in Mfuleni at the moment. We are hoping that at some point we will reach an agreement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When asked about details of the police case or whether the City would consider suggestions put forward by the residents, Van der Ross only said, \u201cThe City is now considering its next steps.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

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<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the families who are occupying the Chris Hani Community Hall in Mfuleni after heavy flooding in June. Photo: Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik The City of Cape Town says it has opened a criminal case against people living in the Chris Hani Community Hall in Mfuleni since 14 June. About 60 families, mostly women and children, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":231486,"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-231485","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\/07\/city-opens-criminal-case-against-flood-victims-occupying-community-hall.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231485","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=231485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}