{"id":241803,"date":"2022-11-02T16:38:51","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T14:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/gauteng-government-backtracks-on-housing-promises\/"},"modified":"2022-11-02T16:38:51","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T14:38:51","slug":"gauteng-government-backtracks-on-housing-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/gauteng-government-backtracks-on-housing-promises\/","title":{"rendered":"Gauteng government backtracks on housing promises"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Mosima%20Rafapa\/marikanasoutpanmeeting-mosimarafapa-20221102.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/gauteng-government-backtracks-on-housing-promises.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">At a meeting last month, residents of Marikana Soutpan north of Pretoria were told their settlement will benefit from an \u201cupgrading project\u201d instead of the \u201cmega project\u201d they were promised years ago. Photo: Mosima Rafapa<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Families in the huge Marikana Soutpan informal settlement north of Pretoria were told five years ago they would benefit from a \u201cmega project\u201d in the area.<\/li>\n<li>The project was to be completed in 2023-24.<\/li>\n<li>Now they have been told by the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements that this has been cancelled due to \u201cland invasions\u201d and a shortage of suitable land.<\/li>\n<li>Instead they will benefit from an \u201cInformal Settlement Upgrading Project\u201d, they were told at a meeting last month. But no budget or timeline was provided.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The long awaited \u201cmega project\u201d promised by the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements to families in Marikana Soutpan informal settlement north of Pretoria has been cancelled. Instead, they have been told, their area will benefit from an \u201cInformal Settlement Upgrading Project\u201d. But in the absence of a timeline or budget, the families are worried.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/gauteng-government-backtracks-on-housing-promises.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>In 2017, residents of Marikana Soutpan were told their area would be developed as part of a mega project to be completed by 2023-24. In 2020, when they asked why nothing had happened. They were told the project was on hold because of \u201cland invasions\u201d in the area. In April last year, Human Settlements <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/promises-promises-residents-marikana-soutpan-have-almost-given-hope\/\">said<\/a> the plan \u201cis still in place\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>But now, it seems, the \u201cmega project\u201d has been abandoned.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Tshwane Department of Human Settlements and Planning, more than 10,000 families live in the area. There is no electricity, water or sanitation. Most households rely on illegal electricity and water connections; some have pit toilets and some people have built brick houses and a makeshift sewage system. People moved to the area in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>On 29 September this year, residents marched to the Human Settlements offices to hand in a memorandum. Last month, a community meeting was attended by more than 700 people.<\/p>\n<p>At the meeting, Sam Mohatlane from the Department told residents that the mega project had been dropped due to budget constraints and the lack of land where people could be relocated to make way for the mega project.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat type of development is no longer implementable. We have decided to provide services, fix roads and provide electricity. People will also receive stands and title deeds so that those that are able to build for themselves, do so and not wait for the government,\u201d said Mohatlane.<\/p>\n<p>Thabang Maunatlala has lived in Marikana since 2014. She and her three children make use of a pit toilet and use a paraffin stove to heat water and to cook. Maunatlala said they had given up hope that services would be provided.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the past three weeks, we haven\u2019t had water. It only comes out at 2am and that\u2019s when we fill our buckets,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Community leader Lolo Lekalakala was one of the first residents to put up shacks in the settlement. He said he felt let down by the department.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChildren have died in this area because of illegal electricity connections. It\u2019s been too long,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Resident Mabel Baloyi said a seven-year-old boy had died a year ago from electrocution. \u201cWe want services, we\u2019ll just have to see when it happens,\u201d said Baloyi. \u201cI don\u2019t trust the government anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Marcia Maruma moved to the settlement in March 2021. She lives with her husband and three children. They bought a house from a former resident after she saw an advert on Facebook. The house has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a garage. She is afraid the structure will be demolished.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they say they\u2019re going to demolish that structure, are they going to compensate us? That structure is the reason I relocated from Johannesburg. I needed security for my children. We had just been hit by Covid. No one knew what was going to happen,\u201d said Maruma.<\/p>\n<p>In response to GroundUp\u2019s questions, Human Settlements spokesperson Tahir Sema said the mega project could not go ahead due to challenges of \u201cland invasion and land assembly issues\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Department had to switch from a mega project to informal settlements upgrading because of the current land invasions. Mega projects require vacant land and the department does not have land where a large number of people can be relocated to while starting the project,\u201d said Sema.<\/p>\n<p>She said they planned to \u201ccomplete all processes\u201d by 31 March 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to the issue of permanent structures, Sema said, \u201cThere is a standing court order that prohibits people from building permanent structures since it was invaded. Any built structure is illegal and therefore the Department cannot compensate people who violated the court order and the municipal planning bylaws. The Department\u2019s Planning Unit will work hard to ensure that demolishing structures will be the last resort and only those structures that encroach on the actual infrastructure will be demolished.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She could not provide GroundUp with the copy of the court order.<\/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=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/gauteng-government-backtracks-on-housing-promises.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At a meeting last month, residents of Marikana Soutpan north of Pretoria were told their settlement will benefit from an \u201cupgrading project\u201d instead of the \u201cmega project\u201d they were promised years ago. Photo: Mosima Rafapa Families in the huge Marikana Soutpan informal settlement north of Pretoria were told five years ago they would benefit from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":241804,"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-241803","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\/11\/gauteng-government-backtracks-on-housing-promises.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241803","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=241803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}