{"id":246855,"date":"2023-01-09T14:23:10","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T12:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/khayelitsha-fire\/"},"modified":"2023-01-09T14:23:10","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T12:23:10","slug":"190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"190 people left homeless after Khayelitsha fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Masixole%20Feni\/polish_20230107_212424196.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">192 people were left homeless when 81 structures were destroyed in a fire in Town Two, Khayelitsha in Cape Town on Saturday morning. On Sunday, some people had begun rebuilding their homes. Photo: Masixole Feni<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>192 people were left homeless when 81 structures were destroyed in a fire in Town Two, Khayelitsha in Cape Town on Saturday morning.<\/li>\n<li>Many of the affected residents are using what they could salvage from their charred belongings to rebuild their homes. Over a dozen people are still sleeping in a small local church.<\/li>\n<li>Local SANCO chairperson noted that it was particularly devastating because many people had lost the school uniforms and groceries they had bought with their social grants last week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A Khayelitsha mother says she is devastated after losing all her savings and belongings in a fire on Saturday morning. According to the City of Cape Town, 81 structures in Town Two were gutted, leaving 192 people homeless.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>Khaziwe Dyantyi told GroundUp that she grabbed her three-year-old daughter after hearing neighbours shouting that shacks were alight.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI rushed out of my shack with my kid and left all my belongings inside except my pyjamas and my gown \u2026 I have no materials to rebuild my burnt shack,\u201d said Dyantyi tearfully as she stood in the charred remains of her shack.<\/p>\n<p>When GroundUp visited the community on Sunday afternoon, many people were sorting through the burnt rubble and material. While some were rebuilding their homes, Dyantyi, who is a domestic worker in Kuilsriver, was distraught that she barely had anything to salvage. She said she lost all her belongings which included a bedroom set, fridge, clothing, washing machine, and laptop.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Vincent%20Lali\/t2_fire_2.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Khaziwe Dyantyi stands in the centre of her burnt shack while her brothers rebuild with charred material she was able to salvage from the blaze. She lost everything she owned in the fire. Photo: Vincent Lali<\/p>\n<p>Dyantyi\u2019s brothers were helping her rebuild her shack with the charred zinc sheets, burnt poles and nails so that she can have a place to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI rely on my child\u2019s grant for survival most of the time as my bosses only ask me to work sometimes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Vuyiswa Makhaphela also lost her home. She lived with her two children and four grandchildren, and sold sweets and chips from her shack for a living.<\/p>\n<p>Makhaphela said they were struggling to breathe as their shack was already engulfed in smoke by the time they woke up. \u201cWe ran out of the shack without removing anything. The strong wind made the fire come at high speed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI used my grandchildren\u2019s grant to buy them stationery two days ago. We have no clothes to wear now. My kids have to go to school, but they have no uniforms and stationery,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe youth rebuilding my shack with the damaged materials are hungry, but I have no food to give them as my groceries are also burnt,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Makhaphela said that the high density in the area contributed to why so many people were affected by the fire. \u201cThe fire fighters came quickly but could not enter our area because we don\u2019t have roads and our shacks are too close to each other. This is why people could not pull-out big things like fridges, sofas and beds,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Masixole%20Feni\/polish_20230108_091955304.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire-2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">A woman with a young child stands among the charred remains after a fire destroyed 81 shacks on Saturday morning in Khayelitsha. Photo: Masixole Feni<\/p>\n<p>Lubabalo Msuthu, South African National Civic Organization chairperson in Town Two, said dozens of the fire victims are still being housed by a local church. Msuthu said that it was sad that most people had already bought uniforms and groceries with their social grants last week. \u201cNow they have all burnt. We only saw food coming from the government. The fire victims need more support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Ward Councillor Thando Pimpi said that he will write letters to school principals to be lenient on the affected children who will not have uniforms and stationery. He said there are plans by the City of Cape Town to de-densify the area. \u201cWe are planning to remove a certain number of people, place them somewhere and build roads. This will happen after the Silver Town Project beneficiaries have moved into their places,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The City\u2019s Disaster Risk Management officials in a statement said that Gift of the Givers and SASSA are providing humanitarian assistance. \u201cThe Electricity and Water &amp; Sanitation [departments] will attend to damaged infrastructure, while Solid Waste will remove fire debris. Home Affairs was also activated to assist residents with identity documents.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Vincent%20Lali\/t2_fire.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire-3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">A pile of burnt poles and zinc sheets in Town Two. Photo: Vincent Lali<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 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\/2023\/01\/190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>192 people were left homeless when 81 structures were destroyed in a fire in Town Two, Khayelitsha in Cape Town on Saturday morning. On Sunday, some people had begun rebuilding their homes. Photo: Masixole Feni 192 people were left homeless when 81 structures were destroyed in a fire in Town Two, Khayelitsha in Cape Town [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246856,"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":[9928,3247],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-246855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"category-news","9":"tag-groundup","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/190-people-left-homeless-after-khayelitsha-fire.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246855","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=246855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}