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One of the poor, unemployed villagers at Gumbani, Mr Amos Baloyi, shows off his dilapidated mud hut, which can collapse at any time if heavy rain falls. Photo: Silas Nduvheni.

Gumbani communities still waiting for RDP houses

 

Except for a few disaster-relief houses that were built in 2000 after the heavy floods that year left many communities without housing, more than 130 households in the deep rural village of Gumbani near Phaphazela, outside Malamulele, have been waiting to receive RDP houses since 1994.

Residents at this village complain that, in other nearby communities such as Phaphazela, RDP houses were allocated to poor people, while they remain overlooked and left asking what they could have done wrong to not be getting RDP houses too.

“Some years ago, RDP houses had been allocated to nearby villages, but just before the department reached Gumbani, they disappeared and we didn’t get anything, although we fell under the same municipality,” said Mr Wilson Makhasa, the community representative at Gumbani village.

Makhasa said that, as community representatives, they had been trying everything to get assistance and get the Gumbani villagers to be allocated RDP houses also. “We don’t know what their sins are. We are upset and angry because, as villagers in South Africa, we expected to enjoy the same fruits of the democracy that we voted for, but since 1994, there is nothing coming to us. In 2017, we were promised that we will get RDP houses like the others, but we are still waiting. We don’t know what prevented them from starting to build the houses,” said Makhasa.

“During a recent visit to our village by the Collins Chabane local mayor Moses Maluleke, he said there were no allocations of RDP houses for our village this financial year, but now we find that houses are allocated at other villages. We want the MEC for Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs, Mr Basikopo Makamu, to intervene.”

One of the unemployed villagers, Mr Amos Baloyi (53), said his life was a nightmare because he did not have a proper place to live in. “It is like sleeping outside, and on rainy and windy days I always pray that God will keep us alive,” he said.

The residents feel that Gumbani village is not recognised and taken care off by any sphere of the government – nationally, provincially or locally.

The spokesperson for the Collins Chabane local municipality, Mr Robert Mathe, said the allocation and building of RDP houses in Gumbani village was delayed because the soil had to be tested first to determine whether it was suitable for building houses on or not. He said that these assessments had only just been concluded and that the village would be allocated RDP houses in the next batch.

 

 

Date:16 April 2022

By: Silas Nduvheni

Read: 1022

 

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