The plight of the Soweto Homemakers community - Part 2

On Monday, the day after the DA launched its Gauteng election manifesto, Mmusi Maimane, DA Premier candidate for Gauteng, came to Jabavu in Soweto to launch an important plank of the manifesto. It focuses on the need to issue title deeds to occupants of state-subsidised housing. As I outlined in my previous post, many of the residents at Soweto Homemakers have lived there for over twenty years not just without title deeds, but under the constant threat of eviction. The DA's policy on title deeds could change this, improving the lives of several hundreds of people in a matter of months. But will the ANC listen?


Around 200 people gathered to listen to Mmusi speak. Many of them were DA activists, but just as many were residents of the Homemakers community and neighbouring streets. They sat or stood underneath the roof of a steel structure erected in 1984 to house the Soweto Homemakers Festival but which now lies semi derelict and unoccupied.

Mmusi's message was simple. He began by telling his own story, of a boy growing up in Dobsonville, not far away from where he stood, a humble upbringing. What enabled him to move up in the world was that his parents had title to their modest four roomed house, so they were able to raise a loan to pay for Mmusi's education. Possessing the title deeds gave them collateral, which banks need when lending money (this was before the micro-lending industry appeared in South Africa).

The people of Homemakers and an estimated 220 000 families in Gauteng do not have title to their place of residence. This means they have no incentive to maintain or improve it, cannot raise a loan against it, and live in fear that someone might one day come along and tell them to move. This is no better than the apartheid days.      
                 
                    A resident having his say

DA policy (you can read Mmusi's statement here)  would give title to occupants of RDP housing after two years rather than the current eight allowed by the ANC government. This would immediately release dormant capital in the bricks and mortar - and the land underneath - for occupants to further improve their properties. Some families might succumb to the lure of too much debt to fund consumption and the high-life, but others like Mmusi's parents would invest in the future - either educating their children, themselves or perhaps starting a business.

Meanwhile, the Homemakers residents carry on life as best they can. Yesterday I drove around Soweto with three of them, first to the Eskom office in Diepkoof, then to another one in Dhlamini, and finally to the municipal offices in White City, trying to find out how they could get connected to a pay-as-you-go electricity service. Each time it was the same story - they needed proof of title to the property before Eskom could connect them. It's been like this since the power was switched off in 2006.

A couple of years ago they spoke to Eskom and were told the same story, but this time the officials suggested they get a letter from their ward councillor, Zodwa Nxumalo. She refused. Why? Because there has been a stand off between her and the Homemakers residents for over eight years.

Earlier in the day I went through the tattered records of the Homemakers Trust and the Jabavu Community Centre which had run the community on and off since 1984. The bank account of the Trust was in the name of a company owned by the man appointed by the trustees to manage it - a recipe for corruption and embezzlement if ever I saw one. When he died the residents and businesses stopped paying rent - to whom, and for what? Then some of the residents formed the Jabavu Community Centre and went around asking for rent from the residents. Others asked, what are you doing with the money? Silence. So a stand off developed and the self-appointed management either left the property or died, and for a time there was relative peace.

But try as they might, the Homemakers leadership has not been able to get a satisfactory answer from the City of Johannesburg to their pleas for assistance. My own efforts have also drawn a blank.

What particularly caught my attention while going through the records was the stack of documents (including a memorandum on the National Democratic Revolution!) from the Jabavu ANC branch that dated back to the early 1990s, as well as the Soweto Civic Association, which was dominated by ANC cadres. The Homemakers community was clearly a hotbed of ANC activism, and an early leader of the community, King Sibiya, became an ANC councillor. Sibiya, in his time (he is deceased) made all sorts of promises of housing to the residents, and was a leader of the Jabavu Community Centre management that tried to extract rents from the residents for dubious purposes.

Is it a coincidence that the current ANC councillor dismisses the community’s concerns because it contains an active DA element? If so this is factional politics at its worst. A ward councillor is duty bound to look after the interests of all his or her residents. But this apparently escapes the notice of the current one.

This evening she is holding a meeting in the ward, and on the agenda is the redevelopment of Homemakers initiated by the Joburg Property Company. As an appointed representative of Homemakers I’m going along to listen to what she has to say. Stay tuned!