Apartheid is still alive, ActionSA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip believes after his oversight visit to various wards in Buffalo City Metro on Tuesday.
Trollip is looking at various projects across the province as part of parliament’s constituency period, which ends on Monday.
The purpose of these visits is to encourage MPs to remain in contact with the people they represent.
He was joined by party provincial chair Nongoma Mtitshana and ActionSA BCM leader Sanele Magaqa.
The first stop on the visit was Mdantsane’s Highway Mall where its landlord, the Eastern Cape Development Corporation, is embroiled in an ongoing legal fracas with unhappy tenants due to rental arrears which have accumulated to R29m over the years.
Trollip said conditions in the mall resembled a pigsty.
“Those small businesses, they pay their monthly rents, there are no toilets in that facility, there’s no water, electricity is intermittent, there’s no refuse removal, the place is a pigsty.
“And if that’s how the government, our own government, treats our own South Africans, it’s absolutely appalling.
“It appears that apartheid is still alive and well in SA because the ANC government treats small emerging black businesses with the same disdain and neglect the previous government did.
“And many, many unregistered illegal immigrants operate businesses there. Many of them sell food.”
In July, the development corporation, which manages 817 properties in the Eastern Cape, started eviction proceedings against tenants in arrears for more than 90 days.
A total of 29 businesses in the mall were affected by the clampdown and faced eviction due to rental arrears amounting to R5.5m by the current tenants alone.
Tenants’ committee member Siseko Siwisa said they were looking at working with ActionSA to rope in parliament to force the development corporation to write their debts off.
“We were looking for help from everyone including the councillors. When ActionSA saw us we mobilised the tenants.
“The ECDC’s primary objective is to assist businesses and uplift businesses here in the province and Mdantsane.
“But that is not happening — instead they want rent money even though the mall is in its current state.”
Trollip said he would take the matter up with the development corporation.
There are lots of questions about what happened to the money [allocated for the housing project] and how people are allocated houses
ActionSA representatives made further oversight visits to halted housing development projects in Betterlife near Reeston and Ginsburg.
“There’s a lot of contestation about how houses are awarded and why people from Eziphunzana get first choice in moving to Ward 13 when there are people living in Ward 13 who have blue cards [a housing subsidy application document that applicants are given once they’ve been approved] and have been waiting 30 years for houses.
“I then went to Ginsburg to meet some families who’d lost their houses. The local authority had provided them with temporary bungalow accommodation more than 10 years ago.
“All they’ve done is put a very expensive ‘Clear View’ fence around those six bungalows. That coloured community lives in the most terrible, terrible, terrible conditions,” Trollip said.
“And I said it reminded me of being in a zoo, where the people in there are treated as if they are wild animals.”
He would submit questions to national housing minister Thembisile Simelane over the delays.
“There are lots of questions about what happened to the money [allocated for the housing project] and how people are allocated houses.”
He described the state of the metro as appalling.
“I come from a small town called Bedford in the Eastern Cape, and the Bedford Golf Course and the King William’s Town Golf Course are exactly the same age.
“They were started in 1892, and are 133 years old.
“The Bedford Golf Course is thriving, and the King William’s Town Golf Course has been completely vandalised. There’s no semblance of a golf course left,” Trollip said.
“It’s an indication of what has happened to Buffalo City. I lived in Buffalo City for 13 years and the decline in that city is so dramatic I can hardly believe it.
“If you live there, you don’t see the deterioration.
“But if you have lived there and you go back quite frequently, the deterioration is so marked that I can’t believe it’s the same town.
“I was travelling on the old East Coast Road through the industrial area in Gonubie — you can’t even travel on that road.
“The neglect of infrastructure, roads, traffic lights, street lights, is appalling.”
Trollip ended his oversight tour by visiting retired mineworkers in Whittlesea on Thursday.
Daily Dispatch
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