My story about hostel allocation in Attredgeville

Residents cry foul at hostel allocation.

Trevor Hlungwani.

Newly-built hostels in Saulsville, west of Pretoria, are getting dilapidated while residents do not have better housing. The residents of Block R Hostels accuses their ward councillor, Conference Ntuli and her predecessor Mrs Boya of allegedly trying to place their relatives and people who were said to be not the rightful beneficiaries of the hostels.

Charles Chokwe, a resident, said that the former ward councillor identified as Mrs Boya, held a public meeting with the residents of the hostels in 2007 and told them that their hostels had to be renovated. “She promised us that we would occupy the hostels upon the completion of the renovations,”Chokwe said. The renovations kick started in 2007. As part of the renovations process, the residents were removed from their houses that were said to be not safe for them.

By early 2011, the construction company had completed the renovations, but up to date the residents are still living in the old hostels nearby the old ones.

“Sometimes we are surprised to see strangers coming to view the houses, we could see that they might have bought them,” said a concerned resident.

However, Ward 63 Councillor, Conference Ntuli, said that what the residents are saying is not true. “It has always been important to me to contribute to the growth of a society in which the government fulfils its promises of service delivery”, said the councillor. She also said that government processes takes long to materialize as there were lot of stages to go through.

“It’s unfortunate that the residents were not willing to wait for the government to do things in a proper way,” Ntuli said. Meanwhile, the windows of the new hostels are broken and thieves are stealing electricity cables, geysers and bath tubs.

An angry resident said that the councillor is delaying the process of placing them in the houses in an attempt to place her people. She further said that they will make sure that the councillor gets their message across. “No lesson really seems to have been sent clearly to her of what will happen if she transgresses our wishes,” said the agitated councillor.

One of the residents, Nicodemous Masango said that they were an example of an excluded and poor community which cannot be recognized because of poor political affiliation. “The current political setup requires one to be related to a government official in order to benefit from government process,” Masango said. They do not have electricity and they rely on a water pump which is 300 meters from their houses. The residents also faced a problem of poor sanitation. The unhygienic conditions of their toilets are very bad and had created a breeding space for worms.

“In another level we cannot measure the pain and sense of dignity we have lost in ourselves, you will never respect yourself while you are living in an environment like this,” said Masango.

Maxwell Mhlanga from Tshwane Metro said that they will investigate the matter and make sure that the allocation of the houses is carried out fairly and adequately.

“Corruption, I suppose, continues because of lack of consequences, if government officials continues to think they have done it before and nothing had been done to them, I guess the temptation is to continue to do it because nothing is done about it anyway,” he said.