Cape Town - The Cape Coloured Congress (CCC) has vowed to exhaust every legal avenue to stop the planned relocation of 1 254 residents illegally dwelling on Prasa’s Central Line to 8.7 hectares of land at Wedge Area by November 30.
This as the party embarked on an awareness drive on Wednesday to tell Mitchells Plain residents about the planned relocations.
CCC president Fadiel Adams said many residents in the area still did not know what had been planned and how this would affect them, including the government, which he said didn’t care how they would be affected.
“A minimum of 3 000 children will be brought and that will put 3 000 of our children out of school again. We have thousands of children in Mitchells Plain not getting into school because of the mushrooming of squatter camps all around us.
“There is no safety plan for this relocation. Moving 1 500 units, with a minimum of three people inside, without a safety plan is illegal. There’s been no consultation with the police. The police station can’t cope with the crime as it is,” he said.
Adams said the fact that consultations had been done with Langa and Khayelitsha communities but not with the receiving community was disrespectful to the coloured residents.
“It is amazing how the government can find land for people from the Eastern Cape as long as it’s far away from whites.
“We call on it to send these people back home, to protest for land and housing where they are from. Let them go and hold the government they voted for to account, because all this is going to do is push coloured grandmothers further down the line in the wait for housing,” he said.
Adams said the housing queue had been jumped since 1994, leading to the elderly still being on the waiting list, languishing in backyards.
Housing Development Agency’s Katlego Moselakgomo said a decision on the final relocation option (whether relocation to empty plots or structures) was yet to be taken in consultation with the affected communities, through the Central Line steering committee.
Human settlements Mayco Member Malusi Booi said the relocations were subject to housing legislation and state housing requirements.
He said the accommodation for relocates would be informed by their housing status as per the Housing Needs Registrar.
mthuthuzeli.ntseku@inl.co.za