The Elijah Baraji Village Mega Project, the first of its kind in the area, was launched near Welverdiend on Tuesday.
This development, situated on the farm Varkenslaagte, will entail the building of 12 700 residential units, only 40% of which will be low-cost houses.
The rest of the project will mainly be made up of houses with values ranging from R350 000 to R750 000.
The project gets its name from the late Elijah Barayi, a trade unionist from Blyvoor who was a founding member
and first vice-president of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1982. He was also the first elected president of the
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) after its formation in 1985.
According to the Merafong City Local Municipality’s housing manager, Mr Lemmy Jofile, there will also be flats
available to rent. All the new dwellings will be similar, double-storey structures.
Although specific details have not yet been finalised, space has been created in the project’s building plan for  facilities like schools, a shopping centre, a police station and post office.
Jofile added that a new reservoir and a pecial waste treatment plant will also be built to meet the demands of the new
community and lighten the load on the current infrastructure, which has been giving numerous problems.
‘This is a long-term project and we only expect it to be finished in five or six years,’ Jofile told the Herald.
The development was birthed as a collaboration between government, the private sector and the Gauteng Partnership Fund. The developer of the site is the company CALP from Vanderbijlpark.
As part of Tuesday’s function, the Gauteng premier, David Makhura, also handed over the title deeds to beneficiaries
of the Khutsong South Ext. 1, 2, 4 and 6 housing development in the same area. The beneficiaries have already been living in these houses since 2011.
One such beneficiary was 88-year-old Ms Mapule Rachel Ngalosha.
‘Our task is to deliver but the community also has a responsibility to help us look after infrastructure,’ Makhura
told the crowd.