WATCH: ‘We are treated as foreigners in our own country!’ – Tented camps for informal residents
Hundreds of South African Nationals have been forced to live in squalor, with no running water or suitable ablutions to meet their needs.
Desperate residents, clutching for attention, could barely wait for their turn to share their plight, since being removed from their homes.
On Wednesday 24 October, a private landowner had informal settlers forcefully removed from his property by a private security company.
The Red Ants flooded into the assortment of shacks and tore apart their homes one by one, leaving the settlers to carry their belongings to the streets.
The informal residents had been forewarned of the planned eviction, but could not relocate since no provisions of alternative accommodation had been made.
Since then, families have been split apart and are now expected to share a tent with seven other people. These strangers are crammed into one tent with all of their personal belongings.
A JoJo Tank was brought in to supply the residents with drinking water but has been empty since Monday.
“We have to share a tent with strangers, we can’t sleep because people are stealing our belongings. In one tent, there are nearly 50 people inside. Last night, we had to keep rebuilding the tents because the wind was blowing them away!” Said Xolani.
Xolani feels like the government is doing nothing to take care of them. “We are being treated like foreigners in our own country! How can people expect us to live like this? We have to go fetch dirty drinking water from a ditch, it’s sewerage water!”
The weather forecast for Middelburg has predicted heavy storms for the next few days and these residents will remain exposed throughout.
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