BARBERTON – Kosovo Villa residents are adamant that they will defy the Northern Gauteng Court interdict issued on behalf of the Umjindi Local Municipality for them to stop the development of the settlement.
They illegally occupied this area about two months ago and have vowed to stick to their guns and continue with development.
A week ago, the municipality demolished some shacks, but residents had already started to re-erect them.When Mpumalanga News visited the area over the weekend, it found some people fearlessly rebuilding them.
Most of them claimed that they had been waiting for many years to get RDP houses, but they did not see any progress from the municipality when it came to delivery.
Some stated that they had registered for houses in 1994 and 1999, but had discovered their names were not on the municipal waiting list.
Ms Sarah Nkosi, one of the residents who was found by this reporter building a shack, said, “I’m unemployed and I really need a place to live. Building is the only solution because we have been waiting for a very long time.”
She added that the general elections were approaching and government would need the votes of the poorest of the poor, but now they were failing to fulfill their promises.
“We are not going anywhere until the municipality gets a site for us.
“We are tired of empty promises and talks that don’t yield positive results. It’s time for implementation, end of story,” said Nkosi.
Some of the residents at Kosovo accused the municipality of handling the matter like the apartheid regime. As one of them said, “The way our leaders operate, it’s as if we are still living under the apartheid goverment because we don’t have a say and they don’t communicate with us. They do as they please.”
Mr Snopo Gwebu, a member of Umjindi Community Forum, told this paper, “We are not fighting against our leaders, all we want are houses. Last week the municipality sent police to demolish our shacks, but we are back again. It’s clear that the people are not going to rest or stop building until they get what they deserve, which is RDP houses,” explained Gwebu.
He said last year in July, they were verbally promised by the executive mayor, Cllr Lazarus Mashaba, that they would be relocated to farms as he explained that the site they had invaded was meant for business development but he did not even show people the new location.
“Last year he said they had bought four farms, but now he’s failing to show them to us. It’s clear that they are playing cat and mouse with us.
“The community don’t want that, we need him to tell us the reason for the delay in the delivery of houses.”
Mpumlanga News tried several times to contact the spokesperson of ULM,
Mr Samuel Jele, but to no avail. He promised to come back to this publication but didn’t do so.
The whole drama started a few months ago when the community discovered the mayor bought an expensive Mercedes-Benz for R500 000 and some of them were furious and decided to invade the open land.
