Letter: Build better ‘shacks’

Krishna Govender of Fairbreeze writes:

Illegal land occupation has created a lot of tension in the community, and it’s understandable.

Poverty-stricken people appearing overnight is cause for concern, since desperate people will resort to desperate measures.

Besides the risk of house break-ins, there is also the concern that these settlements will decrease the value of the properties in the area.

But what if this wasn’t the case?

What if these informal homes were actually built properly?

What if the illegally occupied land actually looked good?

There is a growing trend globally towards sustainable home construction and agro-forestry.

This involves designing houses that can be built out of freely available materials, such as sand, clay, grass, used tyres, and even plastic bottles.

If you search for “cob homes” on YouTube, you will find that these homes can actually end up better looking than conventional houses.

Sanitation is taken care of through the use of composting toilets, which don’t require sewage pipes or the digging of pits.

Agro-forestry involves creating a food forest of edible perennial plants, which means that with the proper planning these sustainable housing settlements can look like those Hobbit homes from The Lord of The Rings.

In my opinion, this would create a better living environment than the government’s current RDP housing settlements.

So instead of condemning the land invaders, the municipality should actually work with them.

We should educate the shack builders in the art of sustainable town planning and construction, and then teach the residents about agro-forestry.

This could actually reduce the risk of community members ending up as criminals, since they will be able to grow their own food and then sell the excess.

That being said, we still have to address the issue of land ownership.

After all, nobody is going to put the time and effort into building a decent house if they know that they can be evicted from it at any time.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons why shacks are so common, as they are literal pack-up-and-go houses.