Penniless renting an RDP house

AS THE sun sets on yet another day, Nikiwe Nkosi’s hopes of ever living in her own house are diminishing.

The family of 12 are currently living in a two-roomed RDP house in the Emadoshini area, a house they have been renting for the past year or so.

According to Nikiwe’s daughter, Sindi Ngema, the family has rented from several RDP houses in the area before this one.

“We have applied for a house every single time word was sent out that RDP houses were set to be built for the community, but to this day, nothing has come of it,” said the young woman.

Sindi said that the family has been in Vryheid since 1993 when Mr Shabangu was the councillor of ward 13. They have seen at least three mayors come and go and each time, they hoped that they would receive help but their attempts to get assistance seem to have been in vain.

The family relies on the income of the elder brother Jabulani Mtshali who works at Vryheid Printers.

“One day when Jabulani’s employer was taking him home she saw just how crammed we are and how terrible our living conditions are,” said Sindi.

The employee then offered to assist this family to get a better home.

“She also wrote a letter to the President himself telling him about our desperate living conditions,” said a heartbroken Sindi.

The family eventually found this RDP house they are currently living in last year and were told that it was for sale.

“We were all happy and very relieved as this meant that we had finally gotten a home for ourselves,” she continued.

This though proved to not be the case as the young man who had initially agreed to sell the house to them, turned out to not even be the owner of the house.

“It turned out that the house actually belonged to this man’s late mother, and he had decided to sell the house without going over it with his family first. Due to the fact that we had already moved in and had nowhere else to go we reached an agreement that we would rent the house for R1000 per month in the meantime while the family settled their issues,” said Sindi.

After this agreement, the man seemed to no longer be bothered with selling the house to the Nkosi family and months passed with them paying rent to him.

“We eventually realised that he was not prepared to sell the house to us and so we told him we would no longer be paying the rent but would continue paying for water and buying electricity directly from the municipality,” Sindi said.

Feeling that their current place to live was not guaranteed, Sindi decided to write to the AbaQulusi Municipality to request assistance and was told to write a letter to their records office.

“I wrote a letter to them making reference to the RDP houses that were built near Ebhareni Hall as well as Holy Angels Roman Catholic Church after I heard that these houses were built for extremely underprivileged people. Living in a house where there is only one breadwinner and two elderly women who cannot walk and have to use wheelchairs to go from point A to point B, I was certain we would receive assistance but these attempts too seemed futile,” Sindi said in dismay.

Nikiwe (64) and Ndinasantu Nkosi (87), were fortunate enough to be one of the people that received help from an outreach program that was done earlier this year and they both received wheelchairs.

They seldom use the chairs as there is barely any space to move around with them in the two-roomed house.

Seeing an 87-year old Ndinasantu crawling as a means to get in and out of the house has become a norm to this family.

At present the family still awaits response from the municipality, and they are currently unsure what the future holds as the owner of the house could throw them out at any given time.