Yet another piece of land owned by the Tshwane metro has fallen into the hands of illegal land grabbers – this time an informal settlement named Nkandla in Mamelodi.
The illegal settlement has slowly been growing over the past six months, but the metro has now started legal proceedings to have the land invaders, who built structures and have started putting up foundations for yet more shacks, legally evicted.
All indications are that the creation of the settlement had been carefully planned as neat walkways had been allocated between the rows of shacks.
But, mayoral spokesman Lebogang Matji earlier stressed that the metro would not stand for illegal land evasion as it severely hampered development plans by the city for all residents.
Matji said the Mamelodi land where ‘Nkandla’ had sprung up, belonged to the City of Tshwane and had been earmarked for a residential development.
“Our stance on illegal land occupation has not changed and people cannot just occupy pieces of land as and when they desire. This behaviour is unbecoming and cannot be condoned. It further brings up a whole lot of service delivery problems, as these informal settlements that are being established were not planned for, with no provisions for basic services,” Matji said.
‘Nkandla’ is but one of several pockets of land that had been invaded in the Tshwane metro over the past months but the metro had acted swiftly to demolish shacks in ‘Malemaville’ in Nellmapius next to Mamelodi and ‘Dali Mpofu View’ in Soshanguve, north-west of the city.
According to Matji, the land invasions were politically inspired and intended to undermine the running of the city.
Earlier this months, the Red Ants, metro police and SA Police Service all assisted to raze the illegal structures on the invaded land, and the areas were regularly patrolled to avoid re-occupation by squatters.
The citizen rights movement AfriForum also became involved, through a Gauteng North High Court order and with the assistance of the metro and Red Ants, in the removal of illegal shacks on a farm north of the city recently.
It could not yet be established when the metro intended to start demolishing structures in ‘Nkandla’ – named after president Jacob Zuma’s controversial private homestead in KwaZulu-Natal.
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