A squatter camp mired in misery is now being turned into a death trap by the Tshwane metro, the DA said this week.
Party councillor Lex Middelberg made this observation when responding to a metro plans to fence in residents of the Cemetery View informal settlement in the east of Pretoria.
The plan was outlined by Tshwane regional executive director Sello Chipu at a meeting with residents on Thursday.
Chipu was meeting residents from around the cemetery and people whose loved ones were buried there at the Erasmuskloof fire station.
He told them that legal constraints prevented the metro from moving the residents of Cemetery View.
This left only one solution — to give them water and toilets and to build a fence to prevent them from using the cemetery for ablutions and a source of water.
Middelberg, who attended the meeting, lashed out at Chipu.
“Your own report stated that the settlement was the worst social disaster in this city,” he said.
“It stated that residents had to tiptoe through faeces and mud and that it was inaccessible to emergency vehicles. Now, instead of moving the illegal residents, you are merely fencing them in.
“The squatter settlement, which is already inaccessible to emergency vehicles, will now, without doubt, be a complete death trap for those living there.”
A broken-down prefabricated wall separating the settlement from the cemetery is currently the only opening large enough for vehicles to get into Cemetery View.
But to get to this opening, vehicles must drive through the cemetery gate which is locked at night.
Chipu’s surprise announcement followed complaints by Mpho Phalala, a Mamelodi resident that the cemetery was unsafe because of the squatters. Her daughter is buried in Pretoria East Cemetery,
“We were almost robbed there on the 7th of this month,” she said, asking what the metro intended doing about the crime at the cemetery.
Other residents said some of the graves of their loved ones had been vandalised by the squatters, who were often seen bathing naked at a tap in the cemetery.
Chipu said the illegal residents had constitutional rights and could not just be removed – therefore the construction of a wall to fence them in was currently the only solution to keep them from using facilities at the cemetery.
Chipu said plans were underway to rebuild a fence between Cemetery View and the Pretoria East Cemetery situated in the up-market east of Pretoria next to Woodhill Boulevard shopping centre.
Since 2011, when there were only a few shacks hidden away in an open veld near the cemetery, an entire new settlement of some 400 plastic and tin shacks has mushroomed – growing almost daily.
At the time of going to print, the Tshwane metro had not yet responded to a request that the informal report about Cemetery View be made available to Rekord.
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