‘We can survive without the metro’
Land invaders say they want nothing from the metro.
Angry residents of Mountain View Estate informal settlement are demanding to be left alone.
This comes after an alleged unprovoked attack by the Tshwane metro on Tuesday morning.
Nine months ago, the residents invaded a vacant piece of land in Mamelodi East Extension 17, and recently the metro has been trying to remove them.
“We are a self-serviced community. We do not want anything from the metro,” said a resident.
“We survived here for the past nine months without anyone’s help.”
The settlement has no basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity.
“So what does the metro want from us, because we don’t want anything from it except to be left alone.”
“Unlike other land invaders who only want electricity and water we have managed to get ourselves a few mobile toilets and a communal tap for running water.”
A community leader, who wished to remain anonymous, said the eviction dispute between the metro and the residents was still pending in court and therefore the metro was aware people lived there.
He said instead the metro police had gone there on Tuesday without any authority by a court and started shooting rubber bullets at residents.
“We chased them [metro police] away by blocking all entrances into Mountain View Estate and throwing stones at them,” he said.
“More than 1 000 families erected shacks here last year, and the majority of them are unemployed and could not afford rent.
“We chose this land to build our homes and are asking the metro nothing.”
The residents said they received no services from the metro and did not protest.
“We can do it ourselves. We do not want any electricity or sanitation,” they said.
“We have hired mobile toilets out of our pocket and don’t want electricity at all.”
The residents said they collected money from residents and hired a private company to take their refuse to dump sites.
“We want to be left alone until the dispute has been resolved in court.”
The residents said nobody sustained any serious injury during the skirmish with the metro police.
They said news reports asserting that they had only lived there for two weeks were incorrect.
“We have been here since last October.
Mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa knows the truth because he is aware of us.”
Metro police spokesperson Senior Superintendent Isaac Mahamba said: “We have received a petition from neighbouring residents complaining about the land invaders, and were reacting on that.”
“We did not attack anyone but we shot rubber bullets because the residents were throwing stones at the metro police and the security company hired to remove the shacks.”
Mahamba said that the metro did not support any illegal land grabs.
“We are still waiting for the court interdict to remove them,” he said.
Also read:
Illegal land invasion will be stopped
Councillor accused of illegal land invasions
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