Mr Nhlakanipho Zuma, executive mayor of the Govan Mbeki Municipality, said the municipality acquired Brendan Village to address the municipality’s escalating human settlement issue.
He said townships are highly populated and GMM thus bought Branden Village through the Department of Human Settlement.
“We began a process of buying the land around our municipal jurisdiction that is not owned by the municipality and Branden Village was available.
“Then we engage the department of Human Settlement that agreed to buy it for us.”
Mr Zuma said Brendan Village has 100 houses, a hall, a lodge, offices and other amenities.
“The property has cost us R95-million and our plan is to have a newly established township that will have middle-cost houses which will accommodate those people who don’t qualify to get either RDP or Bond houses.”
He said the final decision will be taken by the council on what is going to happen once it is handed over to the municipality.
The mayor also said the previous owner was using a land-use agreement, meaning that Brandan Village has one title deed that is attached to all properties on it, including the houses and other facilities.
He said they cannot sell those houses individually because everything is attached to one title dead and they will then have to do a sub-division.
According to the mayor, the entire area was not assessed and surveyed for human settlement and other needs. This needs to be done before decisions can be taken about the property.
“We agreed with the Department of Human Settlement that they first do a study for township establishment before handing the property over to us.
“We cannot take over Brendan Village yet, because we don’t have the internal capacity to rent out those houses and to manage that rental stock.
“We agreed with the department to appoint somebody qualified and suitable to manage the property,” said Mr Zuma.
He said up until the township establishment study, including designs where it will be suitable for the municipality to construct more houses, is complete and availability of sites for members of the public to buy, the department will rent it out to the public, including employees of the municipality and political leaders who qualify through following processes of doing an application.
