'The wait is unbearable' - Homeless take over property meant for District Six claimants

Poppie Meyer coughs as she sucks on a dagga joint outside her rickety shack in a parking lot in District Six, Cape Town.

The parking lot Meyer calls home is a piece of property allocated to District Six claimants, but it has been occupied by homeless people.

It is also the subject of legal action between the body corporate of an adjoining block of flats and the City of Cape Town.

The body corporate of the upmarket the Six Building in Zonnebloem, which comprises a few hundred apartments, has been embroiled in a legal battle with the city over vagrants who have set up home in the parking lot since 2019.

The city owns seven pieces of land in the area, including the parking lot, which has been awarded to successful District Six claimants.

Cape Town remains the registered owner of the land until it is transferred to the claimants. This is yet to happen, 22 years later.

The body corporate has been complaining to the city that homeless people occupying the parking lot “constitute a societal health, environmental and safety risk”.

Last month, the high court in Cape Town ordered the city to take steps to “reasonably remediate the nuisance” by no later than October 27. This includes “curbing the criminal activities on the site” and compliance with the environmental health bylaw.

But Meyer, 51, blames the misdemeanours that got the body corporate hot under the collar on “foreign nationals”.

She said she could not return to De Aar, in the Northern Cape, after she lost her job.

Roderick Visser, who has been living on land earmarked for District Six claimants for the past three years, empathises with the claimants waiting to relocate there but says he also deserves a place to live. (Michael Walker )

“About 100 people live here but I can tell you it’s the foreign nationals who are causing problems here,” she said behind a haze of smoke. “There are few South Africans here. Most are from Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Angola. There is a lot of crime here — robberies, stabbings and theft from cars.”

Up the road from Meyer’s shack are 14 other temporary structures that are constantly monitored by the city’s law enforcement officers. Used diapers are strewn across the parking lot while several people cook on fires. There are no toilets or clean water.

Roderick Visser, 48, has lived there for more than three years.

“I have been on the housing list for the past 20 years,” he said. “But … politicians will come and ask for our votes during election time. We hope that we will be moved to a better place. We understand that the land is meant for District Six claimants.”

Meanwhile, in Grabouw, about 70km from Cape Town, lives Zarina Allie, one of the District Six claimants.

She said the latest legal skirmishes triggered painful emotions. Allie, 64, said her mother had died waiting to relocate to District Six. She had moved to Grabouw because she could not afford to live in the city.

District Six land claimant Zarina Allie says the wait to return to the area from which her family was forcefully removed is taking its toll on her. (Supplied)

“I thought that I would return to District Six within two years but I have been here for eight years now. The wait is unbearable. I had to watch my mother pass on — waiting. I fear the same will happen to me.”

More than 240 housing units have been built in District Six since the dawn of democracy.

In 2018, the land claims court ordered the minister of agriculture, land reform and rural development to deliver a report every three months detailing progress made in implementing the plan to house verified claimants.

According to the last report submitted by the minister in March, 467 housing units are set to be built in three phases “across three land parcels”.

The city said it had “proactively obtained an interdict on that land, to stop any further invasions”, and was doing everything within its resources to protect the area from “further unlawful occupation”.

But it said the reality was that unless all three affected organs of state — the city, the Land Claims Commission and the department of rural development and land reform — agreed to fence or patrol the District Six land, the prevention of further occupation on its land by way of a court order alone was highly unlikely.

“While the city was granted leave to appeal [in another] matter, it has opted to instead pursue discussions with other spheres of government, as a means of resolving the unlawful occupation for the sake of District Six and claimants.”

The body corporate declined to comment.