While in uniform for 40 years, naval petty officer Paul February was deployed across the continent, from Darfur to Senegal. Now that he has retired the navy is not concerned where he goes — just so long as he leaves his naval accommodation.
February’s pension is being withheld until he vacates his three-bedroom home in Da Gama Park, the navy’s small residential village tucked into a valley above Simon’s Town. He now works part-time in the Da Gama Park store to make ends meet and is fighting to stay on in his home at least until he can relocate his child to a new school, or receive his pension to afford new accommodation.
Clive Horwood has also just retired. He lives down the road from February, but probably not for much longer. When he inquired about his pension, he claimed a senior naval officer told him to “go live on the streets”.
“I was a chief mechanic aboard a strike craft,” he told the Sunday Times. “I honestly don’t know why they are being so hostile.
“We want to move out — we have told them we are willing to do so — but we’ve got no money to pay upfront for a place.”
He believes the navy has backtracked on a previous policy of paying outgoing staff within three months of retirement — the grace period for people to vacate naval accommodation. “That has always been the norm,” said Horwood, who moved to Da Gama Park with his wife Eileen 20 years ago.
The couple are now in financial distress, were recently granted a reprieve from debt review and are struggling to support their parents.
“There is no income and there is just enough money to survive, so how are we supposed to pay rent if we have no funds,” asked Eileen. “We left everything behind when we relocated from Durban 20 years ago. Our families don’t have space for us. We were told we must come here, and at the time I had little kids.”
Now they were being told to vacate no matter their personal circumstances.
“We were asked why didn’t we save. But we saved as much as we could — we raised our kids,” she said.
February said the navy was being inconsistent in how it applied the rules: “What I really don’t understand is that people have been staying in Da Gama Park who were done with the navy five years ago, but now the light is shining on us.”
February had been in charge of catering at the Navy Signal School. “Even though I finished in March, I still haven’t got my pension — they don’t want to process the papers unless you move out of the house, and that has never been practised in all these years. People got their money when they retired.
“We are now even getting an invoice for the three months that we’ve been waiting — that has never happened,” he said.
The navy did not respond to queries this week. However, the Sunday Times has established that February’s vacating certificate for Da Gama Park married quarters was signed off at the end of March, the last day of his 40-year service. Two weeks earlier, on March 15, he wrote to his superior asking for permission to stay in his naval home until next year due to personal circumstances. “I told them I had been in service for most of my life and always served with loyalty and pride,” he said.
In response, navy management reiterated that February would not receive his pension until he moved out. “They said administration of my pension would only begin once I have left — and that I should already have organised alternative accommodation.” He was granted the maximum three-month grace period to vacate his home, with an option to reapply for a further extension.
But February said this would not resolve his cash-flow problem in the absence of his pension. “I went and viewed a house in Saldanha, and yes the owner immediately signed my offer, but I don't have any money [and] now depend on the pension and hopefully, God willing, I do get the money before I lose the opportunity of getting this beautiful house,” he said.
The navy has faced criticism in the past over the condition of its Da Gama Park accommodation, which residents said had deteriorated due to budgetary constraints. “These houses are falling apart — we have had to spend our own money,” Eileen Horwood said.
Earlier this year the City of Cape Town intervened to fix water infrastructure and roads that should be the responsibility of the department of public works. When the Sunday Times visited in January, residents feared wildfires because the surrounding mountainside had not been cleared of alien vegetation — a government responsibility.
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