ALEX RESIDENTS DESERVE BETTER
Rats! Lots of them running around.
I saw them by the chemical toilets at night at the informal settlement that I stayed in recently in 12th Avenue, Alexandra. Every month I spend a day visiting forgotten people and places to highlight their plight, and then I sleep overnight in a shack.
Usually it's been in an area neglected because it is out of the way. But Alexandra is a township established 100 years ago in the bustling city of Johannesburg. It was largely forgotten under Apartheid, but what excuse is there now?
In the late 1990s I took up the issue of land rights in Alexandra. Many residents are reclaiming freehold title that was taken from them, but it's a real mess as new developments have complicated it immensely.
I remember an old lady who came to see me with a plastic bag full of documents. She wanted her land back even though a block of flats had been built on it. I met with Dr Barney Pityana of the Human Rights Commission on the issue, but nothing came of it.
In the Gauteng Legislature I was the first to appeal for Alexandra to be a presidential project so that outside resources could be brought in. Things looked good when the Alexandra Renewal Project (ARP) was started in 2001. More than R2 billion has been spent since then, but much has been wasted through mismanagement and corruption.
Improvements include pavements and roads, and RDP houses on the East Bank. But other projects have stalled as incompetent contractors were appointed who couldn't do the job.
The shocker for me was the lack of water and toilets in the many shack settlements, including densely packed shacks around the decrepit Women's Hostel. How difficult is it to install decent toilets and more taps in this area just blocks away from busy Louis Botha avenue?
Residents make use of toilets of private homes across the road. I was told that 250 people a day used the one toilet, but it has broken down. Instead of renewal, some places have worsened, like the old Alexandra Town Council that is now a condemned building crowded with shacks.
I stayed overnight in a settlement that houses about 1500 people in 300 shacks on a half-acre stand. They've been there 15 years, and three years ago were issued with numbers indicating that they would be resettled. But like much else in Alexandra, the promises have not been fulfilled.
The uncollected rubbish causes the rat problem. The council brought in owls to deal with them, but it hasn't worked. Residents said that the rats chase the owls! Apparently, owls eat mice they can swallow, not large rats.
Alexandra's many problems will only be resolved with determined, competent leadership. ARP director Job Sithole is suspended for unexplained reasons, but the ANC Youth League accused him of creating a hit list to "neutralise" comrades who wanted him fired.
The people of Alexandra deserve far better than development compromised by cadre deployment and ANC factional battles. But they will remain forgotten so long as they reliably vote ANC despite atrocious non-performance.
Jack Bloom MPL, is DA Leader in the Gauteng Legislature. This article first appeared in The Citizen.
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