April 2, 2004
By Lucille Davie
THE first two phases of the Kliptown Development Project involving road linkages have been completed since the plan was formulated in November 2001, but the target of 7 000 houses is hard to envisage amidst the run-down residential area.
"Housing is particularly behind. It is very problematic and hugely frustrating," says Aubrey Manganye, the Johannesburg Development Agency's (JDA's) project manager for Kliptown development, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2005.
Given the task of building 200 houses a month, Thulani Nkosi, deputy director of the Johannesburg Housing Department, says the issue of housing is extremely complex: areas for potential houses have to be cleared and surveyed, sewerage, water and electricity has to be installed, show houses have to be built and viewed, before systematic removals can take place, and overriding these complexities is the thorny issue of funding and matching government subsidies for those who qualify for RDP houses, with the cost of building the house.
As a result, Manganye says the JDA has decided to take over supervision of some of the process, and will have a township lay-out contractor on board by the end of June.
The development project aims to move the Kliptown community to "decent affordable housing", create employment and business opportunities, specifically for small businesses in a "sustainable retail and commercial area", implement an "efficient and cost-effective public transport system", all in a healthy environment.
The final vision for the southern section of Kliptown will be tarred streets, restored houses with electricity and sewerage, open park space, an informal trader market, sports facilities, backing on to the new Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication which will contain a satellite police station, museum and other facilities.
The historic "backyard" town, dating back to 1903, is a sorry sight. Tin shanties litter the backyards of the more formal brick housing, rows of chemical toilets stand outside homes, and the untarred roads run with streams of filthy water. The old cinema, Sans Souci Bioscope, and the Hotel New Yorker, both once the hub of Kliptown's social scene, lie in ruins, their windows, doors and bricks having been chopped out and used to build humble shacks.
Between 38 000 to 45 000 people live in Kliptown at present, and a good deal of them will be relocated to surrounding areas. As in Sophiatown and Alexandra, Kliptown residents once owned their properties, but in the 1980s their houses were expropriated by the West Rand Administration Board and they became tenants in their own homes. They subsequently made illegal additions to their houses, renting out these rooms. Others took over their back yards, erecting tin shanties, and the township became overcrowded and squalid.
Kliptown origins
Kliptown was largely created from resettling Indian, black and coloured communities living in Newtown on two farms, Klipspruit and Klipriviersoog, but because it fell outside the municipal boundaries (about 25 kilometres from the city centre), it developed an independent spirit. It was the city's first multi-racial community, and was a natural rallying point for opponents of apartheid to meet in secret decades later. Nelson Mandela hid in the town in the early 1960s on his run from the police before being caught and put on trial with other Rivonia trialists.
Later, in 1955, it was chosen as the venue for the historic two-day meeting at which the draft copy of the Freedom Charter was ratified by several thousand people from around the country and signed a year later by chief Albert Luthuli, then president of the ANC.
Photos in the Kliptown Visitor Centre
The settlement also attracted Chinese shopkeepers. Marriages took place between Indians and coloureds to allow Indians, who were prohibited from buying property, to purchase plots. A small group of whites also settled in Kliptown and married local black women. The result was an increasing population of coloureds, which remains today.
But being independent had its drawbacks: the City was exempt from maintaining the roads, installing electricity and sewerage systems, and the shabbiness of the town is testimony to this neglect.
The town is dominated by Union Street, flowing in from neighbouring Eldorado Park, and is lined with an untidy row of shops and pavement stalls which have attracted shoppers from Soweto for decades.
Progress
The first two phases of the K43 have been completed, linking the Old Potchefstroom Road in Soweto to the Klipspruit Road, running into Kliptown. Phase three, linking the K43 with the Golden Highway to the south, is in the planning stage, with realignment of the road under discussion. One of the issues to be settled before the road continues, is the resettlement of 400 households along its path.
A start has been made on the rehabilitation of the Klipspruit River and a wetlands clean-up campaign is up and running, employing 50 people. A landscape architect has been appointed to consider plans for the open spaces alongside the river.
The sewerage system running into Kliptown has been upgraded but homeowners still await waterborne sewerage
The taxi rank, just off the K43 and near Union Street, is three weeks behind schedule but is expected to be completed by the end of April. It will accommodate 250 taxis.
The Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication, the open, dusty field where the 1955 meeting took place just north of Union Street, has been declared a national monument, and will undergo a major transformation which includes two commemorative squares with symbolic crosses, grids and towers, hawker stalls, a museum, a monument and an auditorium, offset by indigenous trees. Work on the square has begun, with completion set at June 2005, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1955 Freedom Charter meeting.
Burning issue of housing
Kliptown is a closely packed area of several square kilometres, with around 100 formal brick houses of over 60 years old. They are small - on average with two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen - and most have a front stoep with attractive pillars. Most don't have electricity and waterborne sewerage.
But most of the houses are rapidly deteriorating. For decades the houses have been neglected, partly because of unemployment and partly because owners lost control of them in the 1980s. Gene Duiker, who was born in Kliptown and is now the CEO of the Kliptown Our Town Trust, estimates that the unemployment rate in the town stands at around 60-70 percent.
Union Street, late Saturday afternoon
Some of these old houses are to be restored, and have sewerage and electricity installed, while others will be demolished.
The project promises that some 1 700 new housing units will be built within the immediate vicinity. Around 1 400 of these will be for rental, the rest for purchase as RDP homes, for which owners must qualify for a subsidy. In total 7 100 new homes are to be built.
This means that some 6 900 households will be moved, possibly to the area east of the square, on what is at present a golf course serving the middle class area of Pimville.
Designs for the new houses have been completed and the construction of several show houses is to commence in the third quarter of 2004.
The cost of the project has been pegged at R564-million, with R299-million coming from Blue IQ, Gauteng's development arm, R30-million from the City of Johannesburg, R110-million from the provincial housing department, with an expected top-up amount of R125-million.
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