Housing going up in Kliptown

RELATED LINKS: Housing plan looks at homeless blues The City of Johannesburg has a strategy in place to deal with its housing problem. The Housing Master Plan hopes to house the homeless by 2009. Read more Kliptown housing project takes off Residents in Kliptown will benefit from a City of Johannesburg housing project that has set a target to construct 5 700 RDP houses in the "next few years". Read more After 20 years, a home for Christmas The first beneficiaries from the Fred Clarke informal settlement moved into their new homes in Kliptown, at least one after living in a shack for 20 years. Read more A makeover for historic Kliptown The Gauteng provincial government and City Of Johannesburg will give more than R375-million towards the renovation of Kliptown, the city's oldest all-race settlement, steeped in political history. Read more Kliptown makeover slowly gaining ground 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. Read more Historic Kliptown gets its first museum Kliptown, one of Soweto's historic sites, is set to get its first museum, exhibiting pictures and artefacts celebrating its rich political and social history. Kliptown was the site of the 1955 signing of the Freedom Charter, when a mass gathering of anti-apartheid organisations set out a series of demands to the apartheid government. Read more Old Kliptown was a 'picturesque place' Its old inhabitants remember cosmopolitan Kliptown's glory days, when different races and cultures lived in harmony, and look forward to the township's regeneration. Read more

Mayoral committee member for housing, Strike Ralegoma, talks at a community meeting

Drive to provide Kliptown houses Kliptown residents have been assured that houses are being built for residents, although the pace of delivery has been problematic. August 20, 2007 By Lesego Madumo HOUSING is topping the agenda in Kliptown, a suburb of Soweto. In the drive to fill the housing need, some 250 houses in the Fred Clarke and Klipspruit Extension 2 areas will soon be completed, while the planning is under way for housing projects in other sections of Kliptown. According to the City's media liaison officer, Nthatisi Modingoane, this will result in the construction of more than 700 housing units. In addition, land will be acquired from the province for a further 1 200 units. However, on Tuesday, 14 August about 600 residents from 14 informal settlements in Soweto, along with representatives of social movements opposed to council policies, converged on Kliptown to march to the council offices in Eldorado Park. They planned to hand over a memorandum of their grievances. Among other things, they called for the "rent to buy" social housing being built next to the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication in Kliptown to be allocated to locals. Kliptown is in Region D. A memorandum was handed to the area manager, Shimi Makhele, who said he served as the link between the City and its residents. The memorandum would be forwarded to the relevant City parties. Contract problems and problems relating to the ordered clearance of informal settlements had caused delays in the Kliptown housing project, according to Modingoane. "These are being resolved," he said. "The intention is to have at least two, or maybe even three, contracts being implemented at the same time for the different communities in Kliptown." A community leader, Sipho Jantjie, said residents were also upset that some of them could be moved from Kliptown, as land in the suburb was developed. "We refuse to move from Kliptown," he shouted, adding that land that could be used for housing was being used by businesses and churches. "We want the council to stop selling the land to those people. This is our land and they should use it to build more houses for us." However, Modingoane said that the aim of the project had always been "to rehouse all the original residents in Kliptown, within the project, and this is still the aim". The march followed a meeting in July between the community and the member of the mayoral committee for housing, Strike Ralegoma. That meeting was held at the Kliptown community centre in the wake of protests over a lack of housing. Here the allocation of housing was explained. "The City has agreed to build houses for its residents and we will keep to our promise," Ralegoma said. Speaking about the new townhouses built on the edge of the square, he said: "The townhouses have been built for you. However, you will need to follow a certain procedure in order to get access." Electricity was being installed in the townhouses, "and we are working on improving sanitation and landscaping", Ralegoma said. While the building of houses was a slow process, the City had put contingency plans into place to speed up construction and service delivery, he added. One of the issues raised by Kliptown residents was the lack of water and sanitation. Ralegoma promised them that by October, some 910 people would receive houses with proper sewage and running water. So far, the City had build 867 Reconstruction and Development Programme houses in other parts of Kliptown, and it would continue to speed up construction in other remote areas of Soweto. The City intended to eradicate informal settlements by 2014, Ralegoma said, urging people to be patient. Permission to use web site material Publishers may use material from this site free of charge, as long as: Credit is given to either the "City of Johannesburg website (www.joburg.org.za)" or to "Johannesburg News Agency (www.joburg.org.za)"; If the article is used online, a link is provided to the original article on this website; The name of the article's author is acknowledged; The webmaster is informed of how and where the material is used (fill in this brief online form). Johannesburg News Agency is operated by BIG Media at 011-484-1400 Print this Page E-mail this article to a friend Help using Joburg.org.za