Cape Town cruel to demolish backyard homes one week before possible policy shift

Today I was asked to assist a family that lives in the backyard of a council flat in Scottsdene in the northern suburbs of Cape Town.  Last night they were given seven hours notice to demolish the wendy house home they were building in the backyard of a council flat, failing which the City’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit would demolish the structure.  The backyard structure would be one of tens of thousands that house hundreds of thousands of people in backyards – these people are known as Backyard Dwellers.  People are living in backyards only because there is a severe shortage of housing in the City and given that the City’s best case scenario for breaking the housing back-log is 18 years (if we can build 38 000 homes a year – and last year we only built 8000 which was our best effort to date) it is highly likely that thousands of people will live their entire lives in these backyards.

My visit to the family was of little help – by the time I got back to my office and had started making calls to see if I could prevent the demolition of the backyard structure the City’s Anti-land invasion unit had destroyed the house and had fired rubber bullets at the crowd of residents that had gathered in solidarity with the family.

The shocking part of this brutal and cruel act is that next week, on the 24 February 2010, the City will host a workshop for councillors and officials to discuss backyard dwellers – with a view to possibly changing City policy towards backyard dwellers. Backyard dwellers live in the most vulnerable conditions and are the most marginalised people – current policy does not recognise them as entitled to basic services such as water and sanitation – but assumes that they access basic services from the main dwelling.  Given that the main dwelling is probably occupied by a family that can ill-afford their own services it is unlikely that they can afford to share these with the family in the backyard. It is for this reason that I submitted a motion to the Housing Committee that the City provides basic services to backyard dwellers; and this motion is one of the reasons for the workshop next week.  It is very likely that the workshop will consider ways to regularise backyard dwellers and to provide them with some access to basic services.

In this case the structure in her backyard, that has now been demolished,  was to accommodate the tenant’s recently married daughter and son-in-law who have no-where else to live.  There is another structure in the backyard that already accommodates her son and his family.

I do not believe that the City should be destroying these structures given that there is serious consideration for a change in policy which might well see backyard structures regularised and being provided with some services.  In this particular situation the backyard structure would have accommodated an immeadiate family member of the tenant in the main dwelling – which I think is a situation the city should be encouraging, as far as possible, since in these over-crowded conditions it must be preferable that it is a family sharing the space. In any event, I believe a moratorium on these demolitions makes sense given that we are re-looking at the backyard dweller situation – to demolish this week and decide next week to regularise makes no sense and is simply cruel.

The motion I submitted to the Housing Portfolio Committee in September 2009 proposes that:

This Council initiates, develops and adopts a comprehensive policy in respect of the provision of basic services such as water, toilets and electricity to so-called “backyard dwellers” and that the Housing Portfolio Committee urgently set up a special workshop in order to discuss and formulate the framework for such a policy

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