Residents of “temporary emergency accommodation” at Point Road in Durban came out to speak to GroundUp.
Victims of the April 2022 floods have been living in “temporary emergency accommodation” at Point Road, Durban, since December 2022. They are without electricity because of a disagreement over who should pay.
The residents say the municipality cuts off the power because the landlord has not paid the municipal rates.
However, Xolani Mkhize, the manager of the Point Road building, says the municipality has not paid the owner of the building rent for January or February.
When GroundUp sought clarity, Gugu Sisilana, municipal spokesperson, said the municipality does not discuss customer account details with third parties.
Sisilana said the issues would be sorted out through “relevant provincial departments and directly with property owners”.
Resident Nomvula Mafu said families have resorted to paraffin stoves and sometimes firewood to cook.
“We just want our own houses now because we have been living here for a very long time. Electricity is always a problem here. They do not even issue notices when they cut the power,” said Mafu.
A few residents have made informal connections to neighbouring buildings.
At a media briefing earlier this month, when GroundUp asked about power being cut to emergency accommodations, Sandile Mnguni, municipal chief financial officer, said electricity had been restored to most of the emergency accommodation buildings. He said a team from the provincial human settlements department was working with the municipality to settle outstanding payments and restore power to the rest.
The eThekwini Municipality Annual Report for the 2023/24 financial year states that total grant funding for temporary shelters for flood victims was R 35.3-million. An amount of R15.66-million was committed for the 2024/25 to 2026/27 financial years. It is unclear whether this includes paying for rent and services for the families in temporary housing.
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Lack of libraries: Limited access to educational and recreational resources.
Springheel Jack
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.
Winter Bite
Fun South African Travel tip: You can visit the hominid fossil displays and learn more about the beginnings of our planet at the Maropeng Visitors Centre and Sterkfontein Caves.