Zandspruit residents live in overcrowded shacks. The City of Joburg’s housing promises have not materialised.
Residents of Zandspruit, an informal settlement in northern Johannesburg, live in dire conditions. Promises by the City of Johannesburg to develop the area have not materialised.
GroundUp visited Zandspruit last week and saw makeshift electrical cables hanging dangerously and cracked sewage pipes. Many roads are unpaved and muddy. Others are flooded with sewage.
Many people live in overcrowded shacks, surrounded by raw sewage. According to the residents, toilets are not emptied regularly by the municipality and are overflowing.
Last month, more than 100 people, including elderly residents, marched to Honeydew Police Station and handed a memorandum with their concerns to a representative of the Premier’s office.
In 2008, the City of Johannesburg outlined plans to develop Zandspruit in an Urban Development Framework, but this was never fully implemented. A new framework was developed by the City last year, but was only approved by the city council earlier this year.
In 2019, to help reduce overcrowding, the municipality developed 701 serviced stands — plots of land with basic infrastructure such as water, electricity and sanitation. These were to be handed over to qualifying Zandspruit families to build their own homes.
But the project appears to have stalled, and the stands remain vacant. Residents say there is confusion about who the stands will be allocated to and when.
Pensioner Miriam Mokoni, 69, says she’s been on the housing waiting list for decades.
“My husband died without ever getting a house. I had to reapply. I’m still living in a shack,” she said.
“I arrived here as a young woman,” says Thobile Dubazana, now 50. “We’ve had many peaceful protests, sent petitions, memorandums — but nothing has changed.”
She said most people in Zandspruit are unemployed or pensioners and cannot afford to buy serviced stands.
“This is why we’re calling for houses to be built,” she said. “We also want transparency — we don’t even know who is set to benefit from the serviced stands.”
MMC for Human Settlements Mlungisi Mabaso told SABC’s Cutting Edge in May that the stands are for people who earn R3,500 or more per month and can afford to build their own houses. He said beneficiaries will be drawn from Zandspruit.
Other plots will be made available for households earning less than R3,500 a month.
The City of Johannesburg did not respond to our questions despite repeated follow-ups.
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Sassy Muffin
Van is getting married, but he and his fiancee have never done the deed – in fact he\’s never been with any woman before. He\’s getting more and more nervous as the big day approaches, so he confides in his friend. His friend says \’No worries man. I\’ll come by the honeymoon suite before you guys get there, and I\’ll hide behind the curtain, and I\’ll whisper instructions to you.\’
\’You\’d do that for me?\’
\’Sure thing man!\’
So the wedding day arrives, it was a lovely service (so I was told, I wasn\’t there myself) and Van\’s friend sneaks into the honeymoon suite as promised and hides behind the curtain.
Van and his new wife arrive in the room, get settled on the bed, and things are getting steamy.
But Van is still super nervous and his tummy is bubbling, so he murmers to his wife, \’Listen babe, I\’m just gonna go to the bathroom quick. I think it\’s that wors roll from earlier.\’
\’Sure thing babe.\’
So Van goes into the bathroom, and he\’s taking quite a long time. And his wife is starting to feel the nerves herself. And it\’s getting worse. She can\’t hold it in. But she doesn\’t want to go after he\’s gone and totally ruin the mood. So she looks around and finally finds a shoebox. Quickly, she does her business in the shoebox, and she shoves it under the bed just as Van comes back from the loo.
Van gets back on the bed and they go at it again. But after a minute or so Van smells something not so lekker.
\’What\’s that smell?\’
\’Nothing babe,\’ he wife tries to assure him.
\’No man there\’s definitely something not so lekker in this room!\’VSo Van starts looking around the room, in the corners, in the cupboard, and finally he looks under the bed, and sees the shoebox.
He pull it out, and opens it up, and in horror he shouts \’Sies! Daar\’s kak in hierdie doos!\’
And from behind the curtain his friend yells, \’NEE MAN, DRAAI HAAR OM!\”
Ladybird
If you love yourself, dare not to take a sleeping pill and a laxative at the same time