Tired of rats, fires and broken promises, families in a Dunoon informal settlement have risked building with brick and mortar
Peter Luhanga
- Dad of four builds three bedroom home for R70k with his own hands.
- No new RDP houses in Dunoon since 2000 despite huge demand.
- Families connect to City water and sewerage lines by themselves.
- More than 40 brick homes now rising where shacks once stood.
Alex Kolotla, 45, paid R600 rent and R200 for electricity to live with his wife and children in a cramped backyard shack in Dunoon’s Section 31. For years he endured the cold wind that hissed through the zinc sheets, the scurry of rats in the dark, the ever present threat of shack fires, and the shame of only slipping inside to use the toilet when the RDP house owner stepped out.
In 2018 he joined several other residents who were also paying rent in backyard shacks or squeezed into informal settlements. Together they occupied the municipal sports field behind Sophakama Primary School in Section 23. The City’s demolition teams tore down their shacks again and again. Each time they rebuilt. They named the place Ekupholeni, born out of backyard dwellers carving out space on contested ground.
At first the settlement was a patchwork of single rooms and double storey zinc structures. But over time residents pooled their skills, laying pipes, connecting to the municipal sewerage system, and installing flush toilets. They grew tired of waiting for the state to deliver housing and basic services and began to provide for themselves.
“When we arrived at the sports field there was no water and no toilets. There were no municipal services. In 2019 we installed sewerage pipes and connected them to the City of Cape Town’s main sewer, and we connected water,” said Kolotla.
After digging trenches and installing their own connections, they built two flush toilets to serve the entire settlement. In 2021, Kolotla says, the City came in and added more communal toilets and water points.
Kolotla said beside being tired of paying rent for shacks in backyards or informal settlement, what also pushed them to occupy the sports field was the absence of state plans to build new RDP houses in Dunoon.
Nearly 3,000 RDP houses were built in Dunoon between 1996 and 2000, but since then there have been no new projects other than the Winning Way development in response to Covid 19 pandemic.
However, the Winning Way development is not designed for backyard tenants and informal settlement residents.
Winning Way housing project was launched in 2020 by then Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu as part of a Covid 19 response plan. Dunoon was identified as one of the country’s most overcrowded settlements, where families shared taps, bucket toilets, and one-room shacks in conditions that heightened the risk of infection. The project promised to relocate 1,500 families to relieve the pressure. But it stalled almost as soon as it began. The plan was later scaled down to 488 units and by early 2024 it was again paused while budgets and the development model were reviewed. Beneficiaries remained unidentified, construction had not begun, and the promise of relocation slipped further away. Even if the project had gone ahead, it targeted the elderly and disabled, which meant Kolotla and most of his neighbours in Ekupholeni would not have qualified.
Kolotla knew that waiting on the City’s housing waiting list was futile. He had been on it for 16 years and was growing older in a shack while his family expanded around him.
From zinc to brick and morter
In 2022, after a shack fire swept through Ekupholeni, but spared his home, Kolotla began to build his own house in brick and mortar.
The three room house, with bedrooms and a lounge, has a flat roof modeled on the homes he once admired in Sunningdale and Camps Bay, finished with rubber proofing. Kolotla says he has spent about R70 000 on the house, designing the plans himself and laying the bricks by hand. Some of the materials, he says, he bought second-hand from warehouses in the township. He still hopes to finish the flooring with modern tiles. If he had hired builders, he says, the cost would have been far higher.
He has so far built three bedrooms, a lounge kitchen, and a garage, and still busy extending it as money allows from his self employment. Buckets of sand and stacks of bricks line the yard, and a half mixed pile of cement waits for the next wall to be raised. He is also building another room which he intends to rent out for income. He says he plans to install a JoJo tank to store water, which would bring enough pressure into the house to allow the family to shower.
He is not the only way building a permanent structure. About 40 houses have been built in brick and mortar after shack fires destroyed families’ homes.
“When you have shelter it brings dignity. I have a place I can show is my house. It comes with big value. At least I own something,” he said. “My kids are very happy with the house. They think they are in the suburbs but they are in the informal settlement.”
Siyamthanda, 16, said he was grateful his father had taken the family out of a shack and into a proper home. The rodents were gone, the winter wind no longer cut through the walls, and the sound of rain no longer drummed on zinc sheets above their heads.
Nokuthula, his wife, said she was grateful for the home her husband had worked so hard to build. The family now has privacy and safety, and she has a sitting room with an open plan kitchen fitted with cabinets.
Not far from Kolotla, Phatheka Phuza, 41, has also built her way out of shacks. She said in 2005 she was renting a shack in Doornbach informal settlement, but regular shack fires there forced her to move to another shack in Dunoon’s Section 31.
Phuza says in 2018 she joined the occupation of the sports field. In 2023 she began to build, starting with one room for herself, her husband, and their children, and adding three more which she rents out to tenants.
She said the rent is now her only income.
“We are living comfortably, no shack fires. We are safe. The challenge is electricity. What we have is illegally connected and it is weak, it damages electrical appliances,” she said. Like Kolotla, she also plans to install a JoJo tank to store water, so that one day her family can enjoy a shower