MUSINA – Signs of a dangerous population explosion with far-reaching consequences are emerging in this booming border town.

Tension is mounting while the local authority is desperately grappling with emergency solutions to what it terms as an artificial, “politically motivated” problem.

Unemployed adults and even teenagers of school-going age are queuing up for the Government’s child grant to secure some kind of income. The tangible results of families who expand as fast as possible in order to secure additional money for additional children, are becoming visible in the fast-growing new informal settlement, now mushrooming on the western side of Freedom Park in the Nancefield Township. Some of the desperate and destitute families already have as many as five minor children per family, with an unemployed and unskilled father and mother surviving merely on the child grant.

The new informal settlement constitutes a major problem for the authorities. The municipality and the police are at loggerheads about an eviction order for the squatters. The municipality wants the police to act against what it terms as the illegal “and politically motivated” occupation of municipal land. The police are reluctant to act on such a massive scale (several hundred families are involved) and are awaiting instructions from the Director of Public Prosecution.

All families interviewed last Friday in the new settlement in the field next to Freedom Park, indicated that overcrowding and destitution have driven them to erect their squatter huts in the area. All of them said that they received their stands for free. The stands have no basic services. They get their water from neighbouring Freedom Park residents. Asked about the cost for drinking water, one new resident said: “It depends on individual negotiated tariffs. We negotiate and then pay them per month. We get along well with them. They are good to us.” The resident, his wife and their five children were busy building their shelter with the help of other family members and friends.

The settlement is taking shape with several hundreds of “informal” residents erecting their permanent shelters in the open field. Apart from the absence of such basic services as water and sewage, there are also no streets and no visible planned lay-out.

The municipal manager, Mr Abram Luruli, said on enquiry that the occupation of the land and the erection of the squatter’s settlement is an orchestrated political plot by the Greater Musina Unemployment Forum (GMUF). He said the Forum sold stands to people for R20 each and then issued receipts for only R10 membership fee for SANCO. The people are then allocated stands and they move over there to erect their structures.

“We opened a case of illegal occupation. The document has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. In the meantime, we obtained a court interdict against the members of GMUF involved in the illegal allocation of stands. Others just take over and continue. We are now busy with an application for an eviction order for illegal occupation. We are, however, required to provide a complete name list of the individuals to be evicted. This is an impossible task. There are hundreds of them on unmarked stands in the open veld. We have sent a letter to the Provincial Commissioner to record our dissatisfaction with the lack of action on the part of the police,” Mr Luruli said.

On his assertion that the illegal occupation is in fact merely an artificial crisis created for political reasons, Mr Luruli was asked about the present housing situation in Musina and the availability of RDP houses for those in real need. He admitted that Musina has an RDP waiting list of more than 4 000. Last year, Musina received funds for the erection of 200 RDP houses in Freedom Park from the national allocation. All of them are already occupied. The allocation for this year is 300 RDP houses.

“This backlog is now being compounded by the fact that these squatters are now illegally occupying the land that has been earmarked for the erection of the next 300 RDP houses. Construction is supposed to start in April this year. They cannot expect any sympathy from Council, because their action is merely politically motivated and they are causing a health hazard. They have jumped the queue for RDP houses. We cannot allow them to break the law and take things into their own hands.”

Luruli admitted that the present need for accommodation is much bigger than the available Government resources.

“This has been the case for the past four to five years and at no stage did anybody start squatting to prove the point.”