The Musina Municipality will soon start the building of 50 houses for the people in the waterlogged area next to the old Nancefield Graveyard.

Another 300 houses will be built for the people who could not have their houses built because of the illegal occupation of Sihlalangenkani. These revelations were made by the mayor of Musina Municipality, Caroline Mahasela, when she presented the municipality’s 2007/8 budget of R80 852 000 at the Musina showground on Saturday.

Mahasela said there was no need for the municipality to come under attack for destroying illegal shacks at Sihlalangenkani. "We have been under media spotlight on the issue of Sihlalangenkani. As you are all aware, we demolished the shacks on April 4. We came under severe attack from the media and opposition parties. They painted a picture that we are a heartless and brutal council that did not provide alternative accommodation to the squatters. What they did not indicate is that we tried everything humanly possible to address the plight of every homeless person. We bent backwards and accommodated the elderly, the orphans and the sick on our list. But these people were intimidated not to complete subsidy forms, therefore denying them their right to proper and decent housing. For now, we are continuing with the development of Sihlalangenkani."

Mahasela added that the budget was a joint venture between different stakeholders in the municipality. "We are proud to mention that this budget is a culmination of 10 months´ of extensive consultative processes with our people and various stakeholders through our IDP Representative Forums and Budget Consultative Forums. Every conceivable attempt has been made to ensure that this process became as democratic and as inclusive as possible. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to all the men and women who took part in these processes. Your sacrifices and positive contributions will definitely go a long way in pushing back the frontiers of poverty and improving the lives of our people and the communities that we are serving."

She added: "It is really heartening to know that, in this day and age, we still have men and women, young and old who, despite the huge amount of apathy we are facing, can still sacrifice their valuable time, energy and, at times, hard-earned cash to deal with community issues. In the same breath, we are discouraged by the fact that we still have some men and women who are still living under the illusion that apartheid was good. This means that we have people that are still hanging onto the past or we are not communicating our successes properly to our people. We have a duty to defend and guard our hard-earned democracy jealously and consolidate, advance and communicate all our efforts to improve and better the lives of our people, so as to remove any doubts from the doubting Thomases of this world. We have surely achieved a lot in the last 13 years of our democracy, achievements that will leave our detractors green with envy."

The budget also reflected a capital summary of expenditure in finance and admin, planning and development, cemetery, electricity, public toilets in the CBD, new office buildings, construction of concrete roads, storm water infrastructure, to name but a few.