Shelter at last for Eastern Cape family after years of hardship

For more than a decade Bulelwa Rasmeni lived in a leaking shack hundreds of kilometres from her Eastern Cape home after storms destroyed the house she had built with her own hands. Now, after years of hardship and uncertainty, the 56-year-old mother from Mpoza village in the rural hinterland of KwaBhaca has finally stepped into a home of her own again. Rasmeni this year received a newly built two-bedroomRDP housefrom Umzimvubu local municipality, ending more than 10 years of instability for her and the children and grandchildren who depended on her.

Her ordeal began in 2014 when heavy rains and gale-force winds battered the village, destroying the one-room mud house she had built herself. At the time she was raising young children and providing care for grandchildren. Her eldest child, then in Grade 7, had helped her construct the home.

“I built that house together with my children,” Rasmeni said. “When it was destroyed, it felt like our whole world had collapsed as it was the only house we had. “When I was 13 I used to watch my father building houses and I’d help him by passing blocks, so building my house was not a challenge.” With no stable income, Rasmeni relied on consultation fees from her work as a sangoma, along with her children’s social grants and the R350 social relief of distress grant to survive.

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Financial pressure eventually forced her to leave the village and to move to Tembisa in Gauteng in search of a way to support her family. Instead of finding stability, she spent years living in a small shack that leaked badly when it rained.

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