Genevieve Serra|Published3 minutes agoEviction showdown: Singabalapha’s community’s struggle for a place to call home

Singabalapha residents were granted an interdict in 2020, which blocks the City from evicting them, confiscating their property, harassing or abusing the community. The community of the Singabalapha informal settlement, which has made Observatory Main Road their home for the past eight years, has been surviving without access to water, electricity, and ablution facilities. They have expressed their willingness to relocate to a Temporary Relocation Area (TRA) after receiving an eviction notice, provided that it meets basic human rights requirements.

This week, residents told Cape Argus that they are struggling to secure a resource for water and are currently dependent on a local circus. They are in a crisis and are desperate to move. The informal settlement is home to 127 families who had previously occupied the Arcadia House old age home, which is owned by the Cape Peninsula Organisation for the Aged, before being evicted.

Following this eviction, the group made the main road in Observatory their home and obtained an interdict to prevent the City from evicting them. The City confirmed that it has since successfully pursued an eviction process, which it applied for in 2023, and is keen to place residents in Gugulethu at a TRA. The City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Carl Pophaim, explained: “The City issued the eviction application in the Western Cape High Court against the group that had unlawfully occupied this City property after a private eviction.

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The City has identified a site for a TRA, which is intended to be constructed in Gugulethu and would be offered as temporary accommodation to the illegal occupiers.” One of the residents and representatives, Mam’ Mase Vusa from Singabalapha, stated that conditions have become unbearable as they continue to live without access to basic amenities and services, with their shacks lined along the pavements in the scorching sun and enduring winter rains and storms. For this reason, they are eager to relocate for a better life but are seeking a place where they will be accepted and treated equally. “We are about 127 families, including children,” said Vusa.

“We really do not have a problem as long as the City engages with the communities that will be involved in the relocation process. Our site must be conducive to human settlement in terms of water and sanitation because the City has, on more than two occasions, invited us to see sites within certain communities. When we arrive at those sites, we encounter hostilities that we never imagined would occur in such spaces.

It is then that you realise that you are not treated fairly and that your dignity is being violated in a manner that is unexplainable; you realise that you are being deliberately ignored. “We fetch water from the circus, which is now also closed, so we are in a crisis, as we are weary and do not understand why it has been closed.” The Ndifuna Ukwazi Law Centre (NU), which represents the community of Singabalapha, spokesperson, Yusrah Bardien, stated that they are hoping for a resolution before the matter goes before the court in July and are seeking appropriate relocation for residents. “At this stage of the proceedings, Judge President Mabindla-Boqwana of the Western Cape High Court has directed the City of Cape Town and our clients to engage meaningfully regarding the issue of relocation,” Bardien detailed.

“As Ndifuna Ukwazi, we respect the legal eviction process because, among other things, it demands that the question of relocation be addressed. Without this critical intervention, people living without tenure security will be evicted from place to place in an endless cycle. We hope to find a meaningful resolution before returning to court in July.”

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