For some reason, though, our people love to find ways to cheat a system, to crook the books, to help themselves to that which belongs to someone else. So I wasn’t surprised when I read about a businessman in Tlhabologang township near Coligny who was running a tuckshop from an RDP house in the area.
In fact, the North West MEC for Human Settlements, Desbo Mohono, discovered the tuckshop, found the businessman and promptly gave him two weeks to clear out his stuff and close down.
She was apparently furious that the house wasn’t being used to shelter destitute people and she had accidentally stumbled upon the illegal tuckshop while inspecting some of the 1 956 houses that are being built to commemorate the 1956 women’s march to the Union Buildings.
Apparently the businessman had rented the home from its rightful owner – who is unnamed and unknown to Mohono – for a fee of R700 a month. The businessman was apparently quite irritated by the whole event because he was running a nice little business on the side.
The owner of the house is believed to be living on one of the nearby farms outside Coligny and, although he’d been allocated the house by government, he figured it was much more comfortable to stay where he was and benefit from the rental income instead.
Working for farmers is not particularly lucrative at the best of times so the extra R700 a month might have come in handy for him and his family. After all if he’d lived in the RDP house he’d have to pay the electricity and water bills, maintain the property, fix the garden (if he wanted a garden) and do an endless stream of chores that go hand-in-hand with property ownership.
Much easier to let someone else benefit from using the property and just take the money.
This approach to housing has troubled the Department of Human Settlements for a long time now and there are plans afoot to conduct a detailed audit of all RDP houses to establish if the occupants happen to be the rightful owners.
But Mohono’s reaction to finding a tuckshop in Tlhabologang township prompts an interesting question for me. If you give a house to somebody, does that give you the right to insist that he or she is the only person who is allowed to occupy it?
If you give it to a family, can that family live there, but not run a business from there?
In a free market economy it seems that Mohono wants to have her cake and eat it as well. So she must decide whether she is giving the house away to the designated recipients or keeping it for the government and providing indigent occupants with the right to use it. She can’t do both.
I seem to recall that there is a stipulation from government that an RDP house has to be lived in for a period of eight years before it can be sold, rented or refinanced.
That seems fair enough considering that ANC is trying to rid this country of thousands of informal settlements that are little more than breeding grounds for shack fires.
But the notion that you can give someone a house and then tell them how to use it is, in my opinion anyway, utterly flawed. Moreover, the notion that you can promptly de-register the rightful owner because the house isn’t being used in the way you want it to be used is just as wrong.
In a similar but unconnected event, the Tshwane City Council has had to reconsider its position regarding the hopeless plight of the Schubart Park block of flats that were condemned as being unsuitable for human occupation about two years ago.
The council says vagrants are still living in the building, but it has been stripped of every last fixture and fitting and is now in such a shocking state that it may have to be demolished.
People who were complaining about not being able to stay on in the Schubart Park flats two years ago are believed to be responsible for stripping it of all the fixtures and fittings and even the sewerage pipes that were embedded in the walls.
Consider the logic for a moment: you want to persuade the council not to throw you out, so you strip the building of its banisters, window frames, geysers, pipes, taps, doors, locks and so forth so they won’t evict you?
Then when you’ve removed the items that are relatively easy to take, you tackle the more difficult ones by breaking down the walls and ripping out the sewerage pipes.
Then, you wonder why the council wants you out. It defies all reasoning.
I can imagine the conversation.
“How’s about ripping out the sewerage pipes, selling them for cash and using the cash to buy a stock of pirated DVDs to sell at Menlyn traffic lights?” one indigent asks another.
“Good idea, bud. You buy the DVDs, I’ll get aftershave, perfumes or RayBans,” his buddy answers as they chip through the concrete to get to the pipes.
With a bit of cursing, several slightly-grazed fingers and a lot of heaving, the first pipes are removed, amid a horrid flow of sewerage that clogs the insides of those pipes as, one by one, they are removed.
Then, with the help of a handy Checkers’ trolley nicked from a nearby supermarket, these “entrepreneurs” head for the nearest scrap metal dealer to convert sewerage pipes into cashflow.
Of course there’s no apparent thought of consequence; there’s no recognition that stealing pipes is still stealing; there’s no view that selling pirated DVDs or counterfeit perfumes is illegal.
These thoughts don’t enter any equation.
And yet if the same people were to apply their minds to solving the same problems in a legitimate way, imagine what a lucrative economy we’d have today?
Instead of stealing pipes, fittings and fixtures from the buildings they occupy, these people could get real jobs dismantling buildings. Instead of selling pirated DVDs they could sell legitimate ones and still make a decent margin.
They could probably set up their own enterprises and genuinely enjoy the spoils of living a productive, honest and wholesome life as they provide for themselves, their families and their loved ones.
So for the life of me I can’t understand why there is this compulsion to break the law, to act dishonestly and to disregard the consequences of their actions while making so many wrong choices.
And what it all boils down to: making the wrong choices. Whether it is renting a house you’ve just been given so it can be used as a tuckshop or stealing pipes from a Schubart Park block of flats to convert it into easy money.
And we, as a society, must now start making the right choices instead.
*Paddy Hartdegen writes a regular column for Property24.com. The content of his columns constitutes his personal opinion and doesn’t pretend to be facts or advice. Contact him at paddy@neomail.co.za.
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Yeah the price we pay for giving people things for free, and the innocent being allowed to be intimidated not to report crime.
Fact to the matter is, we have to look at how many SA Citizens are there per capita in relation to illegal immigrants, then you will find that the steeling of pipes etc are not just done by our own people, but more likely to be the work of the mentioned immigrants.
The other dilemma is that there are those who had “bought” RDP houses, and within no time whatsoever they are developed into double story mansions. Herein lies my concern, where does the money come from to build such houses when one cannot buy your own property and had to apply to the govt to get one? I have numerous examples thereof, and some are clearly visible from the N14 in Diepsloot. And is it even legal to develop these houses further and do they need planes to be approved before they are altered or is it a free for all in these townships whilst the rest has had their properties bulldozed down when it was not approved.
If there is not any approval granted then why do they then allow double standards to be maintained?
Maybe I am just one of the few gatvol individuals, but as I see it nowadays is the law is for everybody, but if you reside in an RDP house, you are exempt. – Andrew du Plooy
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