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Vultures in Quarry Road
by Raj Patel
Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006 at 8:05 AM
A fire in Quarry Road informal settlement, Clare Estate, Durban, has been an opportunity for a number of predators.
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Christina Khethiwe’s small hands are covered with ash. She rubs them compulsively, playing with her bangle. It’s the only piece of jewellery she has left. “Everything that was mine is gone,” she says. “On Friday night, we woke up at midnight. Everyone was shouting ‘fire, fire’, and we woke up and tried to pull things out of our house.”
Christina lost her school uniform, all her books, and her shoes. “I don’t know when I’ll go back to school. On Monday I will absent myself.” Although she is only eleven, she has the weariness of a woman decades older. “My brother won’t be going either. He lots everything too. He’s seven.”
The shack fired that engulfed Christina’s world happened in the Quarry Road shack settlement in Clare Estate. A fire was left unattended. It spread quickly through the timber-walled and plastic-topped houses. Over 40 shacks were destroyed, and more than 300 people left homeless.
The local councillor, Jayraj Bachu, had reportedly told the media that he had provided housing for those who had been made homeless. Those in the settlement knew nothing about it. Bachu has also said that Quarry Road shackdwellers had been scheduled for “slum clearance”, and that this should be an opportunity for the city to enact its plans.
Mnikelo Ndabankulu, 19, of the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement, who raised money and helped carry wood for the shackdwellers in Quarry Road, said “just because we live in the jondolos doesn’t mean our minds are jondolos.”
The shackdwellers movement has objected strongly to the government’s apartheid-era legislation for "slum clearance", which they criticise as being woefully underfunded, will involve forced removals to areas with few economic opportunities, and is directed principally by the desire to see poor people evicted from the city before 2010.
Bachu wasn’t the only one to take advantage of the shackdwellers’ misfortune. Local companies provided free shipping palettes, to be used to rebuild the houses. But the drivers delivering the crates asked for payment – “whatever you can afford,” reported one shackdweller - before unloading them.
Once they’d been unloaded, several bakkies circled around the lumber, like vultures, taking planks away. They were chased off by some of the older women from the settlement.
Christina Khethiwe
by Raj Patel
Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006 at 8:05 AM
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Christina Khethiwe's house is in the process of being rebuilt since yesterday's fire
by Raj Patel
Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006 at 8:05 AM
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Rebuilding the settlements is a collective effort
by Raj Patel
Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006 at 8:05 AM
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Mnigelo Ndabankulu, from the Abahlali baseMjondolo, helps out
by Raj Patel
Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006 at 8:05 AM
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Meanwhile, a family wait, hoping that it doesn't start to rain
by Raj Patel
Sunday, Jul. 23, 2006 at 8:05 AM
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