Durban - Women living in mass shelters for flood victims across the eThekwini Municipality told the deputy minister for Social Development that they had been faced with ongoing abuse.
The women gathered at a children’s home in Sydenham, Durban, yesterday for a dialogue on challenges they faced daily while living in mass shelters since the April floods.
According to the department, the aim of the dialogue was to emphasise that women are not just a vulnerable group, but they are also agents of change.
Alice Mokoatle, who lives at a mass shelter in Burlington, Chatsworth, pleaded with Deputy Minister Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu to intervene to have them moved to better living spaces. Mokoatle said the men living in the shelter had been demanding that women cook and dish up for them.
“It is worse on weekends when the men are drunk, they cause chaos in the shelter and demand food,” said Mokoatle, adding that men ruled over the women and children in the shelter.
“We have become slaves, we have to listen to their demands or there will be trouble,” she said.
Mokoatle said apart from the frequent abuse, she didn’t know how or where she should apply for her children to go to school as her eldest would be going to Grade 8 while her youngest would be in Grade R next year.
She needed to know where they would live next year so she could better plan for their education. Nothabiso Mbeje, who lives in the Yellowwood Park shelter, said her children went to school on empty stomachs daily. She said their home that was destroyed in the floods was close to the school, so she never had to worry about transport costs to get the children to school.
“We survive on the grant and my child has to walk a long distance to reach the school, and it breaks my heart.”
Nosipho Mtshali, who is disabled and lives in the Westville Truro Hall, said the floods took away her home and livelihood as she had run a crèche from her Reservoir Hills home.
Bogopane-Zulu promised the women that she would act and that their pleas would not go unanswered.
Meanwhile, responding to the issue of resettling flood victims, KwaZulu-Natal Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube said there were many issues with finding appropriate land.
Speaking after a visit to a Transnet building in Montclair that the Department of Human Settlements has recently taken over, she said local government was also looking into buildings in the Durban city centre to house flood victims. She said there were two other buildings like the Transnet lodge that flood victims would temporarily be moved to while their permanent homes were being built.
“Initially we had planned to build individual units, but that has changed and we are looking at moving people into suitable buildings. This will now be the temporary housing and we will stop building Temporary Residential Units and build permanent homes,” she said.