The Dido Valley housing project in Simon’s Town, a flagship restitution project, is progressing “very slowly”, according to the Red Hill Development Forum.
The forum acts as a contact point between the Red Hill beneficiaries and the City of Cape Town.
The R170 million City housing project will benefit 600 beneficiaries and their families.
While the majority of beneficiaries are from the Red Hill informal settlement, the housing project contains a restitution component, which means that 100 of the 600 Breaking New Ground (BNG) state-subsidised houses are for land-restitution claims from Luyolo, a former Simon’s Town settlement that was demolished in 1967/68.
The beneficiaries were forcibly removed from the settlement to Gugulethu in the mid-1960s under the Group Areas Act, (“Protest to halt housing project,” Echo, October 29, 2020).
The chairman of the Red Hill Development Forum, Luyanda Lombo, said the forum was not happy with the pace of the project, which had been hit by several delays since it started in 2019.
So far, according to him, only 33 houses for the Red Hill beneficiaries have been completed and beneficiaries were promised to move into those houses in December last year, as they had been completed in June, but the units had no electricity and the City moved the occupation date to April this year.
At a meeting with City officials in Red Hill last week, the forum and beneficiaries had learnt that the date of occupation had moved to the end of June as the units still had no electricity, he said.
He had met with the unhappy beneficiaries before the meeting and “tried to calm them”, he said, adding, “A delay is a delay, and fighting is not going to fix it.”
However, the City told the Echo the project was proceeding according to “the programme”, and the first houses should be handed over to both Luyolo and Red Hill beneficiaries later this month.
The City said it was working with the Luyolo Land Restitution Committee to expedite the process so that all of the 100 Luyolo units for the land claimants could be completed in the first half of the year, “if all goes according to plan”.
Secretary of the Luyolo Land Restitution Committee Lungiswa Somlota said, “From the Luyolo side of the project, things are moving in terms of progress.”
The City had held a housing-consumer education workshop at the Fish Hoek Sub-council office, on Saturday April 22, for the first 32 Luyolo beneficiaries, she said.
“According to the City, the first group can move in at the end of May,” she said, but added that a date had yet to be confirmed.
There were about 70 structures on site and the contractors were hard at work, but it was hard to say when the work would be completed, especially with winter rains coming and the City having pushed the September deadline back to October, she said.
“The overall progress of this project remains a concern as there are a few elderly beneficiaries who we wish could return to Simon’s Town soonest to taste the beauty and tranquillity of an environment that is free from violence and crime,” she said.
The BNG project comprises state-subsidised houses for first-time homeowners, according to the City.
All units in City projects will be fitted with pre-paid electricity meters and will qualify for the City’s lifeline tariff, which is highly subsidised to provide relief to prepaid customers with limited means.
