Fire destroys 20 homes on Cape Town railway line as 13-year relocation promise goes nowhere

About 100 people are without a home in Siyahlala after a fire tore through the settlement on the Cape Town railway line on 4 October, gutting roughly 20 dwellings.

Ward councillor Bulelwa Mayende, of the ANC, went public after the blaze to press the question residents have been asking for more than a decade: where the relocation they were promised has gone.

The answer, so far, is nowhere. The Western Cape High Court ordered mediation over the relocation 13 years ago, directing that the City of Cape Town and residents enter a process to settle where the community would go. That process is still dragging, and the people living beside the tracks are still there.

That is the fact that turns a fire story into something harder. Fires in dense informal settlements are a recurring hazard, and the loss of 20 homes in a single morning is the kind of event that normally produces sympathy, a supplies drop and a promise. What it has produced here is a councillor demanding to know why a court-ordered process has not delivered in 13 years.

For the roughly 100 people displaced, the immediate problem is shelter and the belongings that went up with the structures. The longer problem is that the ground they are on has been the subject of litigation and mediation since before many of the current residents were adults, and the mediation has not produced a move.

Mayende’s intervention puts the City of Cape Town’s handling of the matter back in the public eye at the point where it is most uncomfortable, in the days after a disaster rather than in a courtroom. The residents of Siyahlala did not need a fire to make their case. They needed a relocation that arrived.

The Enquirer is seeking the City of Cape Town’s account of where the mediation stands and what it can tell residents about a timeline. We will publish the response when it comes.

Source: CapeTown ETC