An increasing number of black women want to formally own their own
homes and land in the cities where they settled informally under apartheid. But
the system is still stacked against them. Anna Weekes hears the incredible story
of one woman’s fight to secure her own home in Cape Town.
[Cape Town,
South Africa - PANOS FEATURES] Hilda Ntombise Ntanyana, 68, has just
retired after a long and tiring working life in domestic labour and nursing. She
is looking forward to relaxing with her grandchildren in her modernised house in
Mandela Park, part of the second fastest growing township in South Africa,
Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town.
Like all black South African
women her age, Hilda grew up under the apartheid regime. Like many others, she
was stripped of her South African citizenship and forced to live in one of the
ten ‘bantustans’ remote, rural, jobless areas - set up by the apartheid
government to separate black South Africans into different tribal areas and keep
them out of the towns and cities set aside for whites.
King Williams
Town, where Hilda grew up, was deemed to be part of the Ciskei Bantustan and
under the apartheid Pass Laws Hilda was issued with a pass defining her as a
Ciskei citizen. As such she was not allowed to live or work in Cape Town, but
even so she migrated there in the 1970s in search of work.
In those days,
the only city jobs available to black women were cleaning the homes of white
families. Hilda was single and the main breadwinner for her family. Whilst she
worked her children remained with her parents in King Willliams town. Hilda sent
the money she earned in Cape Town home to her parents and children.
‘I
was arrested many times in those years for not having a Cape Town pass and was
often sent back home. At other times, I hid from the police. Finding a place to
stay was a real problem. Capetonians were scared to rent us rooms because of the
risk of being raided by the Pass Law police,’ says Hilda.
Hilda spent
many years living in shacks in different parts of the city, in informal and
illegal settlements that mushroomed quickly and were sites of resistance to the
apartheid regime. In a part of Khayelitsha that came to be known as Site C,
Hilda says people first built shacks on open sand dunes. There was no
electricity or running water. ‘We were living under plastic sheets in this windy
area. When the wind blew, my food would blow out of my shack all over the
ground.’
30 yeas on and the apartheid regime has fallen. Hilda still
lives in Khayelitsha but her home is now a small, three-roomed house which she
shares with her son, daughter and grand-daughter. She worked a day job and night
shift as a nurse for many years in order to raise enough money to put down a
deposit on the house in 1989. However, despite paying a mortgage for the past 17
years, Hilda has yet to receive a title deed to her home, and continues to lives
an insecure existence.
Hilda says that none of the residents in Mandela
Park have been given title deeds to their houses, which were sold to them by a
private company jointly owned by the government and a consortium of major banks.
Residents bought the houses for 25,000 Rand - about 4,000 US dollars each - but
were surprised a few years later when faults such as cracked walls and damp
appeared, indicating poor construction.
This was the beginning of a long
campaign by the residents, which included boycotting mortgage payments for
several months as a protest until the housing company repaired the homes. The
community formed a pressure group, known as the Housing Action Committee. Other
protests and demonstrations led to arrests and court cases, and received
widespread publicity for their demands for an end to the privatisation of social
housing and for arrears to be wiped out. The group continues to meet every
Sunday to discuss housing issues.
Many black South African women who
left remote rural areas decades ago to work in the cities later brought their
children to live with them, mainly so that they could attend university. As
their children received qualifications and went on to get their own city jobs,
the family ties with the cities were strengthened.
Many women
approaching middle age, especially widows or single mothers like Hilda, decided
to buck the trend of retiring back to the rural homestead and instead chose to
buy so-called ‘low-cost’ housing, where they could live out their old age on the
edge of the city.
The problems Hilda faces, though, in securing the title
deeds to her house, have not swayed her in her determination to stay in
Kayelitsha. She does not want to retire to the rural areas, which lack basic
services such as water and electricity. She says she doesn’t have the strength
to do a rural woman’s daily work, which includes carrying water and fetching
firewood.
In any case, South Africa’s Communal Land Rights Act introduced
in 2004, poses difficulties for single women and widows who want to retire to
rural areas, build their own houses and live independently of the family. In
Cape Town, women are beginning to get organised and demand their rights, but it
is more difficult for women to own land in rural areas. Here, land is
administered by male-dominated traditional councils.
Researchers at the
Institute of Women’s Law based at the University of Oslo recently published a
report called Human Rights, Formalisation and Women’s Land Rights in Southern
and Eastern Africa.
Written by five African and Norwegian writers,
the report says ‘The Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act
requires that 40per cent of the members of the traditional councils be elected
and that 30per cent be women. Yet, this requirement has been met with
considerable resistance from the traditional leaders.’
Single mothers who
battled against apartheid Pass Laws to secure employment, put their children
through university, and renovate even small houses run the risk of feeling
marginalised all over again if they retire home to rural areas where customary
law often dictates that women are inferior to men.
‘Since women are
already discriminated against under customary law, a further strengthening of
traditional leaders and customary law risks severe negative consequences for
women’s access to land, especially for widows, divorcees and unmarried women,’
the report points out.
The report also highlights another problem for
women who originally came to the city after being evicted from their land by
apartheid laws, and now want to return home. Land redistribution is happening at
too slow a pace and helping too few women. ‘By 2004, approximately 3per cent of
commercial land had been redistributed. As at 29 February 2004, only 11.9per
cent of all households benefiting from land redistribution were
female-headed.’
In Hilda’s case, instead of retiring to the rural areas,
she has spent nearly all her life savings on renovating the damp and mouldy city
house that she bought. She has had to repaint the entire building, replace all
the ceilings, add doors, install a kitchen in part of the front room, and fix
the damp. The house is small, modern and very well kept.
She seems to
have taken a huge risk in doing this, since the housing company has tried
several times to evict dozens of residents who they say have defaulted on their
mortgage payments. Hilda says that two years ago, the housing company brought
people papers to sign.
Company officials told 12 elderly women that they
were merely signing to confirm that they still lived in the houses. Shortly
after, according to residents, the women found that they’d signed away their
rights to their homes and had to accept being removed to tiny one-roomed houses
in the far-away community of Thubelitsha. ‘Many old ladies were tricked like
this,’ says Hilda.
For those who refused to move and who, like Hilda,
stayed in their houses, another problem has arisen. Because the houses in
Mandela Park have only two tiny bedrooms, most families have added more bedrooms
on to the back of the houses and some families have tried to start tiny
vegetable gardens.
But last month the housing company told residents that
any ‘spare land’ outside the front and back doors did not belong to them, and
will be sold to new buyers. And any extra rooms that residents have built over
the years will, apparently, be bulldozed.
Without a title deed, Hilda is
not sure how much land she actually owns. It places her and the other households
in Mandela Park in a very difficult position.
‘I feel very insecure,’
said Hilda. ‘As a family we have shed many tears over our situation. I don’t
know how much I still have to pay for this house. If I die, I don’t know who
will inherit my house as I don’t yet have a title deed.’
‘Some women in the
community feel we have achieved something by owning our own houses, but where
are the title
deeds?’