25 January 2024
Nondyebo Funiselo had to flee her shack after a sinkhole opened under one of the rooms, flooding it with sewage. Photos: Vincent Lali
Nondyebo Funiselo was preparing her grandchildren for sleep one night last November when she heard her daughter scream in another room in the Khayelitsha shack. A sewage pipe under the shack had burst, flooding the room with excrement. The City of Cape Town says the whole of Khayelitsha is affected by a blockage in the main sewer pipe, caused by vandalism.
Funiselo, who works as a domestic worker in Cape Town, Simon’s Town and Mowbray, lives in Section SST of Town Two in Khayelitsha.
“When I went to the room to check, I was shocked to see a hole widen, my wardrobe and clothes sink in and dirty, smelly water gush out.”
The water swept away her cellphone and damaged her furniture. Neighbours came to help the family pull clothes and the children’s uniforms out of the pipe. But the uniforms had to be thrown away because of the smell.
When GroundUp visited her shack on 17 January, the gate was secured with a padlock a huge hole inside gave off a powerful stench. Flies buzzed around.
Her neighbour Mlandeli Songelwa is afraid the hole will affect his shack too. “Once the heavy rains erode the sand and widens the hole, my shack will sink into it,” he said.
Funiselo said she now sleeps on the floor at her daughter’s house nearby.
She said City officials asked her to move so that they could repair the pipe but she did not like the place she was to move to because it was dirty and there was no electricity. “I don’t have money to hire someone to dismantle and rebuild my shack elsewhere.”
Mlandeli Songelwa is afraid the hole in Nondyebo Funiselo’s shack will affect him too.
Boniswa Matiso says a pipe in her shack burst last November. Since then, she says, she and her family eat outside and they struggle to sleep because of the smell. “I worry that the hole will become bigger. I want the City to relocate me,” says Matiso, who lives off her son’s child support grant.
Mzikazi Twani, former chairperson of the South African National Civics Association in Town Two, says the sewage pipes started to break down in 2017.
About 1,000 families live in SST section and almost half of them have shacks built on top of disintegrating sewage pipes, she said. (GroundUp has not verified these figures.) She said the City should “remove all the families that stay in shacks built on sewage pipes, repair them and bring the families back afterwards”.
In 2021 a man nearly fell into a sewage pipe under a local church, said Twani. “The man was standing next to a preacher when the floor caved in. A mat kept him from sinking into a sewage pipe inside the church.”
Ward councilor Thando Pimpi said burst sewage pipes have affected about 37 shack dwellers since last year.
“We relocated ten residents to nearby vacant spaces There are two families that are currently affected, but the problem is that the City has no land to move them to,” he said.
Boniswa Matiso says she has to eat outside after a sinkhole opened in her shack, filling it with a stench.
Mayco Member for Water and Sanitation Zahid Badroodien said: “There is a recurring and stubborn blockage on the 600mm sewer main in Welcome Zenzile in Kuyasa. This is due to a manhole upstream, which was vandalised intentionally to create illegal connections, and that contributes to the severity of the blockage.”
“Additionally, structures have been built on top of the sewer line and other manholes covered which makes the unblocking operation even more difficult. We are seeing building rubble and other foreign objects dumped in the sewer network, which causes overflows,” he said.
Badroodien said: “This is affecting Khayelitsha as a whole. Water and Sanitation’s operational teams have been working consistently since last year, using specialised vehicles in addition to … using pumps to bypass the blockage to provide relief to residents.”
He said the safety of City workers was also a concern and this caused additional delays as law enforcement officers had to be brought to protect the teams. “We understand the urgency of this matter and its impact on the community. Our teams are committed to resolving the issue as swiftly as possible. We appeal to the community to work with us to safeguard the sewer and water infrastructure in order to prevent these overflows from taking place,” said Badroodien.
Twani said: “The City has no reason to worry about the safety of its employees because we have a neighbourhood watch that ensures they are safe. The neighbourhood watch always watches over Eskom and City employees when they work here, until they finish. We even allow them to leave their generators with us.”