Blikkiesdorp: A place “worse than hell”.

“Blikkiesdorp has a different kind of despair,” a journalist friend observed last week. Blikkiesdorp literally means tin village, ready to collapse at any moment; the hollowness of tin ringing through alley after alley.

Here’s the first thing you need to know about Blikkiesdorp: It's a place of no permanent structures. Everything there is flimsy, temporary. That, plus poverty, means the residents also cannot realistically take any steps to improve their homes by – for instance – insulating them. So it is very, very cold in winter and very, very hot in summer.

There is nothing there that gives it a feeling of community. Maybe the odd spaza shop. A couple of dogs (friendly). But even the venue where we screen the documentary is a tent. It’s a grim, desolate, forgotten place.

There’s also precious little data available on the people there. Because, of course, it’s temporary – despite having been there since 2007. (It was originally intended to be a six-month solution.) There are 20 “blocks”, namely A – R. Last year, GroundUp reported that there were around 1,700 structures in Blikkiesdorp. When the Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC) attempted to conduct some initial research for its new documentary Is Blikkies Home? they found that 73% of their sample was unemployed.

Is Blikkies Home?, which is currently running through a series of public screenings held by ODAC, was a project spearheaded by the former, Right2Know, The Development Action Group, The Community Law Centre and The Legal Resources Centre. Once the launch of the documentary is over, R2K will be involved in a longer-term project to assist the residents of Blikkiesdorp in maintaining transparency in communications with the City of Cape Town as well as the Airports Company of South Africa.

Watch: Is Blikkies Home?

The documentary was filmed throughout 2015, following a group of Blikkiesdorp residents on a mission to gain access to information about the City’s plans for their housing and relocation. At the centre of the puzzle was ACSA’s proposed upgrade and runway development plans, which will directly affect the Blikkiesdorp residents, as well as residents of Malawi Camp and Freedom Park. As has been reported, the residents alleged that they were not meaningfully engaged in the planning process.

A quick reminder: their chief concerns were, firstly, that they were not included in the Environmental Impact Assessment by SRK Consulting, the company hired by ACSA to conduct the EIA, and secondly, that they were not privy to the Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Cape Town and ACSA regarding the airport’s plans.

“We, the people who live in Blikkiesdorp in Delft, note that the Airports Company South Africa is planning to re-align a runway, and to do that they have commissioned SRK Consulting … to do an environmental impact assessment of the development.

“We are unhappy this process has not included consideration of us and, therefore, did not constitute meaningful engagement. The consultants said they were told not to consider us, because we are going to be moved, but the City of Cape Town won’t tell us where or when we will be moved,” the committee said in a statement earlier this year.

At the time, SRK did not recommend relocating the residents of Blikkiesdorp, Freedom Farm or Malawi Camp. Later, GroundUp reported that there were concerns over a lack of transparency in the “Open Days” to discuss the EIA. “What did they think, calling it an open day?” Right2Know’s Western Cape Organiser, Vainola Makan, asked reporter Ashleigh Furlong. Makan reportedly said that the open day consisted of posters “which explained the process in complex terms which no ordinary individual would be able to understand”. Jerome Daniels, a member of the Joint Committee, told GroundUp that residents were not informed of the open day and only heard about it through Right2Know and ODAC. According to the GroundUp report, SRK said they informed the ward councillor of the open day, but Khayalethu Makeleni, the ward 106 councillor, said that he was not informed.

Fast forward to December 2015, and the Blikkiesdorp residents have had some victories: their cause has received widespread media attention, the documentary is being screened, they have been given access to the MOU, and there has been (some) improvement in communications both ways.

“What we were able to do [through this project] was present the opportunity to really engage with the City and with the Airport,” says ODAC’s Alison Tilley. “Residents were able to come together in a Joint Committee, where the leadership from all the different blocks were able to form a leadership structure. That was the structure we worked with.”

Tilley is hoping that the progress will continue. “What we’ve been able to do is basically extract the MOU between the City and Airport, which they initially refused to give the community, but which plans their future. It sets out where they can move to.”

In the interests of continued transparency, ODAC and Code4SA also created an interactive app alongside the documentary, which details the areas that would be most affected by the airport upgrade. 

In hell, you burn out

“I hate this place,” Nadeemah Alie tells Daily Maverick. “It’s getting worse. Worse and worse and worse.”

Alie’s structure – she does not call it a home – is surrounded by drains. The drains overflow. “The shit water runs past all day long on all sides,” she says. “I cannot get out of my gate.” Alie basically has her own moat of shit.

Aged 51, Alie has been waiting for a house for 11 years, since her son was a baby. She was in Spes Bona hostel in Athlone, but was evicted from there. She has been in Blikkiesdorp for six years. She used to have a shop, but her husband kept the money when they divorced. She had to sell her vehicle because she had no food. She is not working. “I send my CV, but they see my age and they don’t want me,” she says. Next year she is sending her two children out of Blikkiesdorp – her daughter to live with Alie’s mother in Athlone, and her son to go and live with his older brother in PE. “I don’t want them in this place,” she says.

Alie does not know if or when she will get a house. She is on the waiting list. She filled in the forms. She has copies in her house. But she is not registered for any housing project – she checked. She has not been able to get any answers. She does not know where to go anymore.

Alie and some of the other residents tell me about a local teenage boy who is “not right anymore” after he got kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity. It was mob justice – a group thought he had committed a crime based on his hair colour, and took him for a long drive. They put a bag over his head and bashed his teeth in with a hammer. He has not spoken much since. He got back in the evening, but the police came at 1:30am, the residents say.

“We know who took him,” Alie says. “But we don’t say anything. If you go and say he is the guy and that is the guy they come bomb your place. They throw the petrol bomb and klaar. They don’t worry who is in it. That’s why the people don’t want to talk.”

This has happened previously to a local family, another resident tells me. When was it? The group tries to pin down the date. A family was in their structure and the petrol bomb came down. The father and his primary school-aged son were burnt to death.

Jo-Ann Cupido, Vice-Chair of the Joint Committee of Blikkiesdorp, has her own story to tell. Cupido previously lived on the street. She used to use a great deal of tik; she cleaned up after an overdose. She makes breakfast for the children on her block in the mornings, using donated funds from charities that help her out from time to time. Cupido is as rough as sandpaper and possibly one of the best things to happen to Blikkiesdorp. She tells the story of a burglary in her block.

“We struggle with police. We even had a protest there. We marched up to them,” she says. “There is no response. Two nights, three nights ago they robbed there in my aisle, they robbed an elderly man with a gun. I’m not scared, I don’t know why. I run out, I say ‘Ek sal julle fokken moer julle naaiers!’ [I will beat you, you fuckers]. Ek sal julle befok! [I will fuck you up] They said go, this is none of your business. I say this is my fucking business. Do you know I’m the fucking vice chair of this fucking area? Not just this area, the whole fucking Blikkiesdorp. That’s how I talk to them. I’m not scared.”

Did they run? I ask.

“No,” she says, looking outraged. “They fucking walked. That’s why I’m so… the police, the City, government officials, all of this. I’m dik.”

The crime is the biggest problem, Cupido says. “You can open these places with a tin opener.” The streets are full of drug dealers who target children and “buy them nice tekkies, nice jeans”. The kids then leave school because there’s no incentive for them to stay “if they can be a big man”. Skelms [crooks] slide a burning CD under your door – the fumes make you pass out and when you wake up, your house is empty.

But, Cupido adds, the disease is just as bad. Sanitation is terrible; little children play in the sand and their skin is covered in boils which are typically diagnosed in the local clinics as a “rash”. The clinic and the day hospital are a far walk and if you need an ambulance you’ll wait for hours.

Tilley says there are also significant problems getting Blikkiesdorp children into schools because of the stigma they face. It is known that they are from very poor families, so schools don’t want to accept them because they can’t pay fees. Cupido corroborates this. “The schools I’ve been involved with… there’s a very rude principal,” she says. “When he heard the kids are from Blikkiesdorp, suddenly there was no more space. Then we took him to the Education Board.” The Board intervened, successfully, on the children’s behalf.

Cupido’s biggest concern, contrary to the EIA, is not the increased noise level, should the airport expansion go ahead, although Tilley points out that the residents – because they are living in temporary structures and are financially constrained – would not be able to soundproof their residences if they remained there.

The increased vibrations, Cupido says, are the real danger, even currently. She and the other residents recount incidents where structures have burned down because vibrations from the passing aeroplanes have caused electricity boxes to explode.

“We had one incident like that in my own block,” Cupido says. “He didn’t know about nothing. By the time we got there the fire just spread all over the house. They tried to break down the doors and windows but by the time we shut down the fire, [fellow resident] Sibongile’s husband said, ‘Somebody must be in here because the skin smells.’ We found him behind the door – he was totally burned.”

Moving forward

Blikkiesdorp is meant to be temporary, but as the residents have discovered, purgatory can last a long time. It’s not as simple as pointing fingers, however.

“One thing everybody agrees on – ACSA, the City, the residents – is that it [Blikkiesdorp] was a bad idea and that people should be moved. The question is how and when,” explains Tilley.

The complication is that there is no real solution.

“It’s a really knotty problem,” says Tilley. “Among the residents there are only people who actually owned houses but were evicted because they could not pay rates. So they cannot get a subsidised house. There are people who do not have the income to rent. Some of them are foreign nationals who can’t get access to housing. So saying that the Blikkiesdorp residents will be placed on the housing list or relocated is a third of a solution, and it will take several years to implement.” Even those eligible for housing could wait many years until they get permanent homes, Tilley said.

Councillor Benedicta van Minnen, the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, told Daily Maverick that the City was working on a long-term solution as well as currently trying to improve conditions within Blikkiesdorp. Part of the silence thus far, she said, was because the City did not know yet what it could deliver. “The City has to ensure that it engages and communicates with its residents at the right time. A responsible City government must manage expectations and not make empty promises.

“This is a complicated matter which is dependent on many variables. It has been communicated to our residents that the moment that there is clarity about the way ahead, an extensive engagement will take place. Any future plans are linked to the outcome of the ACSA processes.”

She did, however, suggest that “as part of the agreement [MOU] it is foreseen that the City will be responsible for the development of the land suited to residential development and ancillary land uses which is located to the west and east of Symphony Way” and that this would be “potentially be used to rehouse three communities that are currently living in unsatisfactory conditions, namely, the Freedom Farm and Malawi Camp informal settlements and the Blikkiesdorp Temporary Relocation Area”. Asked whether there were any plans to assist affected residents with soundproofing, she said this would form part of the longer-term solution.

When Daily Maverick queried the situation regarding those who were not eligible for housing, she said they could potentially qualify for emergency assistance such as that provided after the 2008 xenophobic attacks. “After all of the potential future processes have been followed, those in need of emergency housing and who are eligible under the provisions of the Emergency Housing Code, will be accommodated in emergency residential areas.” She said a “fair and equitable” approach would be taken to giving assistance.

“This is a very intricate process, which would involve eventual land swops and rezoning of land parcels, and community engagement. This could take many years and much of the information that is being spread by various third parties is completely premature,” she said.

ACSA spokesperson Deidre Davids told Daily Maverick the airports company intended to engage with the community in future. “To date three public participation processes have taken place - they range from advertising the project to community meetings. Information about the project as well as the meetings were extensively made available through regional and community newspapers and radio, placement in libraries, town halls and so forth,” she said. “The next round of public participation is set for March next year, after which all comments are recorded and included in the draft report for submission to the Department of Environmental Affairs. If positive approval is obtained only then can the project commence.

“After the last public engagement session we had the opportunity to provide meaningful engagements with the Blikkiesdorp community as part of this process and undertook to update the community should any progress or decision be effected as it relates to this project.”

But for the residents, many of whom do not qualify for permanent housing – or for whom the wait for a house could still take years – the prospect of another temporary solution could prove a bridge too far. “This place is like hell,” Cupido said. “It’s worse than hell. In hell, at least you burn out.” DM

Photo of Blikkiesdorp by Marelise van der Merwe.

Read more:

• SRK’s Environmental Impact Assessment (last modified 17 November 2015)


• To find out more and to watch the documentary, visit Open Democracy.