‘We gave your shacks away’

RESIDENTS of Lethabo Park have vowed not to allow the real owners of the so-called ghost shacks to return to the shacks because they failed to claim them on a previous occasion. Residents are now giving these shacks to people who are in desperate need of homes.

They prevented several people from claiming the shacks when the electrification process of Lethabo Park started.

Residents also complained that these empty shacks have been delaying development in their settlement.

They accused the people who claimed to be owners of the shacks of failing to heed previous calls by the municipality to occupy their shacks, which were also posing a safety risk while standing empty.

It is believed that the shacks are owned by municipal and government officials who were not prepared to stay in a place that does not have electricity.

According to residents, the shacks were turning their lives into a living hell because of criminal activities.

The deputy chairperson of the local Neighbourhood Watch, Kagisho Mekgwe, said stolen goods were found in the shacks, rapes were committed in them, and they were used as drug dens.

Mekgwe also added that the shacks caught fire on several occasions without the cause being established.

“A body was found in one of the shacks that burnt down. The body was only found the next day because no one knew that the shack caught fire in the middle of the night.

“The whole street consists of so-called ghost shacks, thus no one noticed that there was a fire. In August, the police were called after a gun went off in one of the shacks, and a group of men were seen fleeing the scene,” said Mekgwe.

“At some stage we also found home-made weapons in a shack that was suspected to be a warehouse.”

Mekgwe said they have already started the process of “double parking” whereby the owner is welcome to collect his/her shack from the plot and leave the new owner in peace.

“The process started after the owners ignored a notice issued by the municipality to claim their shacks within six months.”

He said in some of the streets there can be more than five empty shacks in one row.

Mekgwe said Lethabo park consists of six units. “In Unit 5 alone we counted 88 so-called ghost shacks. You can only imagine how many there are in the whole of Lethabo Park.”

He added that some of the dodgy owners accepted the fact that their shacks were given away while others wanted to remove the new owners.

He claimed that it is also believed that municipal officials reserved the shacks in order to give them to their comrades who would then be used as a “third force” within the community.