Blikkiesdorp – meaning “tin-can town” in Afrikaans – has become a source of controversy in Cape Town, South Africa’s most visited city and the host of several important matches in the much-anticipated 2010 Soccer World Cup, writes IRINnews.
Created in 2008, Blikkiesdorp is sandwiched between sand dunes and the main road through the township of Delft, about 20km outside Cape Town, where over 1,500 box-like units made of metal sheeting line a bleak area of gravel and sand, with not a tree or a bush in sight.
MINDER OM APARTHEID-METODER
Older units lack insulation and gaps can be seen between the galvanized metal sheets; problems with plumbing result in overflows when it rains – the odour of sewage is distinct.
Some residents have called Blikkiesdorp a “concentration camp”, and have attracted media attention with claims that it was created as part of a “clean up strategy” to tidy away Cape Town’s poor and homeless before the World Cup starts in June.
Most of the people were relocated from inner-city suburbs like Woodstock and Salt River – a move reminiscent of apartheid’s forced removals.
However, this Temporary Relocation Area (TRA), as it is officially known, is in fact one of the government’s attempts to deal with the housing backlog.
BOLIGMANGEL EN SVÆR NØD AT KNÆKKE
South Africa’s housing crisis has so far proved hard to crack, and the promise by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) of housing for all is perhaps the nation’s biggest dream deferred.
Cape Town alone has a backlog of some 400,000 houses, and 18,000 new families from South Africa and other African countries arrive in the municipality every year.
Accommodating everyone has become a persistent headache.
MIDLERTIDIG LØSNING
The answer, so far, has been TRAs, Temporary Relocation Areas, which are part of the National Housing Programme for Housing Assistance in emergency circumstances, and have been developed all over South Africa to handle the overflow of people waiting for houses.
