Residents who illegally occupied RDP houses under construction in Buffalo Flats area have vowed to permanently occupy the houses in the area after the eviction case was postponed to December 13 in the East London court on Tuesday.
Clinton Koert, the spokesperson for Plaaslike Besorgde Inwoners (PBI), a group representing the community said the people won’t vacate the houses until Buffalo City Metro (BCM) provided them with alternative houses.
The house invasion began in June and BCM served the illegal house occupiers with an eviction letter in July, however, Koert said they were not deterred by BCM threats to kick them out of the properties.
In an interview with DispatchLIVE, he said, “The issue is not with our Xhosa brothers and sisters; our main issue is with BCM because we are also part of the housing list.
When this project was undertaken, our people also expected to benefit from it because they registered since 1990 on the database of BCM but when the houses were being built, out of 700 only 23 coloured families benefited from that process.”
Koert added, “We do not mind the integration process where they need to move us to Reeston, Mdantsane or wherever in the Metro but the integration should be a fair process not only a situation where coloured communities is being integrated. As houses were built in Mdantsane, Nompumelelo and Reeston there was not even one of those houses allocated to coloured people.”..