Residents of Khayelitsha support the President’s call for a lockdown and the maintenance of strict hygiene, but want the President to pressure the City of Cape Town and Western Cape Government to deliver the basic services residents need to be able to comply with the rules. On the day before the lockdown began, GOOD Secretary-General Brett Herron wrote urgent letters on behalf of Khayelitsha residents to the City and Province, copying the Human Rights Commission, demanding immediate action to reconnect residents whose water supply had been disconnected, and ensure communal taps and toilets in informal settlements were working.
“Disconnecting residents from water supply and failing to urgently improve access to water for those who do not have an adequate supply in informal settlements undermines the national lockdown objective – to contain the virus as quickly as possible – and places the health and lives of these residents, and the rest of us, in jeopardy,” - Herron wrote.
Interviewed a week later, Anele Soto, who lives in the informal settlement known as RR Section, in Site B, Khayelitsha, said sewerage was running in the streets. “We feel totally neglected by the City of Cape Town. We have been living here for more than 10 years, with sewerage and slime outside our homes. You find 15 households using one toilet, and 30 households sharing a tap,” said Soto. “We heard our President saying we should stay at home, but how are we going to be helped here, to do it?” GOOD’s Khayelitsha coordinator, Philiswa Marman, said she was shocked, when visiting RR Section just before the lockdown began, to see workers cleaning the communal toilets without gloves or masks. “Now is not the time to talk politics, but these things really do give you the feeling that, to the City, what goes on in Khayelitsha really doesn’t matter,” she said. On the day before lockdown, residents of Khayelitsha who had fallen behind with water bills had their water cut off – without any drip supply – despite the City’s promise not to disconnect water supply during this unprecedented period. All these problems have been reported to the City and Province by GOOD’s Brett Herron.
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