A disabled Cato Crest man had to reason with protesters who wanted him to give up his RDP home but he vowed to stay put.
|||Durban - A disabled Cato Crest man had to reason with protesters who wanted him to give up his RDP home, but he vowed to stay put.
On Monday, Khuba Mpungose, 50, faced angry residents who claimed there was something underhanded about the way he was allocated the house.
“I was not afraid of them because I knew I had done nothing wrong. I didn’t buy or steal this house from anyone,” Mpungose said yesterday.
He had to answer to a group of disgruntled residents who had caused havoc in the area since Monday, barricading roads with branches, rubbish bins and burning tyres.
They complained about, among other things, a local ward councillor and lack of development in the area.
The angry residents wanted to remove Mpungose if he had no valid explanation as to how he was allocated the house.
He said his disability began with a bout of flu and developed into severe back pains that left him unable to walk. At the time he was living in a shack far from the road, impeding his mobility.
“I was approached by the ward committee and was told that my health issue had been discussed at length and residents had agreed to let me move into a house closer to the road,” he said.
“A community meeting was called and the residents agreed that I should move into this house,” he said, adding that the residents had helped him move in.
Mpungose said he had been living in Cato Crest for more than 20 years and had been elected as a ward committee member several times.
“I signed papers for this house and it will not be easy for me to leave because municipal records will show that I already have this house and getting another one would have been impossible.”
Phumzile Mkhize, a ward committee member, said the residents who had wanted to forcibly remove Mpungose had also attacked her at her home at the weekend, demanding “their” houses.
“Most of those residents are tenants who are renting shacks and I told them to take the matter up with their landlords,” she said.
Mkhize said the committee had told the residents that efforts would be made to get them into RDP houses, but that this would be a challenge because there were “just too many of them”.
Daily News