Thirty-four people share a one-bedroomed council house in Hanover Park – the majority living in makeshift shacks in the back yard.
All 34 share a single toilet and bath. And if the house is locked, they must use a bucket.
Just one person among the four families sharing the plot has a job.
That is the daily reality for the Hendricks family, who moved into the council house on the 275m2 erf 40 years ago and now share it with their relatives.
They are the human face of life in Cape Town for more than 40 000 people who live in the backyards of the city’s rental properties, the “forgotten people” who live in crowded, unhealthy conditions and have little choice.
In Hanover Park there are an estimated 3 780 backyard residents. Langa has a tally of about 960 backyarders and Factreton 250.
Nyanga has the highest number, estimated at 10 000, while Retreat and Gugulethu have 4 000 each.
Now Hanover Park, Factreton and Langa are set to be pilot areas for the roll-out of basic services to backyard residents by the City of Cape Town. They will get standpipe taps, toilets and solid waste removal from next year.
The roll-out cannot come soon enough for the Hendricks family.
Seven people share the main house and 27 live in four backyard structures which cover the plot, leaving only a tiny outside area.
For this, each family pays between R60 and R80 a month, including water.
But that doesn’t mean hot showers. Bath time is strictly controlled – four minutes a person, starting from 4pm.
In one of the backyard homes, Mymoena Sampson, 43, shares two rooms with her husband, six children, two grandchildren and her disabled cousin. They have lived there for 15 years.
November marks their 20th year on the housing waiting list.
She and her husband sleep on a double bed in one room. Her cousin has a single bed less than a metre away, and the four children are squeezed into the room.
A double bunk is in the other tiny room where four boys sleep, separated from the other room by cardboard and curtains.
Abeda Hendricks, 37, also lives on the property. She shares her home with her husband, four children, a grandchild and son-in-law. It is her husband who has a job.
Her 77-year-old father and 55-year-old mother also live there.
Her mother, Camiela Hendricks, said they had lived in a backyard since they married.
“It’s terrible. We have no privacy. I want to be on my own. Living like this is stressful and is making us sick,” she said.
Each day the children in the main house get first option of using the toilet. Then the others from the yard scramble for their turn before going to school.
When the main house is locked up for the night, everyone has to use buckets to relieve themselves.
Sampson and Hendricks complained that other than the indignity suffered, the girls and women often suffered bladder and other infections because of the bucket system.
Sampson said the city’s plan to install services would help, but what they really needed were homes of their own.
Mayoral committee member for housing Shehaam Sims said the survey revealed that most backyarders had asked for access to their own water, toilets and electricity.
Some landlords illegally cut off access to these facilities when they wanted to force people off their properties, she charged.
The options for installing toilets were either communal or single flushing toilets.
“I will push for flushing toilets. Lessons about communal toilets have been learned hard enough,” said Sims.
Alida Kotzee, of the city’s housing directorate, said an area-specific solution would be investigated in each pilot area.
She added that installing a toilet for each family could be the cheaper option for the city, because the family would be billed and the city would not have ongoing operational costs of maintaining and providing security for communal toilets.
Sims said they were considering providing people with electricity. It would cost R7 000 to electrify each unit.
Exact total costs for the provision of services have not yet been calculated.
Backyard residents are shortchanged regarding the housing waiting list. Allocations are set at 30 percent to backyarders and 70 percent to shack residents. Provincial housing’s Zalisile Mbali said the department wanted that changed to a 50/50 split.
Ricardo Sedres, director of the Hanover Park Backyarders Association, said he welcomed the city’s move to provide basic services.
“But we still feel that housing needs must be addressed because of the many backyarders that have been on the waiting list for many years. They were truly the forgotten people because it’s taken the government 16 years to realise there are actually people living in backyards,” he said.
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