Self-sabotage is the albatross around the necks of Cape Flats communities.
We seem to find problems for every solution that comes our way.
We get shiny new trains and buses – and then we vandalise them, until they stop running.
We deny our children the pleasure of community parks by systematically breaking them down.
We break into our libraries, attack our paramedics and burgle our schools and clinics.
And now we are making sure that people on housing waiting lists will remain waiting for heavens knows how long, while we protect the extortionists and gangsters who are preventing housing projects from being completed.
More than 4 500 beneficiaries are being affected by these stalled projects. Maybe that includes a relative of yours.
In a briefing to the provincial parliament’s standing committee on human settlements on Friday, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis addressed the issue of the “construction mafia”, which he says has already cost the City of Cape Town millions.
He says 12 housing projects in Delft Eindhoven, Valhalla Park, Gugulethu, Bardale 4C in Mfuleni, Sir Lowry’s Pass Village, Sheffield Road in Philippi and Beacon Valley, among others, are dealing with threats to contractors and staff.
Hill-Lewis says the City has had to cancel two housing contracts worth R140 million, after incidents of petrol bombing and four construction staff members being shot.
There are Capetonians who have been on housing waiting lists for decades. Some wait their entire lives to move up that list to finally move into a house they can call their own. Some die waiting.
And some of them are now literally on the threshold of realising their dream, except a few unscrupulous and unconscionable people are standing in the way, because they want to make a few rand.
They don’t care how the community is being affected by their selfishness, and they can’t see how allowing the projects to continue uninterrupted will benefit everyone, including themselves.
Someone reasonable and with a strong set of principles, knows these people. Either piemp them, or encourage them to step aside.
Mens kan mos nooit so aan gaan nie!