Three Years On, None of Mbizana's 200 Storm-Damaged Homes Are Complete
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A R34-million Eastern Cape human settlements contract to rebuild 200 storm-damaged homes in Mbizana has not produced a single completed house in three years, leaving residents to build with their own social grants.
Three years after the government promised to rebuild storm-damaged homes in Mbizana in the Eastern Cape, none of the 200 houses have been completed, leaving desperate residents such as 67-year-old Nomonde Mboyi to build their own homes using social grants. Mboyi's household was among hundreds that lost their homes during heavy winds and rain in the Mbizana region in 2019, when she lost two mud houses and a third stick-and-mud home was left with a leaking roof and holes in its walls.
In 2023, the Eastern Cape Department of Human Settlements appointed ZIBSIPRO (Pty) Ltd to replace the storm-damaged houses with 200 homes across the region for about R34 million, or roughly R170,000 a house. Not one of the houses has been completed. The brick-and-mortar house the government is building for Mboyi has only a foundation and partially completed walls, a pattern repeated at most of the houses under construction in her village of Ndakeni.
"When the contractor came here last year to start the foundation, I was already starting the walls of my two-room house. I used my social grant to buy materials and pay for labour. But the process was not quick because I had to spend months saving enough money before I could continue," Mboyi said. Her new mud house needs only exterior plastering and final touch-ups before she moves in in December, and she said Eskom cannot install electricity because the structure is not waterproof.
Mboyi said residents offered during a meeting with the Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Local Municipality in February this year to finish building the houses themselves, but were told to wait. "Since then, there has been no further explanation. We are just waiting," she said.
Community leader Nontokozo Nyombo said many of the beneficiaries, who mostly rely on social grants, were in desperate need of housing, and that residents no longer get answers from the municipality. Residents said the contractor left in November last year promising to return, but has not come back; construction machinery remains in the village, watched over by a security guard.