Toloko Mofookeng and Monyaduwe Tshabalala have been waiting for their RDP house since 2011. The left hand of Mofookeng was permanently damaged in a defending incident. Tshabalala’s leg was amputated after an accident. Photo: Tladi Moloi
A few in the village of Balata in the eastern free state has waited 14 years until their RDP house has been completed.
Huns is one of the more than 20,000 Breaking New Ground (BNG, formerly known as RDP) houses in the province that are incomplete, says Zimasa Mbewu, spokesperson for the Free State Department of Human Settlements. These projects are “blocked”, especially because contractors have not completed the work for which they were paid.
Toloko Mofookeng and his wife Monyaduwwe Tshabalala were assigned an RDP house in 2011 on a piece of land where they lived. A contractor arrived the same year but left without doing anything. A second contractor left after leveling the ground. A third contractor placed a concrete plate before he also left the project.
Fourteen years later the couple lives in a hut next to the plate. The cabin leaks when it rains and must be rebuilt soon. Mofookeng, tired of waiting, says he is considering building his own mud hut on the concrete foundation.
Mbewu says that the contractors who have left the work left behind, left behind and the housing projects, including the MOFOKENG house, will be completed for the next two years. She refused to call the contractors who are responsible for the incomplete house of Mofookeng, because there were still disputes about payment.
Long history of home errors
The Zondo committee noted that between 2010 and 2011, under the former Prime Minister Ace Magashule, about R1 million was spent on housing projects in the free state, many of which have never been completed.
In 2014, the province entered into a corrupt tender of R255 million for the removal of asbestos roofs. That test continues.
In 2021, the Auditor General written That the housing department had spent most of the subsidies received for housing for three years, but had “delivered considerably less houses than the target”, without consequences for contractors who had not achieved their goals.
In 2024, the Auditor General praised The department for improving internal checks, but the department reported only Completion of 50 breaking new ground houses against a target of 2,065.
The Auditor General discovered that there was insufficient evidence that even 50 houses were built. “I could not determine the actual performance, but I estimated that the equipment was less less than reported,” wrote the Auditor General.
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By Tladi Moloi
groundup.org.za
