III 20
6.5 HOUSING AND LIVING CONDITIONS
6.5.1 Household crowding
Most families in relocation areas are now living in more crowded dwellings. For the eleven resettled households visited, the researcher discovered that on average, there had been four houses or structures in the homesteads. There were thus an average of seven rooms per homestead before resettlement. This is in contrast to the average of three structures with the average of six rooms currently evident in relocation areas. At least for households interviewed, while there is evidence of a 20% decrease in room space among all households, and there has been an 18% increase in the number of people occupying rooms.
In other words, this shows an inverse relationship between the number of rooms and the number of occupants, over time. This is illustrated in Figure 6.5 below.
Figure 6.5 compares the past number of occupants per room in eleven households with the present situation. The vertical axis shows room occupancy ratio when relocation took place and compares this with current room occupancy. Figure 6.5 reveals that the households experiencing the highest densities as a result of inadequate housing, coupled with an increased number of people per room are those in Dinabakubo and some in Ntuzuma.
With regards to capacity, households in Matikwe seem to be relatively better off. This could be due to the fact that this area is open and has low-density housing. As explained earlier, households here have relatively larger land compared to those in Dinabakubo and Ntuzuma. In the view of Ms Mntambo ofNtuzuma:
People in Dinabakubo are in most trouble. This is because they never got anything. The households have no homes. They are just staying there
because they are inside tins. It is a place, one cannot regard as home (Ms.
Mntambo, pers. comm., 24 November 2000).
Number of occupants per room in eleven households
0) 5
;;c 4
~0
3 I!IBefore
~ ><
U Q)
"C"C
IIINow -0 · -c 2
.r:.Q)
en::;, 1
0 0
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0 0 0 0 N N N N M M M
Households
Figure 6.5: The relationship between the past and present room occupancy ratios in eleven families ofthe three relocation areas of Dinabakubo (D), Ntuzuma G (N) and
Matikwe (M)
Some households in Ntuzuma do own four room houses made of bricks and asbestos.
Other families however at Ntuzuma G, and Dinabakubo are still living in"tin" houses. By
"tin" houses is meant the huts made of corrugated iron. These huts as predicted by Scott and Diab (1989) are not able to accommodate extended families of the displaced families, but too small. This means that fourteen years after the dam started operating their predictions are still evident.
The issue of accommodating extended families needs further explanation here. One of the characteristics of a typical modern Zulu homestead is a number of houses in any shape, together forming big Umuzi (homestead). In the case of households displaced by Inanda dam, this structure formerly allowed the growing family to be accommodated in the same homestead. In case houses were running short because of a growing family, there were no restrictions with regards to building additional houses to accommodate a family. Ms Meyiwa of Dinabakubo made this point. In the original areas, she stated, there were no significant money costs involved since local resources were employed and utilized.
Householders did not worry as to the type of house to build (Ms. Meyiwa, pers.comm., 23 December 2000).
Mr Nxumalo of Ntuzuma admits that even though he is not happy that he does not have title deeds and that he and his family have no home somewhere else in rural areas, he believes that he and some others are relatively better off. This among other things could be because he at least owns a four room compensatory house. He is mostly concerned about those whose socio-economic status is so low that they find it hard to reconstruct their houses (Mr. Nxumalo, pers.comm., 02 March 2001).
Asked to compare life in Ngcolosi and in Dinabakubo, Mrs Jali also expressed a strong feeling against not having a proper house for herself and her family.
If you have no house really what are you, but if you have a house you know you are safe. In Ngcolosi, we had our buildings. We were surviving, fetching water from Mngeni River, washing clothes free of charge, fetching firewood from the bushes, coming back and polishing our houses whenever we liked. Here now, one does not have space, even if one has a visitor, where will one place her or him, where will one place them? There it was nice yes, but here it is nice because it is closer to employment opportunities.
However, since we have no property, just that alone is a worse experience.
In the past houses were enough to accommodate all of us (Ms. Jali, pers.
comm., 12 December 2000).
Another Jali family in Dinabakubo is worried that they can hardly invest in new furniture.
This is because of limited space, given the smaller size of the tin houses they are occupying. These houses are only 9m2in size. The houses are of low quality so that any new furniture would be damaged within very few years of purchase, said Mr Jali. Ms Nxumalo of Ntuzuma and her family also live in a tin house. The following quote depicts her feelings about the conditions under which she and her family live:
How can I pay rates when I was living in a house before but now only living in the ''bush''? As long as I am still living in this tin, I see no reason to pay rates. As long as I do not have a house of my own, houses others and I were promised, and am still living in a tin, I will never pay any rates. IfI was given a house I would pay yes, but now I am still in the bush and waiting. If I do not get a house they should rather return me to the dam (Ms. Nxumalo, pers. comm., 19 December 2000).
The feelings of Ms Nxumalo further strengthens the evidence that impoverishment of the displaced people also interrupts the local economy as it triggers major losses. If one Durban Unicity resident like Ms Nxumalo refuses to pay for services that means loss to the Council. If the Council forces her to pay rates and yet she is still living in a tin house, it will be acting. against its mission of improving the quality of life of all its residents. If it does not force her however it will continue incurring major losses since she is one of many.
Having access to acceptable shelter, food, to be cared for and secured is a context independent need. Smith (1997) argues that human nature does seek the satisfaction of context-dependent needs. The satisfaction of historically constant and culturally invariant needs is however a primary value. Human beings will always derive value from having these needs met, irrespective of human location in history. Having access to proper housing is one of the primary values.
The discussion in the preceding sections leads to certain conclusions. While households are concerned about issues such as energy and water resources, lack of sufficient and proper housing seemed to be the major crisis for most households. Figure 6.6 below provides a summary of the changes in access to tangible resources that occurred as a result of involuntary relocation by the dam.
While some of the changes shown in Figure 6.6 are clearly negative (in particular, the situation with respect to land and housing), the picture is a complex one. Some changes have both good and bad aspects.
Up to this point in the chapter, the discussion has been mainly around access to tangible resources. The loss or gain of these things can be measured in tangible ways and an attempt has been made to do so wherever possible. People of course have feelings about the loss of tangible assets as these assets have particular meaning for them. These feelings have also been discussed. The chapter thus has been concerned mainly with achieving the first objective of the study, which is the following:
• To examine the material impacts of the dam by comparing key indicators of quality of life before displacement, with the situation in resettlement areas.
Livelihood generation
Common property resources
Housing
Income generation
Before k, .~,I
Now
Variables
I I
Figure 6.6 Diagram summarising changes in access to tangible resources due to the involuntary relocation by the dam
The rest of the chapter deals with some more "intangible" effects of the dam relocation.
This does not however imply that these effects have not at all been addressed since the
"tangible" effects already discussed also have feelings and attitudes attached to them. The following sections attempt to address in more detail the second research objective, that is:
• To determine resettlers' feelings and attitudes on how their quality of life has changed as a result of the relocation.