A severe backlog of over 300,000 RDP houses, stalled projects, and constrained budgets are fueling a deepening housing crisis in the North West province, with problems tracing back to 2007 and leaving thousands of desperate families in limbo.
The crisis is compounded by allegations of manipulated beneficiary lists, where officials claim undeserving applicants are prioritized over those in genuine need.
In Kabe, a village on the outskirts of Mahikeng, the human cost of this systemic failure is starkly visible. One resident, living with her family of ten in a dilapidated shack, described their dire circumstances.
“Our structure is riddled with holes and gets flooded when it rains,” she said. “We cannot even sleep. We are not working and have no income to build ourselves a house. We are asking for a house.”
The family’s situation is critical, lacking even a basic pit latrine in their yard.
Elderly residents are among the most vulnerable. A Seventy-year-old woman says she is forced to sleep at a neighbour’s house because she fears her own shack may collapse at any time.
“This shack is not safe for me and my children. We are always saying this place is not safe,” Milamo stated.
The plight is echoed by another elderly woman who is 65-years-old. She is crammed into a two-bedroom house with her bedridden, blind mother who was born in 1938. “We are asking for an RDP house from the government,” she pleaded.
However, according to a provincial spokesperson, immediate assistance is unlikely due to severe financial limitations.
“In terms of the fiscals, we are very much constrained. If it was not because of that, I think we would have gone far in terms of addressing the backlog that we are having,” the spokesperson said.
The authorities confirm that the budgetary crisis is worsened by the alleged manipulation of housing lists. Another official pointed to a critical lack of oversight as a root cause of the problem.
“If there was monitoring, this challenge would not have been there,” the official stated. “It’s important for us to ensure that there is strict adherence to the beneficiary list because the other problem that we are having is that you would find that some people who do not necessarily qualify are being submitted as beneficiaries… Yet people who are in the need of a house, their names are not been submitted.”
With new applicants facing waits of many years and existing projects stalled, households across the North West are left to fervently hope their plight will be addressed with the urgency it demands.
