A devastating fire has taken two young children’s lives in the mountain view informal settlements
Tshidi sebogodi
by Tshidi Sebogodi
The Mountain View informal settlement was established in the year 2023 without proper structures like The committee used their feet to size the yard to be 16×20. Informal settlements the places where the is no service delivery as it is not formalized by the government. Is the place formed by a community from different places in Soweto? The place doesn’t have water, sanitation or electricity.
As a community, we fetch water near houses and use gas stoves, firewood and braziers(izimbawula), and candles. The problem starts in wintertime is when we have a lot of fires caused by candles and paraffin stoves, as we do with eaters. It happens that we fall asleep leaving candles or braziers on.
One of the many cruel consequences of the organized abandonment of the poor in our country is the regular shack fires that devastate families and communities.
The family of five lost all their belongings, including Identity Documents(IDs), clothes, cards ,schoolbooks everything inside the shack even the shack burned to ashes the Morabaraba family. Winter is a very difficult time for the poor who are homeless and those who live in shacks at Informal Settlement. While families try to keep warm by using braziers or stoves then the risk of these fires escalates .When the fires happen government and community start to blame families where incidents happen, that they were drunk or had illegal electricity connections, without bothering to find out the real causes of the fire. They never act to provide the forms of infrastructure and support to reduce the risk of fires. They leave poor people to die.
Just after midnight on Sunday morning around 01:05 the shack caught fire two children Truth and Trust surname Capital who were 8 & 6 years old respectively lost their lives in a shack that caught fire in Mountain View. The one-year-old Tumi and their father Siya Shlahla are still in hospital fighting for their lives. The mother, who is Siyaya Capital 40 years old still traumatized as she also got burned on the face. The cause of the fire is not yet known.
Being poor in this country is a crime for which you can pay with our lives. There are many ways to pay for being poor with your life. You can burn ,starve, or hunger, get washed away in floods, be shot by the police, and land eviction unit to demolish the shacks. The government simply doesn’t care about the poor as they are not providing land, houses, and services Instead of bringing what we need for a safe and dignified life, they would better bring men with guns to evict us. I ask one of the leaders at the community in block D where the fire happened.
Mr Tims leader in Block D and the patroller said “They are left to die in floods and fires. We are often blamed for their sufferings and poverty always they are told that they are lazy, drunkards, stupid and criminals. Our humanity(Botho ba bona)is vandalized year after year and day after day. Their situation is desperate, we cannot carry on like this”.
The solution to this is to write a memorandum to C.O.J. as Abahlali base Mjondolo. The memorandum handed in the is a feedback from government that sent on 09th of June 2025 says Minister is able to meet with them on the 14th June 2025 at 11h30.The executive committee will attend the meeting.
