Carol’s Column

Solly's shack shelters hope for all South Africans

An interesting thing happened to me on the way home the other day. I gave Solly Nzuza a lift, picking him up at the roadside where he was hitch-hiking.

Yes, I know it's potentially dangerous. I know he could have been packing an AK-47 down his trouser leg, a cosh in his denim jacket and a knife in the waistband of his jeans.

He wasn't. He looked like a particularly nice young man with a friendly grin. And when he approached me at the traffic lights and enquired if I was going in a certain direction and I replied in the affirmative, he asked for a lift.

It seemed churlish to refuse.

Solly was 21 and wanted to be a motor mechanic, he said. He worked at a garage as an apprentice petrol pump man but had a friend who was a motor mechanic and was teaching him to do minor repairs. In the meantime, he'd started a small informal business and was fixing bicycle punctures.

He'd asked me to drop him in town but it turned out he lived on the outskirts in a squatter camp. He came from a small village up country and was trying his luck in the big city, he said.

I offered to drop him at his house. “Will it be safe?” I asked.

He laughed. “Safer than town,” he replied.

So I found myself winding my way over the veld, avoiding potholes and driving slowly so as not to puncture my tyres. Solly lived with his brother, (still job-hunting), and they'd built their shack together, he explained. I have been to squatter camps on several occasions, usually on a story. And always left as soon as I could.

Solly's camp had recently been established on some farm land, over which there was a dispute, and most of the shacks were just a couple of years old.

There were about 150 dwellings. They'd been threatened with eviction by neighbouring farmers and alternative land was to be provided for them. As yet, that land hadn't materialised.

He directed me to one of the smallest shacks. “Come in for a drink,” he said hospitably.

The inside of the hut was eclectic. The frame had been built of saplings anchored in concrete in the ground. You could see the roughness of the wood, the nobbles where the branches looked as if they might sprout.

The walls and roof were covered with municipal refuse bag sheeting, then with a framework of cardboard, cold-drink cans, pieces of tomato box, oil drums and stones. Then, on the outside, a mixture of mud, cement and sand formed a rough wall.

The inside was rudimentary. One bed, an inverted red plastic cold-drink crate, and a tin trunk which alternated as wardrobe, storage chest, pantry and seating.

On the flat wall surfaces, and there weren't many, they'd pasted soccer pictures cut from magazines.

“It's not five star,” smiled Solly, “but it's home. And, so far, it's stayed dry even in bad rains.” No, it wasn't five star. In fact, it wasn't even one star, I thought as I sat on the bed, Solly on the tin trunk, and we sipped a Coke.

But it was quite remarkable because from nothing these two young men had built a dwelling which was resourceful, clever, creative, inventive, fairly solid and, above all, somewhere to live.

I wish all those vociferous critics of squatter camps would visit one and see for themselves what people who have little or nothing have achieved. It's awesome. This to me is positive proof that South Africa can and will work.

It's truly inspiring.

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