South Africa

South Africa

Life on the tracks: Western Cape’s forgotten people of Kossovo

Life on the tracks: Western Cape’s forgotten people of Kossovo

The people of Kossovo exist on the margins of unguarded train tracks. Their children are at risk. A lack of service delivery and poor sanitation makes dire conditions worse. By Dudumalingani Mqomboti for GROUNDUP.

Children abandon their soccer balls and toys in open playgrounds and run towards the train station. Their screams resemble excitement. In less than ten minutes, the Philippi train station, which Kossovo residents’ use, has a crowd.

Two drunken women, pulling up their skirts, stagger to the station in hurried gaits.

“Why do you play here?” one shouts. “Go home, all of you, go home … Whose child is it?” she asks, her Xhosa contorted by alcohol.

Amongst the chaos and the confusion, a child lies by the tracks, two meters from the platform. Security guards disperse the crowd. The train driver stands over the child, shaking, with her hands on her mouth.

“I am glad he is alive,” she says after the child is taken away by ambulance. She walks back to the train, fetches her bag, and leaves the train standing at the platform.

kids-going-to-the-accident.jpg

Photo: Children at scene of accident. (Dudumalingani Mqomboti)

This is one of many such incidents that children in Kossovo have to witness. To prevent their children from playing on the tracks, parents have to keep them in sight, summoning them away with a shrill call of their names. The only other way to keep them away from the tracks is to lock them up in the house and to never let them play outside.

train-accident.jpg

Photo: People gather at the scene of a train accident. (Dudumalingani Mqomboti)

“Our kids get to see many people committing suicide on the train tracks. Many times. And the train too has killed many of them because they play on those tracks”, says mama Nosibongile Dube, a resident and community leader in the Messiah section of Kossovo.

“This is not a life children should be exposed to. This is not a way to grow up.”

Messiah lies on the train tracks on the central line. Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) has promised to move them but they have been waiting for a long time.

train-tracks-in-front-of-Kossovo.jpg

Photo: Washing hangs near the train line. (Dudumalingani Mqomboti)

Kossovo (or Kosovo) is an informal settlement on the outskirts of Cape Town that was built on a forest. It is not known who moved here first around 20 years ago. There are still no services here.

Opposite it, across the train station, is Philippi, and adjacent to it, next to the shrubs where Kossovo residents are forced to relieve themselves, is Marcus Garvey.

new-unfinished-toilets.jpg

Photo: New unfinished toilets. (Dudumalingani Mqomboti)

New toilets were dropped off last week but cannot be used, as they are only the structure. Now children play in them. The municipality does not clean the old toilets and so residents have stopped using them.

Taking a walk with Mama Dube to the forest where residents relieve themselves, we walk underneath a bridge, with nothing to barricade us from trains. People cannot relieve themselves during the day because train commuters can see them, and then when it is dark, they need to go as a group as they fear for their lives. Already two women have fallen prey to rapists and murderers

The sanitation here contradicts the claim in a 2012 National Department of Water Affairs report, echoed by Mayor Patricia de Lille, that 100% of Cape Town informal settlements have adequate sanitation.

In the Messiah section, where Mama Dube lives, service delivery shortcomings pile up. Residents install their own electricity, connecting wires from another section that has electricity. The live wires carrying power weave a fatal pattern over the shacks. There are only two taps, which half the time, do not have water.

The first shacks in Messiah were erected eight years ago. Mama Dube was amongst the first. Her house appears small from the front, but inside, it stretches back, allowing her to fit in her furniture and still have enough space for her six children. Most of the shacks are small. From underneath her home, I imagine the sound is present in other homes too, there is the recurrent rumble of the train as it passes by.

Kids-playing-in-new-toilets(1).jpg

Photo: Children playing in the new toilets. (Dudumalingani Mqomboti)

Part of the problem of service delivery for Messiah, beyond the complacency of local government, is the fighting between the Ward 33 councilors, Nico Mzalisi of the ANC and Nqu Mesuli of the DA. The community even started a committee with the sole mandate to demand the two councillors work together. It has not yielded much.

Despite this, Messiah is not a place of abject misery; men hang about drinking their beer, kids play soccer, women share jokes at the queue for water. People seem to know each other. But this lightheartedness lasts only until the haunting sound of murderous trains drags people back to a harsher reality. DM

Main photo: Messiah, Kossovo. Photo by Dudumalingani Mqomboti.

Gallery

Please peer review 3 community comments before your comment can be posted

X

This article is free to read.

Sign up for free or sign in to continue reading.

Unlike our competitors, we don’t force you to pay to read the news but we do need your email address to make your experience better.


Nearly there! Create a password to finish signing up with us:

Please enter your password or get a sign in link if you’ve forgotten

Open Sesame! Thanks for signing up.

We would like our readers to start paying for Daily Maverick...

…but we are not going to force you to. Over 10 million users come to us each month for the news. We have not put it behind a paywall because the truth should not be a luxury.

Instead we ask our readers who can afford to contribute, even a small amount each month, to do so.

If you appreciate it and want to see us keep going then please consider contributing whatever you can.

Support Daily Maverick→
Payment options

Become a Maverick Insider

This could have been a paywall

On another site this would have been a paywall. Maverick Insider keeps our content free for all.

Become an Insider

Every seed of hope will one day sprout.

South African citizens throughout the country are standing up for our human rights. Stay informed, connected and inspired by our weekly FREE Maverick Citizen newsletter.