HEADLINES:
R/€ Forced to live in hole in the ground
June 15, 2006 Edition 1
Murray Williams
In the middle of the beauty of the Cape winelands, a De Doorns grandmother has been living in a septic tank for three years. Marieka Wiese, 58, is just one of the millions in the Western Cape who yearn for a proper home.
And although the Breede River municipality recently became aware of her rodent-like existence, and provided her with a 2mx2m corrugated iron shack, it has not been erected on a proper site yet and so she remains in her hole. She has no income and survives on hand-outs from her daughters in the town.
Wiese was born in Cradock in the Eastern Cape, and moved to De Doorns with her late husband.
He worked for the local council, which gave him and his young family of six children a decent council house.
But as the first of his children hit their late teens, 20 years ago or so, he was sacked. The family returned home to find their possessions dumped outside.
When he died, she said, she had been promised a pension of sorts. But she hd received nothing.
Her children grew into adulthood, married and began lives of their own. Wiese has been left to fend for herself.
What about her children - could they not provide a home for her? "They are full," she said quietly.
So in late 2003, or thereabouts, she found herself a shelter - a bricked-up hole in the ground, the old septic tank behind a council house. It measures, perhaps, 1.5m by 2.5m, a metre-deep coffin in the ground.
She found planks to barricade the entrance at night and moved in.
She had little to move - a patch of old mattress, an old blanket or two, a pot, a cup.
This week, we found her waiting to meet her daughter in the town, hoping to collect "'n bietjie koffie, suiker en 'n kers (a little coffee, some sugar and a candle)".
She cooks her meagre rations outside on a fire, almost always by herself.
When it rains, she asks those in the house next door if she can come inside.
But back in her gat (hole), she lies freezing, sodden by the leaky roof. She has piled soil on top, but it has not helped much.
It is worse when it has snowed on the Matroosberge, delighting tourists, but sending an icy chill on the north-westerly wind down into the valley below.
She and the residents of the council houses in the area collect water by five-litre plastic bottle from a tank up on the hill, fed by a borehole.
Wiese gave up work as a grape sorter because of her health. She suffers from asthma and high blood pressure, which sometimes causes her to faint. A wound at her left temple is from a fall.
Aware of her plight, city manager Allan Paulse ordered that a hut be immediately sent to her, along with additional materials like corrugated iron for more rooms.
They have promised poles for structure, nails and cement, but these have not arrived yet.
And Wiese is not sure if she will even be able to find anyone to help her build a new life for herself.
Outside a shop in the town, she waited this week to meet one of her daughters, Anna Weymers.
She stood surrounded by vagrants, people she described as dronkies (drunkards). She said she did not touch the five-litre plastic containers of wine that they bought for R40.
She cried when gently questioned about how she coped; tears not from self-pity but the patent hardship of her brutal life.
She was still hoping for that money she had been promised, Wiese said.
As she turned to begin her walk home, up the hill and over the N1 highway, she shielded herself from sheets of icy rain that swept across the valley.
murrayw@incape.co.za
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