Days of limited mobility came to an end for Samuel Mashele of Diepsloot after he was allocated a house in Riverside View Mega City in the north of Johannesburg.
 
Mashele and his wife Lita Mashele applied for an RDP house in 1996 after arriving in Diepsloot.
 
“The roads are nicer here, I will be able to go out and visit neighbours without worrying about my wheelchair being stuck. My new home is also quiet, I will be able to read a book,” he said. 
 
Lita said that they were thankful that the Department took into consideration her husband’s disability when constructing the houses.
 
“They called and asked us about the size of the wheelchair before we could move into the house,” she said.
 
She added that she was happy that she would no longer have challenges such as fetching water from far.
 
Another beneficiary Anna Sithole, 55, said that she had been moved three times because her shack was on the river bank and she had lost many of her possessions.
 
“Most of my belongings have been destroyed. The house symbolises a new start for me. I will be able to buy furniture for my new home knowing that it will not be damaged again,” she said.
 
Sithole encouraged people who have also been waiting for houses to have faith in the Government.
 
MEC for Human Settlements and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Uhuru Moiloa said that allocation of houses to people living with disabilities and the elderly was in line with the Department’s commitment to prioritise the elderly who applied in 1996, people living with disabilities and child-headed households.
 
“The Riverside View Mega City, is also a true example of densification by building RDP flats. In the RDP flats, we allocate the elderly and people living with disabilities on the ground floor and child-headed households and other people are allocated the upper floors,” he said.
 
Moiloa said that sectional build-ups have allowed the Department to build more in a limited piece of land which means that we are trying to densify to ensure that increasing the absorption rate of land which is increasingly becoming a scares commodity  in the urban areas. 

The Gauteng Department of Human Settlements is creating new (post-apartheid) towns and transforming current cities and towns in Gauteng by moving towards efficiency, inclusion and sustainability.