Good evening my name is Gerda, I am writing you this evening from Klawer in the Western Cape, I live on Windhoek Street 7 in Klawer and Windhoek Street 4 is also our property that we pay tax on to our local municipality, Vredendal matzikama that Executive Mayor Johann van der Hoven runs, Klawer also falls under this municipality.
Now I am writing you again, I have written you before because of the same thing, We visited the Vredendal municipality offices on multiple occasions to complain about the same thing and it has been over 15 years that Riemvasmaak the informal and illegal squatters got approval from the Vredendal municipality to come and put up a house for themselves on a piece of concrete that's been laid for them by the municipality against our will the residents that now currently live right next to this squatter camp, as you will see in the photos I will attached to this mail .
Every night fires are made right next to our properties, with anything they can find, on multiple occasions, there have been shacks that burned down and the police and fire department had to come and kill these fires where residents of Riemvasmaak also died allegedly.

My property is 5 steps from Riemvasmaak currently and we have to pay tax on our properties, while these residents pay nothing and they live right behind me, on a previous occasion the Department of Health visited our home and had a look at how close this squatter camp is to our homes, we were told it is illegal for them to be this close and there should be a buffer zone between them and us but after they left, we never heard from the department of health again.
It is not healthy for us or even the people in the squatter camp to live like this, 2 years ago my dad passed away from pneumonia in his lungs, and somewhat I do want to blame this squatter camp for it , they use anything they can find to make fires with plastic , waste anything sometimes its so bad we cant breathe and have to close all the windows and doors in our house.

Now under my understanding, we pay property tax to the municipality to live here, we pay for the removal of our waste but the waste as you can see in the photo is everywhere right behind our walls, its not healthy for anyone, so what are we actually paying for? and why must we pay taxes if the people living 5 steps from me pay nothing?

The Vredendal Matzikama municipality only pulls up their shoulders when we ask them about when these people will be moved away here, the klawer police station blames the municipality and the municipality blames each other and the squatter camp flourishes and gets new residents daily, as I am typing this email they are busy adding a new home I can hear them constructing it.

When we visited Vredendal municipality we sat down with Mr. Soles at that time the financial director and he told us that if we heard the construction of new shacks we should phone law enforcement, now the police station gave me 3 cellphone numbers of the law enforcement and they are all not available when you call, the police station was also not available tonight when I called at 10 past 5 in the evening and their excuses are normally something like ''we were handing over shifts'', or some stupid story because like I say the police and the municipality can only make up excuses around here and the problem continues in the background because nobody wants to take accountability for riemvasmaak and everything that's going on here, and we as their tax paying next door neighbors must suffer.

In the summer and in the winter our properties are wet, so wet that the wetness pulls up through the floor and you can see it on our carpets, 2 aunties on the next road, their gardens have standing water in them, and we phoned the municipality about it and was told it must be the wastewater from Riemvasmaak, that is running from there underneath our properties and we find it in our gardens, now I don't have eyes to see what my homes foundation looks like by now, but I am a single lady who works for a basic salary what do I do if my homes foundation cracks? where do I go? Will Matzikama municipality give me another house where I can take my family and go live?

If our homes burn down or are damaged because of this squatter camp right next to our homes what must we do? who is going to help us?
We drew up a petition and said we do not want them here, the municipality has enough land around Klawer to place these people, but we were ignored like we are being ignored to this day because the '' burgermeester'' and the director of Matzikama lives in nice homes in great areas not right next to a squatter camp.

In the summer the flies terrorize us because these people in Riemvasmaak do not use toilets, they use our back walls, or anywhere in the open field next to their homes and ours to do what they need to do,
In the photos I uploaded you will see the rubbish everywhere and this photo wa taken from my backyard, you will also see in the picture