Somerset: The Ugly Face Of Poverty

EDWARD BULE
Correspondent | Friday April 9, 2010 00:00

 

Unemployment, underemployment, lack of access to land, lack of skills and old age, among other things has been blamed for this acute poverty. The informal sector has however served as a useful alternative to unemployment. Informal sector activities in Somerset include the sale of vegetables, airtime, firewood, alcohol, fat cakes, cooked animal hooves, heads, bones and intestines.

Takatso Dube has been living off the sale of fat cakes since she lost her job a year ago. Although she contends that the profit is quite minimal, 'doing it is better than nothing.' Clearly, most of the economic activities in Somerset are only for survival and not for profit.  While several residential plots in Somerset are used as workshops for motor vehicle repairs, there are others like Dingongorego Tshedu who makes a living by renting out rooms to tenants. She confesses that she faces challenges in trying to reconcile the interests of the desperate tenants in instances where for example, one tenant likes loud music while the other prefers a low volume. This, she says, can cause unnecessary tension in the household.

Kedibonye John from Nshakazhogwe, who settled in Somerset in 1962 cooks and sells pap, samp, meat and fat cakes from her home. Seventy-four-year-old Petrus Makwaeba has a nursery at his residence where he sells all sorts of fruit and shade trees.

Thalefang Nteletja, originally from Mapoka where she was born 78 years ago runs a kiosk at home and rents out a few rooms. She is further sustained by the tandabala she gets from government. She used to run a shebeen selling home-brewed traditional beer. Traditional doctors also constitute an important segment of the informal sector in Somerset. One activity, important in these circles is motshelo, a credit facility where a group of people contribute an agreed amount of money to a common fund which is then loaned to customers with interest. At the end of the year, the profit is shared among group members.

Accommodation is a major problem in the densely populated township of Somerset. It is common to find as many as 10 or more people sharing the same compound and using the same pit-latrine. Ramshackle houses are being replaced by more solid or modern houses at an admirable rate but Somerset continues to be defined by dilapidated and unsanitary houses some of which are offered to tenants for accommodation.

Houses with rocks, bricks, car parts other heavy items to support the iron sheets from being displaced by the wind are a common sight in Somerset. Nor is the tenant-landlord relationship always stable, a situation that presents a major sense of insecurity to the tenant.

Conflicts between landlords and their tenants leading sometimes to the eviction of the tenant are caused by a myriad of factors such as the landlord or landlady accusing the tenant of flirting with either their spouse or their daughters.

Somerset, like many townships in Africa, is a product of poverty, poor planning and the failure of the economy to halt the rural-urban drift. One wonders then if shantytowns, with the attendant squalor, high population density, filth, high crime levels and skyrocketing unemployment an inevitable bye-product of urbanisation?