Forgotten and frail: How SA government neglect fails our elderly

Indignity has become a natural way of life for an elderly man who has been waiting for an RDP house for almost 30 years.
Time after time, Vincent Thomson in Chicken Farm, Soweto, watched his neighbours allocated RDP houses nearby, but somehow, although he has also been on the waiting list since 1996 and again confirmed in 2009, he has been repeatedly skipped for allocation.
“I suspect the house with my name on it was sold to someone who didn’t qualify to get a house. City officials sell land and shacks here in Chicken Farm, and today they are even scared to set foot here because they double sold shacks to people,” he said.
The now frail Thomson describes his long wait as the result of “corruption by City of Johannesburg housing officials” and “a general negligent government”.
For many years Thomson watched provincial and City officials setup fancy government events right on his doorstep in Chicken Farm, but none where moved by his living condition in a dilapidated one room structure with no electricity, running water, a roof – let alone a toilet.
“They would all come in a crowd and peep at my living situation, make promises to find me a home urgently, but then that would be the last I hear from them. Worse, the Joburg Ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission have been to my place, but they too have proven unhelpful” he said.

Thomson also currently lives in fear as he has become a target for nyaope drug addicts who steal the little that he has.
“They have setup next to my room a place where they take drugs freely – you can see injections everywhere… The last time they stole my pots with food inside while I was cooking outside on a prama stove. They even took the stove, and this was not the first time. They have also stolen my clothes,” he said.
Asked how he survives the cold and living without ablution facilities, Thomson pulled off a small mat over a tiny bucket with some used shredded newspapers in it.
“This is my toilet. I empty it now and again in the nearby field. It is not easy living here. There is a lot of dust inside the room, the rain freely flows inside and there is frequent flooding around the place which traps me inside sometimes,” Thomson said.
“After all the unfulfilled promises, I am running out of hope that I will ever get help from the current government. I had hoped that I would have a home before my last days, but things are really bad. I am currently on medication for bronchitis and desperate for a proper home, but what can I do,” he said.