Arson feared in Langa fire devastation

May 25 2000

By Yunus Kemp and Eugene Tong, Cape Argus (Cape Town, South Africa)

Gladwell Mapisa stands forlorn among the charred remains of the home he once shared with his wife Nolwando and their five-month-old baby boy Asivile, who died in the blaze.

All around him little children sift through blackened remnants in the hope of retrieving something from the fire that razed eight shacks in Zone 25 of the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa, Cape Town, on Friday morning.

Neighbours and other residents who gathered at the scene stood silently sombre, all eyes fixed on the destruction by which they could so easily have been affected.

Thirty-two shack fires, including the incident on Friday, have been reported in the settlement since the beginning of the year, said Epping fire control room officer Clarence Sinkfontein.

There have been six deaths, including those of Mapisa and her son.

The community fears an arsonist is operating in the area.

In January, three fires within a week of each other destroyed 165 shacks, left two people dead and hundreds more homeless.

In April, 150 shacks were destroyed, some of which had been rebuilt after other blazes, and again scores of people were left homeless and had to rebuild.

And last week, two Angolan brothers, Mario and Nguije Inacio, burned to death after their shack was set alight in what was believed to be a xenophobic attack.

Mapisa was still at work when the fire, which broke out at about 5.30am on Friday, trapped his wife and baby son inside, and sent them to a fiery death.

No one else was hurt in the incident.

Eleven firefighters from the Epping Fire Station responded to the call at 5.52am and arrived on the scene seven minutes later. They extinguished the fire within an hour.

Although the police have not established the cause of the fire, residents believe that it was the work of an arsonist after a neighbour of the Mapisas, Nonkululeko Jacobs, saw a man running from the scene seconds after the fire started.

"I was woken up by footsteps and looked through my window and saw the fire. I then saw a man at the Mapisas' home and opened my front door and shouted at him, 'What are you doing, why are you lighting the fire?'

"The man just ran away and disappeared," said Jacobs.

She then shouted for people to wake up. "Everyone except the woman and the baby got out. We could hear them screaming and tried to put water on the flames, but the fire was too strong and spread quickly," said Ms Jacobs.

She ruled out the possibility of the fire being started by a candle or a paraffin lamp as the Mapisas used neither because they had electricity.

Mapisa, still distraught from the loss of his family, could only say: "Both of them destroyed in the fire, both of them destroyed in the fire."

For the others affected, the rebuilding process will start almost immediately as they fear losing their small plots to other people.

Nosipho Tuba and her family rummaged through debris for salvageable pottery, spoons and glass plates.

Her house used to stand next to the Mapisa home.

Tuba was awakened by Jacobs' shouting. Seeing her quarters burning, she put on some "light clothes" and woke her 11-year-old son and 19-year-old brother, telling them to escape.

All she managed to save before the house collapsed was a suitcase packed with personal belongings.

The informal settlement sprang up in the early '90s, when people invaded the open land on the corners of Vanguard Drive and Washington Street. It has since mushroomed and today stretches from the Langa Comprehensive School all the way to the Langa exit on the N2.

People still share communal taps and the night bucket system is in use, testimony to the area's sub-economic status and an example of the rudimentary lifestyle of its inhabitants.

Greg Pillay of the Cape Town City Council's disaster management office, said the number of fires in the Joe Slovo settlement was definitely a worry.

Long-term plans by his department to combat the problem included the installation of "panic poles", six of which had been installed in Langa.

The poles have a button which, when depressed, connects the user to the Cape Metropolitan Council's control centre via a two-way radio system, from where rescue personnel can be dispatched to deal with the reported emergency.

Pillay said firefighting was a problem in the informal settlements as there were no water points. There was insufficient space between homes for firebreaks and fire engines had difficulty in navigating the narrow roads.