Homes welcome in poor township

For 10 years, Lesar Rule has lived in a shack in a township outside Cape Town, with no sanitation, no running water, a leaking roof and the fear of intruders.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern yesterday gave her the keys to the two-bedroom house that will be the new home for her and her mother, who is in a wheelchair following several strokes. The house is one of 5,000 built by the Niall Mellon Township Project over the last six years, many of them by Irish volunteers.

"It wasn't nice living in a shack. What will be the first thing I enjoy? Sleeping and feeling safe! Before we always  slept with one eye open," she told The Irish Timesyesterday.

This November, Mellon is determined to bring 2,008 volunteer builders, craftspeople and helpers from Ireland to Freedom Park to build hundreds more homes. "We are chartering seven Airbuses to bring everyone here," said Mellon, who already has 400 people signed up, including some Irish-Americans and African-Americans.

Last year, 1,370 volunteers "from Derry to Dingle, from Lurgan to Listowel" came and built 203 houses in the course of one week. "Irish volunteers are the absolute key. Without them, we could not build all the year round. Last year, they housed 1,500 people - 1,100 of them children - and left money to house more."

Building is also taking place now, even when the Irish are not present. This year, the trust's South African workers will erect nearly 7,000 houses.

"We are building one in five of all houses in Cape Town now," said Mellon, who now spends nearly all of his time working on the charity.

The houses in Freedom Park are an oasis in a township riddled with drugs wars, where the lives of thousands have been destroyed by crystal meth, known locally as tik.

Many of the locals stay working with the trust for six months or a year before moving on to better-paying jobs on World Cup building sites and elsewhere.

"Most of them would never have worked anywhere. We are helping to give them skills. But we can't pay them more than we do because we run a tight ship, but they can move on to better things," he said.

Though the trust has now extended its operations to Johannesburg, the need in Cape Town is still vast: 460,000 families are on waiting lists in and around the city alone.

Impressed by the charity's work to date, the South African government now contributes €4,000 towards every house, and the subsidy is "going up every year".

The Taoiseach's decision to sanction a €5 million contribution marks a significant change in official attitudes in Dublin to Mellon's work.

Up to now, Irish Aid - not convinced about the sustainability of a charity dependent entirely on volunteers - has made just one contribution of €250,000, and that came four years ago.

Diplomatically, Mellon yesterday concentrated on the future and not on the past: "We have lobbied hard for 18 months. International donors don't support shelter for the poor. Instead, they focus on Aids, health, famine relief, and I understand that. But how can you expect a child to study when their shack blows away in the rain and when they are cold at night?"

Hoping now for "a strategic relationship" with Irish Aid, Mellon said the volunteers who have come for six years are "deeply rooted in a culture of giving and in respect for what Irish missionaries did".

In a country blessed with great wealth, as well as the cruellest of poverty and degradation, the early signs of local philanthropy are now appearing in South Africa.

"Businesses here have just been trying to stay in business and get used to the new set-up, but over the last months this has been changing.

"Companies here are now beginning to realise that they have corporate and social responsibilities," said Mellon, a multimillionaire.

Six years on, however, he believes it is time to change the name of the organisation from the Niall Mellon Township Trust: "I never wanted this to be about me. Tell me if you have any ideas."