Wheelchair-bound Sibongile Moyo sometimes slips and falls while attempting to relieve herself in a bucket.

Even pushing herself to the outside pit toilet is a task.

"I would fall to the ground and the contents of the bucket would cover my pyjamas. I get so embarrassed at times that I would try to stand up and get back onto my wheelchair to avoid the embarrassment of my children seeing me all wet with urine," Moyo said.

Moyo lives in a single-room shack with her two daughters and grandchild in transit area in Barcelona township, East Rand.

Their shack is so small that their two single-beds have taken up most of the space, leaving them with a tiny space to use for cooking.

Like many in her community, Moyo's efforts to get an RDP house seem to have come to a dead-end since she applied for one in 2004.

"I've been to municipal offices several times and it's not easy to get there when you are on a wheelchair," said Moyo, who has been wheelchair-bound since the 1990s after being in a car accident.

The Moyos are among about 1400 families that Ekurhuleni municipality relocated to the area four years ago with a promise of building them RDP homes.

There is hardly any development in transit area - there are gravel roads and no electricity.

People use pit toilets and communal taps.

According to the Housing Development Agency's Informal Settlements in Gauteng report of 2013, Ekurhuleni had 119 informal settlements with 162982 shacks in 2012.

The issue of housing and land drove more than 200 people from Barcelona and surrounding areas to illegally occupy a piece of municipal land at the weekend.

The land-grab protest was triggered by people who complained about lack of housing, and irregular allocation of plots.

The Red Ants clashed with community members, mostly EFF supporters, who had erected about 50 shacks on unused municipal land in the area on Sunday.

The community later removed the incomplete structures after the local ward councillor accepted a suggestion for a community meeting to be held this week.

Ekurhuleni municipality spokesman Themba Gadebe told Sowetan that they were in the process of formalising Barcelona into Etwatwa's Extension 34 where 4226 plots were identified.

The 4226 houses were expected to be completed by the end of the 2016-2017 financial year. He said 1500 homes had been completed.

Gadebe said the 2012 relocations were a part of the process.

"The community rejected the smaller stands of 126m² which resulted in an overflow and shortage of almost 807 stands," he said.

The transit area could not be fully serviced as it was a temporary measure, Gadebe added. "The intention was to house all families in the overflow area from Barcelona with an aim to look at other tenure options in the area in order to address the non-qualifiers and overflow. Given the housing backlog in the area, the municipality is in the process of acquiring strategically located land portions in order to address the backlog."

sifilel@sowetan.co.za