Refurbishment set to begin at old Steve Biko building
Eastern Cape MEC for Human Settlements, Ms Helen Sauls- August will preside over a ceremony to handover the Old Sanlam building site to a contractor who will commence with refurbishing the building into a thriving social housing project. On completion, the building will have 220 social housing units.
The ceremony will be attended by the former detainees, families and relatives of those who died in the building during apartheid years. The old Sanlam building was used by apartheid state security to torture freedom fighters among them being the late Steve Biko, Simphiwe Mthimkhulu, Lungile Tabalaza, George Botha and many others. The MEC announced last year that the department would convert the notorious erstwhile Apartheid State Security Branch offices in Nelson Mandela Metro into a thriving social and rental housing project.
The site handover ceremony will be preceded by the cleansing and blessing ceremony of the building to afford healing and closure to the former detainees who were tortured in the building.
The media is invited to capture the activities to be held as follows:
1. Cleansing and Blessing Ceremony of the Building
Date: 18 May 2017
Time: 09h00-12H00
2. Site handover and sod turning
Date: 19 May 2017
Venue: Old Sanlam Building Corner of Strand Street and Rodney Street (Port Elizabeth)
Time: 09H00
Enquiries:
Lwandile Sicwetsha (Mr)
Director: Corporate Communications
Tel: 043 711 9679
E-mail:lwandiles@ecdhs.gov.za
