Everybody wants to own a house. This is a fact. Period. Even squatters do. Yes, they do. That is why they go out of their way to look for any vacant piece of land and erect a house of their own.
It may be a plastic or tin shack, a pole-and-dagga hut or even a brick house. People call it whatever they want, but to the owners, it is a house. The only problem is that their stay will be illegal.
Too often one hears some people, especially bachelors, boasting, foolishly I must say, that they don’t need a house because they have no wife or kids. So what do they need it for? They are comfortable with renting a place.
The simple truth is, they need, and want, a house. Otherwise they would not bother to rent one, an expensive one for that matter. After all, who knows who is buying or renting a house unless the occupier tells you.
Some people simply say they do not need or want a house merely because, deep down, they believe they can never own one, even if they wish to.
Such people, as far as I am concerned, are cowards. They are afraid to face the truth and the challenge of life. They give up easily, without even trying.
I am not saying it is easy to get a house. No. If it was, we would not have hundreds of thousands of people on the housing waiting list.
The problem is money. One needs money to buy a house and money is hard to come by.
But there is a saying that: Where there is a will, there is a way. I believe this is true because there are some people who have money but do not have houses. They have posh cars, expensive furniture, dress expensively but never think of buying a house.
The days when one could boast that one did not need a house in the urban area because one had a communal home where one would retire to, are gone and never to come back.
This kind of retrogressive thinking cost our parents and friends dearly because they lost out on cheap housing. Now they cannot afford those houses which they were offered years ago for peanuts.
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