‘The dream of living in my own house kept me going’

UNDER the peaceful pose of a special statue of St Christopher, Lesar Rule can now sleep in her own house for the first time.

At 40, Lesar has lived in 22 different places and said she can only count the first nine years of her life as being happy.

She was one of the first people to invade the gangster hang-out known as the Field and establish the Freedom Park township in 1998.

With other elected community leaders she fought for six years to get communal water taps or sanitation and until yesterday lived in an immaculately kept shack with her disabled mother.

Now she sees a new start in a home built by Irish volunteers who she said have given her the opportunity to be content for the first time since primary school.

“It was just always a dream that kept me going, that one day I would live in my own house and now it is happening I am so happy.

“I am looking forward to cleaning it and making it nice,” she said.

Lesar’s right hand was paralysed in an accident and she had to give up her job in a book factory.

She volunteers all her time as a community leader fighting legal battles with the Cape Town City Council.

Both she and her mother share a disability cheque worth €80 a month and it is never enough to go around.

She was never going to be able to afford to buy her own house.

While there is still a short snag list to be cleared after the Light Blue team finished on the site she said her new life has already started.