Gloria Vena has given up swatting the flies gathering around her face. Her eyes seem empty and distant as she stares out the front door of her house, the back of her neighbour'€™s rickety shack a few steps away from her makeshift front door.

Thulani Shezi's New Germany Road settlement is one of about 500 shacklands in the eThekwini metro, and it only had a few portable toilets and a distant tap before the ablution block was built two years ago.

Residents in Diepsloot and Orange Farm struggle to get basic services such as clean water and sanitation.