Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement
Friday, 4th July, 2008

Delft-Symphony — On Wednesday, July 2nd at the Bellville Magistrates Court courtroom E, two members of the Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign, Jerome Daniels and Ridwaan Isaacs, were each sentenced twelve months in prison - simply for being community leaders at Delft-Symphony Way settlement. Both maintained their innocence on charges of malicious destruction of property brought by Elmory Isaacs, a former resident of the same settlement, who presented no evidence beyond her own testimony.

During a two hour trial in which the activities of the Anti-Eviction Campaign featured prominently, Ms Isaacs testified that these two community leaders had threatened her with knives of and slashed her tent. Under cross examination, Ms Isaacs conceded that all the evicted occupants of the Delft Symphony N2 Gateway homes had begun their pavement encampment by agreeing as a group to remove any resident who threatened or attacked another. Moreover, she also acknowledged that on the evening in question an individual she had allowed to live in her tent unsupervised had violently threatened another community member. However, she became agitated when asked questions about whether these threats violated this agreement, shouting “this is not about Johnny. This is about my tent, my property.” Without presenting any evidence or calling any other witnesses, the prosecution rested its case.

During his testimony, Mr. Daniels, explained that he had verbally intervened to prevent the occupant of Ms Isaac’s tent from making good on his threats. But when residents of Symphony Way learned of what had occurred, the community decided to remove this person from the settlement to prevent any future violence from occurring. He insisted that rather than taking part in taking down her tent, he had sought to prevent residents from taking such drastic action.

For his part, Ridwaan Isaacs testified that he had not been in that part of the Symphony Way section when community members dismantled Ms Isaac’s tent. It was only later that night that he learned of what had occurred. Another resident of the Symphony Way settlement, Mrs. Evelyn Mokoena, corroborated the testimony of both Mr Isaacs and Mr Daniels. She stated that dozens of community members took the decision to dismantle the tent and took action over the objections of Mr Daniels. Mr Isaacs, she insisted, was not there.

During the course of this testimony, Magistrate Van Graan from Court E, repeatedly interrupted the defence and prosecution attorneys to question defendants about their involvement in the Anti-Eviction Campaign. When Mrs Evelyn Mokoena responded that it was the community that was responsible for making the decision to dismantle the tent, he interjected, “I can’t understand under what circumstances does the community take a decision?” When Mrs Mokoena explained that in the informal settlement the community is responsible for making its own decisions, Magistrate Van Graan responded, “Is this what is happening in this country? Is this thing justifiable?”

In closing, the defendants’ attorney reiterated that the preceding testimony had proven that neither defendant had touched Ms Daniel’s property, with each witness corroborating the other. After a five minute recess, Magistrate Van Graan delivered a guilty verdict, quoting case law that justified his dismissal of the defence’s testimony and only accepting that of Ms Isaacs. He explained that while he could not sentence the community, some one had to take responsibility for this offence. In response, the defence attorney recommended a warning, noting that both defendants had children and were currently volunteered their time supporting the residents of Symphony Way. The prosecutor, in response suggested a fine but did not suggest any jail-time for the defendants. However Magistrate Van Graan imposed a twelve month sentence at Goodwood Prison, with a possibility of a six month suspension for good behaviour. While he acknowledged that this charge was not as serious as a murder or rape conviction, he argued that he needed to hold the defendants responsible and teach the Anti-Eviction Campaign a lesson.

Upon hearing of this verdict, the residents of Symphony Way condemned it as unjust and called upon all struggling communities to support them in their effort in seeking the release of Mr. Daniels and Mr. Isaacs before the end of the month. “There are murderers and rapist walking around,” asked Mrs Mokoena. “Why aren’t they locking them up for twelve months?” Symphony Way resident Francis Jantjies objected to the verdict: “it seems like the justice system in South Africa is not right. Who did the investigation in this case? How are these two being sent to prison for something that the community did?”

Residents of the AEC settlement in Symphony Way believe that Mr Isaacs and Mr. Daniels are political prisoners who are being convicted of something they did not do merely because they are dedicated activists fighting for better lives for their families and community

The Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign is now seeking to raise R7 000 towards an appeal of these convictions. They are also accepting donations to go to the families of Mr. Daniels and Isaacs. The prisoners also desperately need money to by necessities in the prison: socks, underwear, deodorant, razors, telkom cards, etc.

Individuals, communities, and social movements that would like to assist in their fundraising efforts, in showing solidarity towards the defendants and their families, and/or help with future actions, should contact Auntie Jane at 078-403-1302 and Ashraf at 076-186-1408.

For information on how to donate, please visit:

http://antieviction.org.za/donations/

Ridwaan Isaacs with his wife outside their home

Jerome Daniels doing his dishes

Mavuso Dingani

The intensity of the xenophobic attacks in Gauteng has taken the government, media, political analysts, and all the included in the new South Africa by surprise.

As pictures of bloodied men and women, burnt shacks and the atoms of destruction scattered on empty streets were first beamed into suburban living rooms I could just imagine the moral indignation in all those homes.

‘How could this happen here? Who is responsible? Surely it must criminal elements. And of course the underlying message - Not here in South Africa…Africa maybe with its Hutsi and Tus-whatever, in Kenya, or ‘mughabhe’s’ Zim….but not a stone’s throw away from paved Sandton! Whatever shall we say when we are next in London?’

The following morning on SAFM radio, which broadcasts in English and thus with a listenership that is all but the majority of the excluded, caller after caller poured scorn on the crowds in Alexandra with calls for the police to arrest these criminals and trouble-makers inciting our otherwise decent folks. It wasn’t left to the imagination that these uneducated marauding bands of criminals must be dealt with firmly.

I agreed with them.

Surely, it must be criminal elements, I concluded. It couldn’t possibly be ordinary South Africans whom I have grown to love and respect in all their imperfect diversity.

But as the days passed and the attacks on foreigners spread, my views changed. So did the thinking of the majority of callers on SAFM. Moral outrage turned to analysis of poverty and the frustrations of the poor. The killing, looting and raping continued nonetheless. By the end of the week, all that talk of poverty and marginalisation was still present, and moral outrage too, but strains of prejudice, and ‘these foreigners bring this and do that’ began to creep into the callers’ contributions. And then it finally dawned on me that this damnable disease, xenophobia, infected the middle classes too.

It got me thinking. Hatred and prejudice is one thing, but it is quite another thing to loot rape and kill because of it, triggered or otherwise. I know the first because as a Zimbabwean I have experienced it regularly myself. But the leap from xenophobia to the annihilation of the object is huge, or is it? Or rather, is it not an intimate affair? Does not one have live with them to know them? Then despise them; hate them enough to go to their homes, break down their doors, and rape the women. Does not one have to be close enough to stab, not once but a few times of course - just to make sure - then finally burn down their houses? That seems fairly close to me.

But I am beggaring the question and to answer I will start by being just as close to home as the attackers. So I will tell my story. I am Zimbabwean and my country has gone to the dogs, and even that description slanders dogs. It’s a country held captive by a gang of scoundrels flying high the flag of Pan-Africanism, nationalism, whilst its people go hungry. Our diet has always been of Chimurengas that never end. So we have subsisted on the glorious fight against ever diminishing ‘white farmers’, and a distant yet powerful Britain. Fear not we are told, our Moses, Mugabe, who will live forever shall lead us to our promised land. Meanwhile, those who disagree are labelled as traitors; beating and killing them is a patriotic duty. But they do not beat everyone who disagrees, the rest just suffer from hyperinflation, poverty etc.

The other alternative besides starvation left for some of us is the go south and work in the streets of eGoli selling cigarettes, mending shoes, or as gardeners, maids and busboys. It’s true, we are a strain on the resources, so are content to be at the periphery of South African economic activity. In fact, we are in the informal economy, doing those jobs that many South Africans would not do because they are ill paid and insecure. But why not go home and change your own country you ask? It’s a legitimate question and requires a short answer - we should. In fact, why should there be refugees at all in the world?

It would lazy to blame everything on the Zimbabwean crisis and end there. Xenophobia then? No! It’s too empty a term that says much and explains little. So the imperative is to follow and analyse the trajectory of thoughts that many pundits on TV and Talk radio have used to explain the pogroms.

The first rationale used to explain the xenophobic outburst was to be blame it all on criminal elements. It had to be criminals and marauding gang of natives roaming the streets and butchering anyone who looked ‘other’ African. Of course, the underlying message being that ‘ordinary’ South Africans, law-abiding citizens of the Rainbow nation could not possibly be involved. The reasons behind that train of thought was maybe shock, and shame (the sort that says ‘it can’t be happening here. What will the world say, that we are just another African country?). Clearly, South African society is violent and everyone agrees that crime is one the most important challenges aside from poverty facing this country. Furthermore, does it really need to be pointed out that killing of innocent civilians, raping and looting are criminal acts whether xenophobic or not. So that rationale says a lot, and again explains nothing.

The second rationale was rather interesting because it blamed the pogroms on some sinister ‘Third Force’. Many independent political analysts quickly dismissed it as some bogus conspiracy theories that government always uses when violent protest erupt in the townships. If one recalls recent history of post apartheid protests around service delivery in places like Bethlehem, Soweto and even Khutsong, government officials quickly dismissed justified protests as being instigated by a ‘Third Force’ (sometimes it was the Ultra Left). This force is a throwback to the early 90’s when rogue elements in the apartheid security apparatus trained, funded and armed various groups to kill ANC activists in the hope of destabilising the democratic transition. This rationale was given credence when hundreds of men welding guns, machetes were seen toyi-toying in the streets of Jo’burg on TV. It seemed as if history was repeating itself. The scenes were reminiscent of that time when IFP’s ‘Impis’ (alleged to have been in cohorts with this Third Force) would terrorise townships hunting down ANC activists. As far I am concerned, whether such a force has resurrected is beside the point. In fact, I will contend its not even necessary to prove its non-existence because if there was such a force it still needed fertile soil to germinate and spread its poisonous fruit.

The most popular rationale for the xenophobic outburst runs like this; the South African economic fundamentals are under strain. Inflation is on the increase; expected growth of 6% has never materialised and thus done little to solve joblessness and poverty. Neither can the economy provide decent housing and even when housed constant adequate basic services are only available for those who can afford it. For example, unemployment rates in townships are at least above 30% and much higher among youth. RDP houses built by government has done little in solving the housing crisis meaning that informal settlements will continue to be urban eyesores for many years to come. As a result, the rationale goes, the poor suffer the most from all these ills above, but are also given the added burden of competing with African immigrants for the little resources that are already available. This stokes anger and frustration.

This is correct in many ways. Was it not the suspicion that ‘foreigners’ were benefiting from government subsidised RDP houses in Alexandra that triggered the mayhem on the 8th of May? When attacks spread they graduated to targeting foreign informal traders in Gauteng, Durban, Cape Town and elsewhere. Fruit and vegetable stalls, Phone shops, spaza shops were looted and even pitiful small tent-like barber stalls in the Durban market area were targeted.

I can understand people attacking, and destroying the cause of ones poverty, and unemployment. It natural that one should resent the parasitic bodies within society that only sucks away wealth that should rightly belong to the body as a whole. In fact, is it not an injunction on the poor to rise up against the cause of inequality and misery? What struck me is that that rightful anger of the poor was directed to other poor people albeit of a different nationality.

Therefore, also reducing the recent ‘xenophobic’ attacks to the ‘economic’ is suspect. Economic reductionism cannot explain why the ‘people’ did not go a step further and attack small white and Indian traders too. Why did the black South African informal small traders not attack big supermarket chains that invade their communities undercutting prices thus diminishing their market share?

Clearly arguments that rely exclusively on the economic theses while illuminating are insufficient on their own. An observer looking in from outside may simply dismiss the attacks as the excesses of nationalism because the vision of an all-embracing Rainbow Nation also presupposes the idea of the nation state. But of course, we know better, or should, that neither nationalism nor economic arguments are sufficient. Rather, my argument would be that as much as people want to consign apartheid and other colonialisms to some forgotten distant past, their spirits continue to haunt us in this present day.

Thus the xenophobic attacks we witnessed should be located within the co-ordinates of colonialism, racism, and the economic underdevelopment of black people. But I go further than just blaming the past, because the blame lies more firmly elsewhere, in the strategies used to overcoming that past. When the poor of the townships were promised heaven and earth after the democracy they have a right to expect nothing less. The unemployed young man in idling in the townships of Alexandra who sees the ostentatious wealth in gated Sandton owned by other people who look like him knows that there is enough for everyone. TV relentlessly shows us Black upwardly mobile people, BUPPIES, nor do newspapers tire of telling us of the fabulous wealth of the new Black bourgeoisie nor of the last multi-million Rand BEE deal. In other words, xenophobic violence should lie on the shoulders of the rapacious need for accumulation of the new black economic and political elite. The fruits of the democracy have not been spread evenly.

Thus, in their amnesia feathered by sweetened BEE deals and Affirmative Action and the ” I am the first black to do this and …so forth…” in their suburban condors…

…the working class of the towns, the masses of unemployed, the small artisans and craftsmen for their part line up behind this nationalist attitude; but in all justice let it be said, they only follow in the steps of their [black] bourgeoisie. If the national bourgeoisie goes into competition with the Europeans, the artisans and craftsmen start a fight against non-national Africans. In the Ivory Coast, the anti-Dahoman and anti-Voltaic troubles are in fact racial riots. The Dahoman and Voltaic peoples, who control the greater part of the petty trade, are, once independence is declared, the object of hostile manifestations on the part of the people of the Ivory Coast. From nationalism we have passed to ultra-nationalism, to chauvinism, and finally to racism. These foreigners are called to leave; their shops are burned, the street stall are wrecked… (The Wretched of the Earth).

It was in 1961 when Frantz Fanon wrote these words! This untidy BEE of the poor. of South Africa’s townships Prophetic words they might seem, but they were meant as warning to future generations not to fall into the same pitfalls. We did. But I hope the powers that shall right their mistakes.

I hope they do because for many immigrants like me the past is another country. We live in desperate longing for acceptance in the present, in the place where we live and have learnt to love. But as Salman Rushdie reminds immigrants in Imaginary Homelands, ‘it’s the present that is a foreign country and the past that is home’. I hope he’s wrong.

Mavuso Dingani

The intensity of the xenophobic attacks in Gauteng has taken the government, media, political analysts, and all the included in the new South Africa by surprise.

As pictures of bloodied men and women, burnt shacks and the atoms of destruction scattered on empty streets were first beamed into suburban living rooms I could just imagine the moral indignation in all those homes.

‘How could this happen here? Who is responsible? Surely it must criminal elements. And of course the underlying message - Not here in South Africa…Africa maybe with its Hutsi and Tus-whatever, in Kenya, or ‘mughabhe’s’ Zim….but not a stone’s throw away from paved Sandton! Whatever shall we say when we are next in London?’

The following morning on SAFM radio, which broadcasts in English and thus with a listenership that is all but the majority of the excluded, caller after caller poured scorn on the crowds in Alexandra with calls for the police to arrest these criminals and trouble-makers inciting our otherwise decent folks. It wasn’t left to the imagination that these uneducated marauding bands of criminals must be dealt with firmly.

I agreed with them.

Surely, it must be criminal elements, I concluded. It couldn’t possibly be ordinary South Africans whom I have grown to love and respect in all their imperfect diversity.

But as the days passed and the attacks on foreigners spread, my views changed. So did the thinking of the majority of callers on SAFM. Moral outrage turned to analysis of poverty and the frustrations of the poor. The killing, looting and raping continued nonetheless. By the end of the week, all that talk of poverty and marginalisation was still present, and moral outrage too, but strains of prejudice, and ‘these foreigners bring this and do that’ began to creep into the callers’ contributions. And then it finally dawned on me that this damnable disease, xenophobia, infected the middle classes too.

It got me thinking. Hatred and prejudice is one thing, but it is quite another thing to loot rape and kill because of it, triggered or otherwise. I know the first because as a Zimbabwean I have experienced it regularly myself. But the leap from xenophobia to the annihilation of the object is huge, or is it? Or rather, is it not an intimate affair? Does not one have live with them to know them? Then despise them; hate them enough to go to their homes, break down their doors, and rape the women. Does not one have to be close enough to stab, not once but a few times of course - just to make sure - then finally burn down their houses? That seems fairly close to me.

But I am beggaring the question and to answer I will start by being just as close to home as the attackers. So I will tell my story. I am Zimbabwean and my country has gone to the dogs, and even that description slanders dogs. It’s a country held captive by a gang of scoundrels flying high the flag of Pan-Africanism, nationalism, whilst its people go hungry. Our diet has always been of Chimurengas that never end. So we have subsisted on the glorious fight against ever diminishing ‘white farmers’, and a distant yet powerful Britain. Fear not we are told, our Moses, Mugabe, who will live forever shall lead us to our promised land. Meanwhile, those who disagree are labelled as traitors; beating and killing them is a patriotic duty. But they do not beat everyone who disagrees, the rest just suffer from hyperinflation, poverty etc.

The other alternative besides starvation left for some of us is the go south and work in the streets of eGoli selling cigarettes, mending shoes, or as gardeners, maids and busboys. It’s true, we are a strain on the resources, so are content to be at the periphery of South African economic activity. In fact, we are in the informal economy, doing those jobs that many South Africans would not do because they are ill paid and insecure. But why not go home and change your own country you ask? It’s a legitimate question and requires a short answer - we should. In fact, why should there be refugees at all in the world?

It would lazy to blame everything on the Zimbabwean crisis and end there. Xenophobia then? No! It’s too empty a term that says much and explains little. So the imperative is to follow and analyse the trajectory of thoughts that many pundits on TV and Talk radio have used to explain the pogroms.

The first rationale used to explain the xenophobic outburst was to be blame it all on criminal elements. It had to be criminals and marauding gang of natives roaming the streets and butchering anyone who looked ‘other’ African. Of course, the underlying message being that ‘ordinary’ South Africans, law-abiding citizens of the Rainbow nation could not possibly be involved. The reasons behind that train of thought was maybe shock, and shame (the sort that says ‘it can’t be happening here. What will the world say, that we are just another African country?). Clearly, South African society is violent and everyone agrees that crime is one the most important challenges aside from poverty facing this country. Furthermore, does it really need to be pointed out that killing of innocent civilians, raping and looting are criminal acts whether xenophobic or not. So that rationale says a lot, and again explains nothing.

The second rationale was rather interesting because it blamed the pogroms on some sinister ‘Third Force’. Many independent political analysts quickly dismissed it as some bogus conspiracy theories that government always uses when violent protest erupt in the townships. If one recalls recent history of post apartheid protests around service delivery in places like Bethlehem, Soweto and even Khutsong, government officials quickly dismissed justified protests as being instigated by a ‘Third Force’ (sometimes it was the Ultra Left). This force is a throwback to the early 90’s when rogue elements in the apartheid security apparatus trained, funded and armed various groups to kill ANC activists in the hope of destabilising the democratic transition. This rationale was given credence when hundreds of men welding guns, machetes were seen toyi-toying in the streets of Jo’burg on TV. It seemed as if history was repeating itself. The scenes were reminiscent of that time when IFP’s ‘Impis’ (alleged to have been in cohorts with this Third Force) would terrorise townships hunting down ANC activists. As far I am concerned, whether such a force has resurrected is beside the point. In fact, I will contend its not even necessary to prove its non-existence because if there was such a force it still needed fertile soil to germinate and spread its poisonous fruit.

The most popular rationale for the xenophobic outburst runs like this; the South African economic fundamentals are under strain. Inflation is on the increase; expected growth of 6% has never materialised and thus done little to solve joblessness and poverty. Neither can the economy provide decent housing and even when housed constant adequate basic services are only available for those who can afford it. For example, unemployment rates in townships are at least above 30% and much higher among youth. RDP houses built by government has done little in solving the housing crisis meaning that informal settlements will continue to be urban eyesores for many years to come. As a result, the rationale goes, the poor suffer the most from all these ills above, but are also given the added burden of competing with African immigrants for the little resources that are already available. This stokes anger and frustration.

This is correct in many ways. Was it not the suspicion that ‘foreigners’ were benefiting from government subsidised RDP houses in Alexandra that triggered the mayhem on the 8th of May? When attacks spread they graduated to targeting foreign informal traders in Gauteng, Durban, Cape Town and elsewhere. Fruit and vegetable stalls, Phone shops, spaza shops were looted and even pitiful small tent-like barber stalls in the Durban market area were targeted.

I can understand people attacking, and destroying the cause of ones poverty, and unemployment. It natural that one should resent the parasitic bodies within society that only sucks away wealth that should rightly belong to the body as a whole. In fact, is it not an injunction on the poor to rise up against the cause of inequality and misery? What struck me is that that rightful anger of the poor was directed to other poor people albeit of a different nationality.

Therefore, also reducing the recent ‘xenophobic’ attacks to the ‘economic’ is suspect. Economic reductionism cannot explain why the ‘people’ did not go a step further and attack small white and Indian traders too. Why did the black South African informal small traders not attack big supermarket chains that invade their communities undercutting prices thus diminishing their market share?

Clearly arguments that rely exclusively on the economic theses while illuminating are insufficient on their own. An observer looking in from outside may simply dismiss the attacks as the excesses of nationalism because the vision of an all-embracing Rainbow Nation also presupposes the idea of the nation state. But of course, we know better, or should, that neither nationalism nor economic arguments are sufficient. Rather, my argument would be that as much as people want to consign apartheid and other colonialisms to some forgotten distant past, their spirits continue to haunt us in this present day.

Thus the xenophobic attacks we witnessed should be located within the co-ordinates of colonialism, racism, and the economic underdevelopment of black people. But I go further than just blaming the past, because the blame lies more firmly elsewhere, in the strategies used to overcoming that past. When the poor of the townships were promised heaven and earth after the democracy they have a right to expect nothing less. The unemployed young man in idling in the townships of Alexandra who sees the ostentatious wealth in gated Sandton owned by other people who look like him knows that there is enough for everyone. TV relentlessly shows us Black upwardly mobile people, BUPPIES, nor do newspapers tire of telling us of the fabulous wealth of the new Black bourgeoisie nor of the last multi-million Rand BEE deal. In other words, xenophobic violence should lie on the shoulders of the rapacious need for accumulation of the new black economic and political elite. The fruits of the democracy have not been spread evenly.

Thus, in their amnesia feathered by sweetened BEE deals and Affirmative Action and the ” I am the first black to do this and …so forth…” in their suburban condors…

…the working class of the towns, the masses of unemployed, the small artisans and craftsmen for their part line up behind this nationalist attitude; but in all justice let it be said, they only follow in the steps of their [black] bourgeoisie. If the national bourgeoisie goes into competition with the Europeans, the artisans and craftsmen start a fight against non-national Africans. In the Ivory Coast, the anti-Dahoman and anti-Voltaic troubles are in fact racial riots. The Dahoman and Voltaic peoples, who control the greater part of the petty trade, are, once independence is declared, the object of hostile manifestations on the part of the people of the Ivory Coast. From nationalism we have passed to ultra-nationalism, to chauvinism, and finally to racism. These foreigners are called to leave; their shops are burned, the street stall are wrecked… (The Wretched of the Earth).

It was in 1961 when Frantz Fanon wrote these words! This untidy BEE of the poor. of South Africa’s townships Prophetic words they might seem, but they were meant as warning to future generations not to fall into the same pitfalls. We did. But I hope the powers that shall right their mistakes.

I hope they do because for many immigrants like me the past is another country. We live in desperate longing for acceptance in the present, in the place where we live and have learnt to love. But as Salman Rushdie reminds immigrants in Imaginary Homelands, ‘it’s the present that is a foreign country and the past that is home’. I hope he’s wrong.

QQ Section Press Statement and AGM Invitation 2nd July, 2008 -
Event: QQ Section Annual General Meeting Date: 5 July, 2008 Time: 12h00-16h00 Venue: QQ Section Community Crèche RSVP and directions: 073-256-2036

At 12h00 on Saturday, 5th of July, 2008, the abahlali of QQ Section in Khayelitsha will hold an Annual General Meeting to approve the launch of Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape. The event will be held at the new QQ Community Crèche that was built and funded by abahlali.

QQ Section residents have been living under appalling conditions for more than 20 years. Even the advent of our so-called democracy has been meaningless to abahlali (residents) of QQ. For us, all the rights to basic services, land, and safety which are stipulated in our country’s constitution, signify a democracy on paper but not in our everyday lives. In QQ Section, we are 620 families who have no access to electricity, no toilets except a nearby field, no sanitation system, and only 8 water taps to share between over 3,000 abahlali.

But because we have been ignored for too long, QQ Section will soon vote to officially join Abahlali baseMjondolo (the South African Shackdwellers Movement). The purpose of joining AbM, a movement that began in the Durban jondolos, is to ensure that all the rights of people living in informal settlements are being recognised, respected, and listened to by those in positions of authority (the government, NGOs, and the private sector). In short, AbM exists to ensure that no one but ourselves speak for ourselves and no one but ourselves govern ourselves.

An additional aim of this shackdweller’s movement is to build relationships between informal settlements and to explore alternatives to the current developmental approach to government. We will appose the forced removals of our communities and top-down housing policies of government officials.

Abahlali baseMjondolo, which has been working with QQ Section for four years now, was originally launched in 2004 from Kennedy Road in Durban, has now become one of the leading social movements in the country. AbM is not a political party and does not have any working relationship or affiliation with any political party or vanguard organisation.

For this landmark event, representatives from Abahlali baseMjondolo will be coming all the way from Durban to support residents. Other social movements such as AbM’s alliance partner, the Anti-Eviction Campaign, will be attending and bringing the support of their respective communities.

The Mayor Helen Zille has been invited to attend along with the local ward councillor and housing MEC Richard Dyantyi. Their authority to speak for the poor will be challenged by abahlali. Also, all government officials who attend will be handed memorandums about the issues affecting our community. Dan Plato, Mayoral Committee Member for Housing has been asked to engage on the following issues raised by abahlali:

1. Relocation of QQ Section residents
2. Time-lines regarding housing issues
3. Declaring QQ Section as ‘in-situ upgradeable’
4. The city’s immediate intervention plans for this years winter floods

In addition to government officials, a number of NGOs, academics, and well-wishers will be invited to attend, listen to and learn from abahlali. They will not be permitted to speak; the AGM is a space for the community to speak and teach. In the next few months, QQ Section is planning on building more crèches, youth centres and toilets to improve the lives of residents. For this purpose, the community requests that each individual whose attendance is accepted, make a donation to the community as well as bring along one of their favorite books to help us with our new community library.

For further details, directions and donation instructions, please contact Mzonke Poni, QQ Section Community Committee Chairperson @ 073-256-2036

For more information on QQ Section, click here.

Friday, June 27, 2008 Source: Cape Argus

Fed up with waiting for toilets to be delivered to their informal settlement, residents of QQ section in Khayelitsha have had their own environmentally friendly toilet installed and are now demanding that the City of Cape Town reimburse them for the R3 000 it cost.

Community leader Mzonke Poni said residents had come up with the idea because QQ section had been in existence for 20 years, but still did not have access to basic services.

Residents had used open spaces for toilets or had relied on toilets in nearby houses.

Residents had used open spaces for toilets or had relied on toilets in nearby houses

Poni said endless meetings with the government had been fruitless, so the community had decided to raise R5 each from 600 families in the area.

The focus of the fundraising was so that children at a crèche in the area, also established by the community, would have a safe toilet.

Poni said the toilet, obtained through a local NGO and installed by the community, was environmentally friendly as it did not produce a smell and its decomposed waste could be used as fertiliser.

But he said providing toilets was the city’s responsibility and residents should be reimbursed.

One resident, Joyce Graham, 41, said she feared children could be sexually abused when having to go to the toilet in nearby bushes or behind shacks and felt happier that there was now a proper toilet.

City of Cape Town spokes-man Charles Cooper said residents had installed the toilet at their own risk.

He said if they wanted to be refunded they would have to speak to their ward councillor to see if they could be assisted through money allocated to the ward.

The city was planning the installation of 1 364 chemical toilets for QQ section, but the toilets were being imported and had yet to be delivered. It was hoped the toilets would arrive within two weeks but success would depend on community acceptance and buy-in. - Cape Argus

Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement Sunday 29th June, 2008

Delft-Symphony — Last night at 22h00, three police vans pulled up to Symphony Way dressed in riot gear. Without warning, they began pepper spraying people in the settlement and attempted to arrest a 58 year old resident named Auntie Tilla. When it was all over, the road’s pastor had been assaulted, beaten and abducted and five residents had been pepper sprayed multiple times. An American journalist had also been sprayed merely for taking photographs of police officers. The Anti-Eviction Campaign believes this intimidation and violence is uncalled for and condemns such cowardly actions by police. As of today, residents and the American journalist have laid charges of assault against Superintendent Van Wyk and the police under his command. Pavement Dwellers call on police to work with them to protect them from speeding drunk drivers rather than against them.

The incident began in the late afternoon when a drunk (on-duty) police officer from the Delft police department arrived at the Symphony Way pavement settlement and began to harass residents. Auntie Tilla, a loved and respected elder in the community, was bothered by the officer’s actions and attempted to make a citizen’s arrest for public violence and consumption of alcohol while on-duty. However, after bothering residents, the cop jumped into his car and sped away.

An hour later, a caravan of 3 police vans with over 15 officers arrived in front of Auntie Tilla’s shack and began threatening residents and seeking to arrest them. American journalist, Toussaint Losier likened the police operation to “cowboys jumping out of their vans looking for a fight. Without their name-tags on they had the clear intention of intimidating and assaulting residents”. But residents banded together trying to protect Auntie Tilla from being arrested. As a response, Van Wyk ordered police to pepper spray residents.

Brother Alfred Arnolds, a respected pastor who lives on the road with residents, was sprayed, assaulted, beaten by police and then thrown unconscious into one of the vans. He describes the event as follows: “When they came back it was like they were going to shoot some kind of movie. The way they came at Auntie Tilla and Etienne, I had to intervene…As you can see, this government has no sympathy for us. That is why we are living in these conditions”. Arnolds claims that after he awoke at the police station, he was kicked and beaten again, striped of 150 Rand, and then left injured in from of the station.

Toussaint Losier, a student from the university of Chicago as well as a journalist for the Boston Banner, was was taking pictures of the incident when Superintendent Van Wyk came and pushed the camera out of the way threatening: “you can’t take pictures of police officers conducting their operations…[and added] you shouldn’t be supporting the people on Symphony Way”. Knowing he was protected by South Africa’s constitution, Toussaint identified himself as a journalist and took a picture of an officer shoving a resident. Immediately afterwards, a police officer came right up to him and sprayed him directly in the eyes.

Twenty minutes after the police had abducted Pastor Arnolds, residents marched to the Delft police station where where they were ignored and laughed at by detectives and other policemen. Residents then went all the way to Bellville Police Station where they laid the charges of assault against Superintendent Van Wyk and called for the arrest of the special operations gang of Delft police who were under his command at the time.

While residents wait, hoping the law might finally be on their side, Tilla offered others a bit of perspective on the incident: “Why are they making us live like this when there are empty houses right here [across the road]. They think we are animals, but we are not animals. We know our rights!”

In reality, this unwarranted brutality by Delft police officers is merely part of a larger campaign by provincial and city government to vilify, intimidate and control the families who have nowhere else to go. Residents refuse to leave the road until they are given the houses that have been promised to them for decades. They know that if they leave Symphony Way, they will be swept under the rug, forgotten and stuck in a ‘temporary’ shacks for another ten years. But because they choose to protest and not be silent, they are bearing the brunt of this oppressive government and violent police gangs.

For comment, contact Ashraf at 076-186-1408. He can connect you to the witnesses and victims of the crime.

For more pictures, click here or contact us at wcantievictioncampaign@gmail.com

For the AEC press release on the brutal police raid of Delft-Symphony, please click here.

26 June 2008 Thando Mgaga Source: The Witness

Residents of the Ash Road (Jika Joe) informal settlement in the downtown area of the city say they are fed up with living in tents and are threatening to rebuild their shacks and mud houses if the Msunduzi Municipality does not address their complaints.

A strongly-worded statement outlining the residents’ complaint is in The Witness’s possession, but the writers do not wish to be named for fear of intimidation. They said the tents do not provide protection against the cold winter nights.

“We see many things planned for us, promised to us, and written about us in the newspapers, but there is never our voice - always it is the words and the empty promises and the visions of the politicians, the so-called leaders, and the municipality,” the statement reads.

It adds that it is not right for outsiders and “leaders” who are not forced to live in tents in the winter to be the only ones who speak. The residents say the leaders tell them the same thing in different ways. “For us who are living here, this makes us see that we are treated as if we are not people. We are human beings and now we are saying no more of this disrespect and lying. We are fed up.”

One of the residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a neighbour died in the tents, apparently from the cold. However, this was not confirmed by the police. She said he was buried two weeks ago.

The residents say they have been promised temporary housing in formal shacks and flats and the municipality has threatened to remove the few portable toilets made available for them.

“We think there is no future for us and our children living in tents or temporary tin houses. For us it will be better to rebuild our mjondolos [shacks] right here on the sports ground and this is what we will do. Our mud shacks give us a better protection from freezing cold and summer’s heat,” they said.

Msunduzi municipal manager Rob Haswell said a nearby site across the Dorpspruit has been identified and levelled to accommodate up to 180 temporary houses.

He said a tender for these houses closed yesterday. “It is expected that the appointed contractor would be on site by August 5 … with the first houses becoming available within the first week. In the short term, we will attend to any torn tents and continue to provide chemical toilets in an effort to improve living conditions, until those people living in tents can be moved into the temporary houses,” he said.

thandom@witness.co.za

Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement
28 June, 2008

Delft-Symphony – At 4 pm on Saturday 28th of June, 8 year old Charl Jacobs was hit from behind and knocked over by a drunk driver speeding down Symphony Way. Renee, a qualified nurse, and Vicky, a first aid assistant (who both live on the road), kept pressure on Charl’s head wound – keeping him conscious until the ambulance eventually arrived.

For months, the Pavement Dwellers of Delft-Symphony Way (who were violently evicted in February) have been emphasizing the danger of speeding vehicles such as taxis, trucks, ordinary cars, government vehicles and even aggressive police cars who insist on using Symphony Way as a shortcut to their destinations. This road is supposed to be closed to traffic because of the thousands of homeless people currently living on the road. This problem has been raised at all meetings of residents with the traffic department, government officials, and directly to MEC Richard Dyantyi. In fact, for months, city officials have promised that action would be taken to close the road.

But because officials fail to keep their promises, residents have attempted to take matters into their own hands by calling on drivers to slow down, partially barricading the roads, setting up makeshift boom gates, and finally, as a last resort, closing the road completely with burning tires. On Thursday, yet another city official promised to set up proper barricades by 4pm the day before the incident (the 27th of June). This, as with other commitments by officials, never materialized.

According to Renee, “Charl was running off to the store and the car hit him from behind. Thats when I shouted: He’s getting away!”. Rather than stopping after hitting the boy, Mr Xolile continued speeding down Symphony Way. When residents caught him at the corner of Modderdam and Stellenbosch Arterial, he was clearly intoxicated. Residents brought him back to the scene of the crime where police took him and a passenger into custody.

Thousands of angry Pavement Dwellers are holding the South African government directly responsible for this easily preventable accident. While residents, who are struggling to survive in the freezing cold weather, live directly across from empty houses that were meant for them, this tragedy is proof once again that no one in government actually cares about the safety and basic needs of the poor pavement dwellers.

The Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign is now looking into the feasibility of suing government for their inaction which has resulted in the near death of Charl and suffering of thousands who have, for years, been on the waiting list for houses.

For comment, please contact Ashraf at 072-503-6625

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Update: Charl Jacobs’ father went to the police station today and has found out that the drunk driver, Mr Xolile, has not been charged for his crime.  The police seem to have just let him go.

Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign Friday 27 June 2008 12 noon

CAPE TOWN - The Anti-Eviction Campaign held a highly successful occupation of Local Government and Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi’s office yesterday.

Dyantyi has been invited several times over the past year to the Anti-Eviction Campaign’s weekly meetings on Sunday in the Gugulethu Sports Complex but has always failed to show up. Hence the movement decided to occupy his office.

After several hours of occupation yesterday, the Deputy Director informed the Anti-Eviction Campaign that Dyantyi would finally meet the community at 2pm today.

At the meeting today, the Anti-Eviction Campaign will hand over its “housing waiting list” - an accurate record of all those residents who have been on the waiting list for between five and 30 years, and who have their original “red cards” (proof of registration).

The oldest resident asking for a house is an 86 year old woman, who has been on the housing waiting list for 30 years. She attended the protest yesterday.

All those residents who have been on the waiting list for 30 years are available to be interviewed by the media.

“The Minister must commit himself to providing houses today or else we will stage more protests,” said Mncedisi Twalo of the Anti-Eviction Campaign.

For comment call Mncedisi Twalo on 078 5808646

For comment from the scene call Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign Co-ordinator Mncedisi Twalo on 078 580 8646

CAPE TOWN - A large and vibrant occupation is underway at Housing and Local Government MEC Richard Dyantyi’s office, in the Provincial Parliamentary building in Wale Street.

The occupation began about 15 minutes ago.

Twalo said “we won’t leave until the Minister comes and gives us keys for the newly built houses in Langa, Delft and Nyanga”.

The residents who are at the occupation are those who have been on the housing waiting list for more than 20 years. They are carrying their “red cards” as proof. These are the cards they were issued with 20 years ago or more, when they first joined the waiting list.

The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign has spent the last seven months carrying out an exhaustive census of people in Cape Town who have been on the waiting list for more than 20 years. This census was carried out by holding dozens of mass meetings in each and every township and ghetto in the city, where residents came forward with their red cards and vowed to join the campaign for housing.

These residents should clearly be first in line for any new houses, but instead they have been forgotten.

“We know the ANC and DA using an iron fist when it comes to dealing with their own people, but we have to get our houses, and that is why we are here today,” said Twalo.

by Nsingo Fanuel

Zimbabwe, ……………..wait before you……………….!

Excitement gripped me when I was able to go back across the border to visit my family in Zimbabwe. Pleased as I was, I tried to ignore all the media reports on the country’s disregard of acceptable and proper treatment of human beings. Before going home, I braced myself for whatever the hell was to befall me! Imagine going back home to unpredictable situations, disastrous conditions, or even impending death - and when home is Zimbabwe this is no exaggeration. If you have been in South Africa you are immediately suspected of being MDC. Anyway, going home was the only way to please my mum!

From Johannesburg I boarded a bus directly to Harare, Zimbabwe. I paid 300 Rands for the trip and took at least seven hours to reach the Beitbridge Border Post. The border was highly-congested, with border officials dragging their feet at main checkpoints. My stay there was four hours. Later, the bus had to leave for Harare at around 5 o’clock in the morning. The bus took eight hours to reach Harare.

My arrival in the capital city was met by a great shock. There was no transport to ferry me to my small city of birth, Marondera. Familiar to my country’s economic woes, I immediately settled on the fuel disaster as the explanation. However, I waited by Fourth Street, just behind Roadport for any transport, and immediately arrived a smoking, dusty, ready-for-scrap Mazda T3500 lorry, and not wanting to miss it, I jostled alongside other stranded commuters onto its back. Along the way the driver demanded Z$500 million, as transport fares. He said this was to enable him to buy fuel.

As we drove past Ruwa, a small town just outside Harare, the black-marketeers of fuel waved down the driver. It was a clear signal that only Zimbabwe could run dry, but never the black-marketeers. Immediately, the driver parked by the roadside, but was told to restart and get fuelled in a small patch of thick bush, obviously to be hidden away from the raging battalion of the army or police. He complied. I tried to get as close to the black-marketeer as I could to grasp details of his conversation with the driver, but had to gather the two were arguing over the exact price of the ‘precious liquid’. It seemed the young man was attempting to refuel the lorry before settling on the actual price.

When I arrived in the newly-crowned city of Marondera[formerly a town, and recently given a city status], I just slept overnight, eager to catch the morning bus to my mother’s plot, that she was allocated by the ruling Zanu-PF party. The house in Marondera belongs to my grandfather, my mother’s stepfather. Currently, the four-bedroomed tiny property is home to my mother’s sister, together with her three children. Her first-born is a boy, who has two younger sisters as well. The next morning I took a lift to the Baker Plots that were grabbed from a Mr. Baker, a white farmer. Mr. Baker is one of the 4 000 white farmers whose farms were forcibly grabbed by the ruling government in 1997, under the influence of the late and former Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association leader, Chenjerai Hunzvi.

I paid Z$200 million from Marondera to Baker’s. Initially, the driver of the small, out-of-date obsolete Datsun Pulsar had asked for Z$300 million, arguing that the exchange rate of the ZimDollar Versus the South African Rand was unpredictable, thus the need to cater for the unexpected devaluation of the dollar. True to his utterances, and as I had to experience for myself during my short stay in Zimbabwe, the Z$ keeps falling on an hourly basis. To stay on the safe side, one has to keep a close and tight guard on the ‘now indispensable’ Tito Mboweni product.

As I reached the place, I was greeted by a commotion of chants of slogans and shouts, by ruling party youths at the local shopping centre. Then there was another shocking horror, the shelves in one of the stores were the emptiest and grubbiest in the whole world! Immediately, I rushed for my mother’s plot, and when she saw me, she burst into tears, wondering how on earth God had spared me from the ‘Xenophobia Attacks’. We hugged and kissed, and I told her, ‘Give thanks to Abahlali baseMjondolo’, to which she, who has never lived in a shack, responded curtly, ‘Who the hell’s that?!’ I mumbled to answer her as I felt I would shock her in my struggle for land and housing as an ‘Umhlali.’

When we were seated, I began by narrating how good Abahlali had been to me and told her all about the red T-shirts - at the same time pulling out the colours with pride, and showcasing the movement logo, all to her surprise. ‘That’s politics, my son!’, worried my mother. I continued with the different marches that I had been part of, the camp meetings, the regular fortnightly meetings, office work, drinking and eating in the same plate with the President of Abahlali. I wondered if the same could be done with the ailing and wilting Bob. I wondered at the ease by which I was proud to wear the Abahlali red. I wondered how difficult and burdening it must be to have to wear the old dictator’s picture on a shirt. Free at last, ain’t I?

The one and only cock at our roots was made to suffer the consequences of my return , as is the African custom. It had to be sacrificed for my arrival. How good the meal was, as my sister’s authority and expertise over the rural pots proved itself! No spices, just the boiled chicken and a few grains of salt. Of course no cooking oil or any fatty additives whatsoever these days. But the meal was perfect.

The next day mother forced me to wear the ZANU-PF T-Shirt and to attend an everyday compulsory ZANU-PF meeting. She was very worried that I would be under suspicion after having been away. When we arrived at the meeting place I heard war veterans boasting that they had just acquired knew knobkerries to beat those who had absconded from the previous day’s meeting. At first I thought it was a joke, but was shocked to see a young man being dragged in front of everyone, and thereafter being severely beaten. A certain headman was also being accused of defecting to the opposition MDC. He however managed to save his skin because of his ill-health, otherwise he would have received the canning. But others have been ironed on their backs until they admit to being MDC and promise that they have seen the errors of their ways and that they will be loyal to ZANU-PF.

When I was to return, mother wrote a letter to the President of Abahlali, stating how grateful she was for my good upkeep. She further narrated how difficult it was to survive, mentioning the billions of ZimDollars-for-nothing needed to survive on a daily basis. To this day, I feel pity for her.

When I got to Beitbridge for my intended journey into South Africa, I overhead some youths openly debating on who the richest man in Zimbabwe was. All the tycoons and bigwigs mentioned in that debate are Zanu-PF loyalists. One talkative youth even got to the extent of boasting about Phillip Chiyangwa, nephew of Robert Mugabe and former MP for Chinhoyi West. The youth was saying Chiyangwa’s pair of shoes could cost approximately US$5 000.00. His car could talk, he had a machine to wash his teeth, six wardrobes of shoes - from his Bulawayo-based G & D Shoes Engineering, twenty wardrobes of suits and so on. For your own information, the fallen MP was also booted out of the ruling party for allegedly engaging in espionage, selling all the ‘top secrets’ to the then Tony Blair-led government in England.

My question is; if people spend government resources to enrich themselves, to the extent of living luxurious and flamboyant lives, whilst 90% of the population are suffering, even starving, what is the motive behind this? If a pair of shoes is worth a life, how come the leadership is failing to dish out its leftovers or excesses towards the livelihood of the poor? Does ZANU-PF care about ordinary Zimbabweans at all? What other assets are the ruling party cronies hiding throughout the world? We are told that there is a struggle between Zimbabwe and England but it feels like a struggle between the rich and the poor in Zimbabwe.

As the events further unfolded, some MDC youths arrived at the Beitbridge Rank, not knowing about the worse to come. Within ten minutes of their arrival, the police began chasing them away, accusing them of serving a puppet leader, and warning them of arrests. The opposition youths could do nothing but listen to Mugabe’s bees. Immediately, an old, forget-my-past Mazda 323 dragged itself towards the rank and out came the ugliest face I have ever seen, wailing a loudhailer that ‘Operation Mirai Zvakanaka’ was to start in ten minutes time, therefore every street-trader, and all the ladies by the vegetable market, should ’shut down’ and attend an urgent meeting. ‘Operation Mirai Zvakanaka’ means ‘Operation Get Rightly Sorted Out’, literally, ‘Operation Know Your One and Only ZANU-PF Party.’ In Abahlali we come to a meeting with all our different ideas and experiences and discuss things together until we see a way forward together. We are free. In Zimbabwe ZANU-PF tells you want to think. If you don’t say publicly that think what you have been told to think you will be beaten, sometimes even killed.

After the ten minutes were over, the meeting was held, with youths ’sorting-out’ everybody who they had seen walking around, without attending the urgent call. I felt pity for Morgan Tsvangirai and his colleagues. Surely, this wasn’t an atmosphere for free and fair elections. Surely, this wasn’t an atmosphere for people with their own ideas to be safe. There is no freedom here.

The army is also brutalizing the people, the police have become the opposite of real protectors, and everybody is scared. What will happen to me now that my mother has been Zanufied? How will she fare if the MDC wins the June 27th run-off elections? Will I be made to carry the burden that she put herself in? On the other hand, the 4 000 white farmers, whose farms were grabbed took their case to the SADC Tribunal. The question is: If Uncle Bob retains power, and the farmers win the case on the 20th July, is he[Uncle Bob] going to budge, and immediately trigger a war? If he gives in to the tribunal demands, where is my mother going to go at her current old age, together with my brother and three sisters? Or above all else, shouldn’t I start a political party as soon as possible? A political party that is for land and freedom? A political party based on the full involvement of the poor, the street-traders who have been chased away from their stalls, the shack dwellers whose homes have been destroyed, the people who have been beaten and tortured? A political party in which people like my mother will be able to speak freely and will know that they will not be old and without a place where they can live and look after their children?

Prepared by: Nsingo Fanuel

24 June 2008
Statement from Abahlali baseMjondolo bakuAsh Road

Sekwanele! We are fed up and cold here in the tents

The tented ‘transit camp’ into which some residents of the Ash Road settlement in Pietermartizburg have been forced.

We see many things planned for us, promised to us, and written about us in the newspapers but there is never our voice - always it is the words and the empty promises and the visions of the politicians, the so-called leaders, and the Municipality. It is not right for outsiders and ‘leaders’ who are not forced to be living in tents in the winter to be the only ones who speak and act. They tell us again and again in different ways the same thing - “be silent, be patient, we are making plans and visions for your future”. For us who are living here, this makes us to see that we are treated as if we are not people. We are human beings and now we are saying No! No more of this disrespect and lying. We are fed up; the time has come for the world to know that we think, we speak, we act. Councillor Green and his family have not been living in the tents. As far as we are concerned he must therefore shut up.

When the heavy rains fell in January, we were put into these tents on the Tatham sportsground. We were told this was for three months only and we were forbidden to return and rebuild our homes. It is six months later now, and we are still here. It is the middle of winter now, and we are still here. The freezing cold, at night especially, is really killing us - one of our neighbours in the tent has already died from the cold; another one nearly died the other night from smoke from a fire that was lit to try and stop dying from the cold! We have been living so long in these tents that they are now all torn and worn-out. When it rains it is not just freezing cold but leaking so there is water inside too. This week, the municipality has also threatened that they will soon remove the few portable toilets they put here for us to use. Well this will just make our life, which is hard to bear already, even harder and unbearable for us.

We have no trust in the promises and visions that others make for us. They promise us ‘temporary housing’ in formal tin shacks that they will put somewhere else, and they promise houses and flats (that we do not want) somewhere else that they do not know yet. We can see now that, even if these promises eventually come, they would not be better than the housing we can build for ourselves anyway. We think there is no future for us and our children living in tents or temporary tin houses. For us it will be better to rebuild our jondolos right here on the sportsground and this is what we will do. Our mud shacks give us a better protection from freezing cold and summer’s heat.

Now it is clear to us that we are the ones who can really make a better life for ourselves - definitely better than tents and empty promises! We, the people who are living in these conditions, are the ones to find a better solution. It is going to be better to leave behind all the politicians, the committees, the officials and so on and we will discuss and plan and act together as the people taking our own issues forward in the way that we decide.

ENDS

Contact: as members of Abahlali baseMjondolo we have worked together to write this statement. For reasons of security and intimidation we cannot give individual names but the following telephone numbers can be used to speak to residents from the tents and from the shack settlement: 076 657 5041 or 082 504 7866.

Annexure: for some background information from an independent housing rights organisation called the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) please read the attached report from a workshop held by COHRE at the invitation of Abahlali baseMjondolo bakuAsh Road at the Ash Road settlement on the 7th of June this year.

Update: 25 June 2008 The council removed the portable toilets from the tents without explanation last night. And one of the tents burnt down. People have to try and keep warm in the flimsy tents in the cold ‘Maritzburg winter and so there is always a threat of fire.

Previous entries on the Abahlali baseMjondolo site on the Ash Road settlement:

Mission in an Urbanized Context. The Case of Ash Road Shack Dwellers’ Community Flooded, October 2007

Ash Road Settlement Flooded, January 2008

More Flooding in Ash Road, February 2008

(Apparent)Victory for Ash Road in the struggle against forced removal, March 2008

Ash Road: Transit Camp Looms, May 2008

Ash Road: Numbers & Crosses, May 2008

Ash Road: Fire, Flood & Forced Removal, June 2008

Ash Road Tents, June 2008

Attachment Size Ash Road workshop 20080607 (lr version).pdf 837.52 KB

Mail & Guardian: Stadium show must go on

Justin Arenstien and Gcina Ntsaluba Jun 25 2008 00:00

Mpumalanga’s provincial government is threatening to reverse a R63-million land claim settlement unless the farmworker beneficiaries agree to surrender a prime portion of their ancestral land for just R1.

The land, just outside the provincial capital of Nelspruit, is the site of Mpumalanga’s flagship R1-billion 2010 World Cup stadium.

Provincial authorities started building the stadium on the 118ha piece of land two years ago without actually owning it.

Last year the “Matsafeni” community of land claim beneficiaries — people living on the land — protested. Nelspruit’s Mbombela municipality then secretly negotiated a sales agreement with their representatives, the Matsafeni Trust, granting the land to government for just R1.

The R1 deal was signed by the city’s 2010 coordinator, Differ Mogale, but he failed to declare his relationship with a former chairperson of the Matsafeni Trust, Terry Mdluli. Mogale, together with former Mbombela mayor Justice Nsibande, is a member of a tourism company called Blue Nightingale, of which Mdluli is board director.

An independent commission of inquiry has recommended that criminal charges be laid against Nsibande and Mogale for failing to declare their interests.

Both national Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana and the national land claims commission warned at the time that the sale was illegal because it violated clauses built into the title deed to protect the community. Xingwana also said that Mpumalanga had failed to obtain her written permission for the sale as required by law.

Lawyers acting for the community say that the trustees failed to call the required special general meeting needed to get 75% community approval of the deal.

Last month the Pretoria High Court replaced the Matsafeni trustees who made the deal with nine new community representatives.

The jubilant community asked lawyer Richard Spoor to tell government that it doesn’t want to derail Mpumalanga’s 2010 preparations but does want a fairer sales agreement to be negotiated.

“We would all be delighted to resolve the sale and [we] have been waiting for weeks to start discussions. But government appears to be refusing to deal with the new trustees or the community itself,” said Spoor on Thursday.

Instead, Mpumalanga’s cabinet and Mbombela municipality sent a terse, two-page letter to Spoor, saying that they regard the original R1 sale as legitimate and will therefore transfer the land ownership from the community to government.

The letter, from Kruger-Moeletsi Attorneys, says that any attempt by the community or Spoor to resist the transfer will provoke a response from the provincial treasury, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and national government to “safeguard” the tens of millions of rand already spent on the stadium.

The letter further warns that the entire land claim is being reviewed by the National Department of Land Affairs. This review includes an examination of the award of the land to the community, the title deed restrictions and the “restrictive conditions” imposed on the land as part of the settlement to protect the Mdluli clan, farmworkers and other residents who live on it.

“We also have instructions to inform you that [government], after due investigation, has information at hand that your demands are being fuelled and financed by an outside party. Such information shall and will be made available in any court proceedings to the detriment of such party,” the letter says.

“Lastly we have been instructed to inform you that any application brought by yourself, which obviously cannot be on behalf of the Matsafeni, will be opposed and a punitive cost order will be requests against the party deposing the affidavit and yourself.”

Spoor said the letter is “outrageous intimidation” and that the Matsafeni community would bring an urgent interdict before the Pretoria High Court on Friday to freeze the transfer.

“I have signed mandates from the founder of the trust, Phineas Mdluli, six of the nine new trustees plus 750 of the Matsafeni beneficiaries. I take instruction directly from them alone and act for the beneficiaries and not anyone else,” said Spoor.

National land spokesman Godfrey Mdhluli said on Thursday he was not aware that the ministry supported Mpumalanga’s bid to transfer the land, while national land claims commissioner and acting land affairs director general Tozi Gwanya said on Thursday he had not been briefed about the matter.

Mbombela’s executive mayor, Lassy Chiwayo, was not immediately available for comment on Thursday. — African Eye News Service

June 11, 2008 Source: CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) — Shamita Naidoo [of AEC alliance partner Abahlali baseMjondolo] said she often wonders whether anyone really ever sees her. She also wonders the same thing about the hundreds of people living around her, in tiny tin shacks perched underneath gum trees on a nearby hill.

Sometimes, she said, it seems like they all are invisible.

The shantytown where Naidoo lives is on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa, in an area known as Motala Heights. The squatter community has been there for a number of years, but it’s increasingly being squeezed out by nearby factories and suburban neighborhoods.

Some residents, according to Naidoo, have already been evicted. Others are afraid that they could soon be forced to move. And almost everyone fears that if they have to leave, there may be nowhere else to go.

“We are like a lost city,” said Naidoo, who shares a home with her two children and 10 other families. “We are not known.”

United Nations Habitat estimates that roughly 1 billion people — or 33 percent of the world’s urban population — live in conditions like those of Naidoo and her family. By 2030, according to the UN’s human settlement program, that number is likely to double.

The slum dwellers struggle to survive with little clean water and sometimes no electricity around metropolises like Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Mumbai, India; Lima, Peru; and Istanbul, Turkey. Their shantytowns are usually vast in expanse and dense in population. In Kibera, a slum near Nairobi, Kenya, for example, more than a million people live in an area about the size of New York’s Central Park.

Yet despite their overpowering nature and unavoidable presence, the world’s informal cities are often overlooked — partly, according to UN Habitat, because many aid efforts are still focused on helping the rural poor: “Rural poverty has long been the world’s most common face of destitution,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a 2006 world city report. “But urban poverty can be just as intense, dehumanizing and life-threatening.”

The problem can also seem too big. The slums appear impenetrable to outsiders. And no one wants to take full responsibility. So walls are built, blinders are put on, and the shantytowns simply fade into the backdrop of urban life.

“We still don’t know what to do,” said Edesio Fernandes, a professor of urban planning at the University of London. “A huge amount of money has been spent and very little has been achieved in terms of reversing the phenomenon.”

Although slums, in and of themselves, are nothing new — some Brazilian favelas are more than 100 years old, Fernandes said, and many modern cities, like New York and London, once had prolific slum-dwelling populations — what is unprecedented is the rate at which they are growing. The UN estimates that almost 70 million people move into cities each year, many of them poor.

Yet this, according to some experts, should not be seen as a problem but rather as a potential way to win the war against global poverty.

The mindset must shift from “city as problem to city as solution,” said Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation, which aims to raise awareness on solving long-term problems.

Historically, Brand said, squatter cities have always been areas of economic expansion; within them there is virtually no unemployment, and their inhabitants are constantly striving to lift themselves out of destitution, he said.

“[Slums] are generating wealth the way cities have always done,” Brand said.

In India, almost 20 percent of the GDP comes from Mumbai, where half the city’s 12 million residents live in slums, Brand said. And even though many slum dwellers work in the informal economy, the official economy benefts as workers accumulate income and can afford to buy more goods and services outside their shadow neighborhoods.

Urbanization also leads to lower birth rates, Brand said, which means as more people migrate to cities, the world’s population could eventually level off at around 8 billion or 9 billion and then rapidly drop.

But to both capture and capitalize upon the potentialities of slums, more must also be done to embrace the people who reside in them and understand how they live their lives, said Robert Neuwirth, a journalist who spent two years living in shantytowns around the world.

Many employees working in Rio’s high-end hotels and restaurants live in nearby favelas, Neuwirth said. And not all slum dwellers are necessarily poor — a survey of more than 200 slums across India by Shelter Associates, which provides support to informal settlements, found residents with a variety of jobs, including government employees, small entrepreneurs and even doctors.

“Outsiders tend to view these as repositories of criminality, and they are not at all,” he said. “These are hardworking communities whose aspirations are the same as yours and mine, and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can begin working with these communities.”

Some progress has been made, especially in Latin America, around cities like Rio. There, despite the presence of drug gangs who largely control the communities, a handful of favelas are undergoing a sort of gentrification. Businesses like cable television companies and banks have moved in, and tourists are even making reservations to stay in new shantytown hotels, Neuwirth said.

Yet in the Motala Heights slum in South Africa, along with many others around the world, the situation remains stagnant as governments continue to deny slum dwellers basic infrastructure and property rights and occasionally even demolish entire parts of shantytowns altogether, forcing their dwellers to move to another piece of land and try, once again, to build a new life.

“We have to recognize these people as people and not as statistics,” Neuwirth said. “The way forward is to engage with them.”

Click here to see the Motala Heights digital archive and here to see Robert Neuwirth’s blog.

June 11, 2008 Source: CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) — Shamita Naidoo [of AEC alliance partner Abahlali baseMjondolo] said she often wonders whether anyone really ever sees her. She also wonders the same thing about the hundreds of people living around her, in tiny tin shacks perched underneath gum trees on a nearby hill.

Sometimes, she said, it seems like they all are invisible.

The shantytown where Naidoo lives is on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa, in an area known as Motala Heights. The squatter community has been there for a number of years, but it’s increasingly being squeezed out by nearby factories and suburban neighborhoods.

Some residents, according to Naidoo, have already been evicted. Others are afraid that they could soon be forced to move. And almost everyone fears that if they have to leave, there may be nowhere else to go.

“We are like a lost city,” said Naidoo, who shares a home with her two children and 10 other families. “We are not known.”

United Nations Habitat estimates that roughly 1 billion people — or 33 percent of the world’s urban population — live in conditions like those of Naidoo and her family. By 2030, according to the UN’s human settlement program, that number is likely to double.

The slum dwellers struggle to survive with little clean water and sometimes no electricity around metropolises like Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Mumbai, India; Lima, Peru; and Istanbul, Turkey. Their shantytowns are usually vast in expanse and dense in population. In Kibera, a slum near Nairobi, Kenya, for example, more than a million people live in an area about the size of New York’s Central Park.

Yet despite their overpowering nature and unavoidable presence, the world’s informal cities are often overlooked — partly, according to UN Habitat, because many aid efforts are still focused on helping the rural poor: “Rural poverty has long been the world’s most common face of destitution,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a 2006 world city report. “But urban poverty can be just as intense, dehumanizing and life-threatening.”

The problem can also seem too big. The slums appear impenetrable to outsiders. And no one wants to take full responsibility. So walls are built, blinders are put on, and the shantytowns simply fade into the backdrop of urban life.

“We still don’t know what to do,” said Edesio Fernandes, a professor of urban planning at the University of London. “A huge amount of money has been spent and very little has been achieved in terms of reversing the phenomenon.”

Although slums, in and of themselves, are nothing new — some Brazilian favelas are more than 100 years old, Fernandes said, and many modern cities, like New York and London, once had prolific slum-dwelling populations — what is unprecedented is the rate at which they are growing. The UN estimates that almost 70 million people move into cities each year, many of them poor.

Yet this, according to some experts, should not be seen as a problem but rather as a potential way to win the war against global poverty.

The mindset must shift from “city as problem to city as solution,” said Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation, which aims to raise awareness on solving long-term problems.

Historically, Brand said, squatter cities have always been areas of economic expansion; within them there is virtually no unemployment, and their inhabitants are constantly striving to lift themselves out of destitution, he said.

“[Slums] are generating wealth the way cities have always done,” Brand said.

In India, almost 20 percent of the GDP comes from Mumbai, where half the city’s 12 million residents live in slums, Brand said. And even though many slum dwellers work in the informal economy, the official economy benefts as workers accumulate income and can afford to buy more goods and services outside their shadow neighborhoods.

Urbanization also leads to lower birth rates, Brand said, which means as more people migrate to cities, the world’s population could eventually level off at around 8 billion or 9 billion and then rapidly drop.

But to both capture and capitalize upon the potentialities of slums, more must also be done to embrace the people who reside in them and understand how they live their lives, said Robert Neuwirth, a journalist who spent two years living in shantytowns around the world.

Many employees working in Rio’s high-end hotels and restaurants live in nearby favelas, Neuwirth said. And not all slum dwellers are necessarily poor — a survey of more than 200 slums across India by Shelter Associates, which provides support to informal settlements, found residents with a variety of jobs, including government employees, small entrepreneurs and even doctors.

“Outsiders tend to view these as repositories of criminality, and they are not at all,” he said. “These are hardworking communities whose aspirations are the same as yours and mine, and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can begin working with these communities.”

Some progress has been made, especially in Latin America, around cities like Rio. There, despite the presence of drug gangs who largely control the communities, a handful of favelas are undergoing a sort of gentrification. Businesses like cable television companies and banks have moved in, and tourists are even making reservations to stay in new shantytown hotels, Neuwirth said.

Yet in the Motala Heights slum in South Africa, along with many others around the world, the situation remains stagnant as governments continue to deny slum dwellers basic infrastructure and property rights and occasionally even demolish entire parts of shantytowns altogether, forcing their dwellers to move to another piece of land and try, once again, to build a new life.

“We have to recognize these people as people and not as statistics,” Neuwirth said. “The way forward is to engage with them.”

Click here to see the Motala Heights digital archive and here to see Robert Neuwirth’s blog.

Abahlali Youth League Secretariat

After months of work that AbM Youth League was launched and elections held for all positions on 16 June 2008. The following people were elected to the following positions:

President Mazwi Nzimande 074 222 8601

Vice President Lindo Motha 073 029 9185

General Secretary Zodwa Nsibande 082 830 2707

Vice Secretary Ayanda Vumisa 079 574 7459

Treasurer Nontombi Xolose 074 367 8227

Chairperson Bongo Dlamini 083 727 3656

Coordinator Nelisiwe Mgenge 078 115 3215/079 334 5063

2008/06/20 By AZWELL BANDA, RUSSELL GRINKER and SIV HELEN HESJEDAL

THAT the growing upsurge of xenophobia across all communities and social classes in South Africa has finally erupted into savage and violent attacks on Africans from across our border should be of concern to everyone. This explosion of bigotry threatens to destroy much that is positive in our emerging democracy and undermine the limited gains made to date, especially by working people.

In the wake of this, it is absolutely essential that everyone concerned with the struggles for jobs, social progress and against poverty, puts the fight against xenophobia at the top of their agenda.

Just what is “xenophobia”? Essentially it describes any irrational and unfounded fear, distrust, or hatred of strangers, foreigners, or anything human that is perceived as foreign or different. It can take many forms, like national immigration laws that stigmatise foreigners by, for example, calling them “aliens”, and by subjecting them to degrading treatment.

It can be through the use of insulting, derogatory terms such as kwere kwere. It can mean restricting certain classes of people to inferior jobs and social status , their victimisation by police, or assault, rape, murder, “ethnic cleansing” and mass expulsion from countries.

The media may transmit xenophobic messages by persistently calling people from other countries “aliens” and prominently reporting incidents of crime involving foreigners. Some people may even compose songs offensive to foreigners.

Politicians from across the ideological spectrum, love to use “foreigners” as scapegoats for their inability to solve problems in their constituencies.

Then lies spread. Residents of poor communities are led to believe that unemployment, housing shortages, prostitution, crime and homelessness are problems caused by Africans from other countries. Some believe that because foreigners in these communities may have more money than local people, local women are more readily available to them. This is not only mischievously wrong, but also an insult to all women.

More alarmingly, there is misinformation about foreigners spreading diseases and raping women and children. Dangerous lies like these easily stir up anger and breed hatred.

The problems that most ordinary people in this country face are in truth rooted in years of apartheid capitalism which kept the majority in desperate poverty and denied us any democratic means to improve our plight.

The real level of unemployment is well over 35percent - this means that around eight million people are jobless.

Crime flourishes in situations of deprivation and social disintegration.

Foreigners are not to blame. Our problems have very little to do with immigration. What is the connection between the arrival of Zimbabwean and other refugees and the mass retrenchments imposed by employers at car plants, in the mines, the textile industry or at parastatals like Telkom or Eskom? Thousands of workers have been thrown into unemployment in recent years. Were their jobs taken by foreigners? Are car factories now filled with foreign workers? Is the textile industry in the Eastern Cape now staffed by foreigners?

On the contrary, workers from other parts of Africa are also victims of capitalism’s jobs bloodbath.

Who really is to blame? Many employers, reactionary politicians and racists find it easiest to blame poor people from other countries for job losses that occur every time the South African economy gets into trouble. But the real culprits are employers who have cut jobs and closed down entire industries because they are not making enough profit.

This is a resource-rich country. But an irrational economic system won’t put those resources to use unless it makes a profit for the privileged few. On the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, billions of rands change hands every day between speculators and financial institutions. But the resources to create the things we urgently need - hospitals, houses, schools and jobs - stand idle because speculators will not invest without the possibility of making a quick profit.

South Africa has no real shortage of land. Acres lie fallow, even as millions go to sleep on empty stomachs. We boast vast quantities of minerals and other natural wealth. There are millions of bricks, sheds full of timber and giant piles of cement stockpiled everywhere. Yet millions live in shacks or even on the streets.

Blaming poor people from other countries is a crude attempt to disguise the responsibility of the economic system for society’s problems.

Many South African trade union pioneers were migrant workers from across southern Africa. Workers from other African countries have for many years been part of the labour movement here. The South African economy, from agriculture to mining to all other sectors, was built by the combined labour of workers of all races - from inside South Africa and outside.

Yet immigration laws continue to make national and racial divisions official. They always contain rules relating to specific nationalities and races. They brand poor workers from other African countries as second-class citizens before they even set foot on South African soil. They encourage divisions in the workplace along racial, gender and communal lines. This makes it easier to keep wages down or just fire and deport workers who are no longer needed. The laws are a constant reminder that workers from other African countries have no rights here.

Immigration laws institutionalise racism and xenophobia. They divide and weaken our democratic organisations in their collective fight for a better society. Yet human rights are not just for South Africans, but for everyone . We diminish our own humanity if we do not insist on this fundamental demand.

Xenophobic attacks on immigrants also result from institutionalised prejudice prevalent in government bodies. According to reports compiled by non-governmental organisations, more than 45 000 foreigners who apply for refugee status each year are consistently denied basic human rights by government agencies because of ineptitude, mismanagement, corruption and indifference. The government’s lack of concern for their plight has led to them being excluded from access to housing, health care, education, banking services and jobs.

Officially sanctioned discrimination also makes refugees more susceptible to crime and abuse by South Africans.

Most refugees are not issued with the documentation that would give them access to all the services they need. Instead, they get a three-month temporary refugee visa. It often takes Home Affairs years to grant refugee status, and even longer to get an ID book, which allows access to basic services such as a bank account or the renting of accommodation. In addition to these delays, refugee centres are rife with corruption. Refugees are forced to visit the centres every three months to renew their temporary refugee visas, but Home Affairs workers often refuse to issue such visas unless bribed.

To be African and look foreign or speak with an accent is to be under suspicion. The police often show little sympathy to foreigners notifying them of xenophobic attacks. Many reports indicate that they are instead harassed and face demands to prove that they are legally in the country.

We, South Africans of all races, should be the last people in the world to be xenophobic.

We defeated the apartheid system thanks to solidarity action from all over the world, but especially from Africa. How can we now turn guns, knives and pangas on those fleeing oppression in their own countries?

All of us owe a debt of gratitude to other Africans. Oliver Tambo and hundreds of other Eastern Cape revolutionaries and freedom fighters were welcomed as exiles in many African countries during our long struggle for freedom . This province is a place where xenophobia must never be allowed to take hold.

All who live in this country must know that if people are made scapegoats for the problems afflicting us simply on the basis of their country of origin, we will be on a slippery slope towards regionalism, tribalism, new forms of racism and division. As it is, we are already fractured and not united along race, class and gender lines. Such divisions provide a poor foundation for enduring democracy, prosperity and peace. If current xenophobic tendencies are allowed to grow, they will simply compound our crises. Our collective efforts to construct a caring, humane society out of the rubble of our divided past will come to nothing.

We have no choice but to take a stand against xenophobia.

Azwell Banda, Russell Grinker and Siv Helen Hesjedal are development activists involved in the East London Anti-Xenophobia Collective. They write in their private capacities

l At 10am tomorrow, the province’s Anti-Xenophobia Collective will be hosting a public discussion at the University of Fort Hare’s ABC Hall, East London campus, on the road ahead. Everyone is invited.

June 23 2008 at 07:29AM Source: IOL

Disgruntled residents in Atteridgeville have vowed to fight on until they have been allocated RDP houses by the Tshwane Metro Council. The residents had previously tried to occupy a stretch of land in Lotus Gardens, west of Pretoria.

Pretoria West police stepped in and stopped the residents from moving on to the land.

The residents, some of whom claim that they have been on the housing waiting list for the past 10 years, said they feared that the land could be sold to private developer who would then build expensive houses.

Joseph Ngoetjana, spokesperson for the residents, said they agreed at a report-back meeting on Saturday that they would continue to fight until the municipality had allocated those houses.

“The people want action. They want to invade the land to show government that they seriously want RDP houses,” said Ngoetjana.

He said they could not meet executive mayor Dr Gwen Ramokgopa as planned on June 17.

“Instead of meeting the mayor, we met with the mayoral committee member for housing, Absalom Ditshoke and his colleague Subesh Pillay (mayoral committee member for public works and infrastructure development),” said Ngoetjana.

He said the meeting with Ditshoke and Pillay was not fruitful.

“We are prepared to fight on until our demands have been met by the municipality.

“We are arranging a march to the executive mayor’s office.

“If we do not get any response from the executive mayor’s office, we will be forced to invade the land,” Ngoetjana said.

Stop the Xenephobic Attacks in Alexandra & Elsewhere!, by the Anti-Privatization Forum & the Alexandra Vukuzenzele Crisis Committee, May 2008

Abahlali baseMjondolo Statement on the Xenophobic Attacks in Johannesburg, May 2008

The Foreigner in the Mirror, by Hein Marais, Mail & Guardian, May 2008

Audio interviews with refugees in Cape Town, May 2008

Shattered Myths: The xenophobic violence in South Africa, by Nathan Geffen, Treatment Action Campaign, June 2008

COHRE statement on Xenophobic Attacks, June 2008

The Politics of Fear and the Fear of Politics, by Michael Neocosmos, June 2008

We are not all like that: the monster bares its fangs, by Andile Mngxitama, June 2008

A Crisis of Citizenship, by Richard Pithouse, June 2008

Special Issue of Equal Treatment on ‘Systematic Abuse of Immigrants’, June 2008

What the U.S. Press Got Wrong About South Africa’s Xenophobic Riots, by Kerry Chance, Slate Magazine, June 2008

Also see: The South African Migration Project