Floods Rock the City

Joint AbM and AEC Press Statement
24 September 2008

Gugulethu -- About 50 residents from Thambo Square informal settlement have been displaced from their homes to a local community hall as a result of flooding in their shacks (Cape Town's heavy rain this winter has left a lot of people homeless in the City.

The devastated group early this morning marched to the office of their local Department of Social Development seeking immediate relief or intervention such as building material for their shacks, plastic to put over their roof, blankets and a temporary sleeping place. However all they were able to get from Social Development was an unpleasing response. People were told that the ANC government had nothing to do with their situation and they must go to DA. When trying to question the unpleasing response by government, instead of receiving a proper report, the police were called to intimidate and threaten the residents. Residents then went back to their flooded homes in Thambo Square informal settlement.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20080921085429202C416922

Slums built on the ashes of apartheid

September 21 2008 at 01:42PM

By Imraan Buccus

Last Saturday almost the entire Foreman Road shack settlement in Clare Estate, Durban, burnt down, leaving thousands destitute.

The next morning residents found a body in the ashes

There was a devastating fire in the same settlement in 2007.

The photographs from the morning after are apocalyptic. The nearby Kennedy Road settlement has had seven major fires in 2008.

Update: Please note that after vigorous protest at the arrival of bulldozers on the site of the fire without consultation the City agreed to allow Foreman Road residents to decide whether they wanted to rebuild themselves or stay in an on site transit camp.

http://antieviction.org.za/2008/09/21/western-cape-aec-in-durban-for-shack-fire-summit-alliance-meeting-and-to-support-comrades-at-foreman-rd-who-are-being-subject-to-illegal-demolitions/

Breaking News: Siyanda shack-dwellers, facing eviction from the MR577 Freeway site, are staging ongoing marches to halt building and allocations at the Kulula Housing Project. The contractors have just been stopped from proceeding with the patently unfair allocation of housing that has been undertaken without any form of meaningful consultation. There is a heavy police presence again today and the situation is tense. (There is an article in yesterday's Isolezwe here.)

Statement in solidarity after the Foreman Road fire

Power to the Poor

Even if our whole settlement burns down, the reality is the land on which our community lives will remain our home. A fire, like the devastating one yesterday at Foreman Rd, will not change the way we view our homes. No matter how disadvantaged our communities are, we will not allow individuals who are on power to label our homes as slums because once we allow that they'll will want to eliminate our homes and throw us in unsuitable asbestos filled temporary relocation areas.

These unnecessary fires can be prevented if our government was caring and democratic. But this government is only democratic and caring about issues that matter to their pocket book. Whatever we, as shack-dwellers, say to them does not matter. Only our votes matter so that they can attain more power and enrich themselves further.

Foreman Road Abahlali baseMjondolo Branch
Press Statement, 10:00 a.m., 13 September 2008

Massive Fire Devastates the Foreman Road Settlement

morning sun. man. smoke. ruins.

A fire started at the bottom of the Foreman Road settlement at around 3: 00 a.m. this morning. There is only one tap in the settlement and it was impossible to fight the fire. Most of the settlement, at least a thousand shacks, burnt very quickly. Our neighbours called the fire brigade and they came and put the fire out. In 2004 the Municipality said that they would install fire hydrants. They started the work but never finished it. We have been left to burn.

Update: A summary of the report has now been published at Pambazuka and it has been discussed in an article in the Sunday Tribune

Monday 8 September 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Release

A Big Devil in the Jondolos
Abahlali baseMjondolo Launches a Report on Shack Fires in Advance of the City Wide Shack Fire Summit on 22 September 2008

This picture, by the M&G, is from another fire in Kennedy Road earlier in the year.

Well more than a hundred shacks burnt down in the Kennedy Road settlement this morning. This is the 7th fire in the settlement this year.

Abahlali baseMjondolo condemns the eThekwini Municipality's inhuman 2001 decision to stop electrifying shacks on the grounds that it is too expensive. There is a direct link between this decision and the fires as the fires are caused by candles and paraffin stoves.

Text of a speech by S'bu Zikode at the Diakonia Council of Churches Economic Justice Forum - an audio recording of the speech, including the discussion afterwards, is available from Diakonia. Click here to read the report on the speech in the Sowetan.

Land and Housing

Thursday 28, 2008

I have been asked to speak on the burning issues of land and housing. I only get these invitations because of the strength of the movement of which I am part and so, on behalf of Abahlali baseMjondolo, I thank Diakonia for this platform.

Abahlali baseMjondolo has just won a major court victory against evictions. But outside the court the eThekwini Municipality is currently demolishing shacks in the Siyanda settlement. There is no court order and so, according to South African law, these demolitions are illegal and criminal acts. Media are urged to rush to the scene.

The shacks that are being demolished were built a month ago after renters in the area were left homeless when shack owners were moved to RDP houses and the renters illegally left homeless. This happens in every relocation or upgrade in Durban and in South Africa it is a completely illegal and in fact criminal act to leave someone homeless. The people who have been made homeless again today, just after being made homeless last month, will rebuild again. What else can they do? This is the cruel reality of the government's plans to eradicate shacks: give houses to shack owners and leave shack renters, the poorest of the poor, homeless and desperate.