PRESS RELEASE
THURSDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2005

THOUSANDS TO MARCH ON COUNCILLOR YACOOB BAIG ON 14 SEPTERMBER 2005

Giya! Giya! Bathengisa Ngathi

WHEN: 8:00 a.m. (sharp), Wednesday, 14 September 2005

WHERE: Leaving from Kennedy Road Community Hall at 286 Kennedy Road, Clare Estate and ending at Baig's offices on the corner of Randles and Spark's Roads in Sydenham.

WHY: To demand land, housing, basic services, democratic development and respect and to give Baig two weeks notice. See the memorandum below for our full demands.

ORGANISERS: The Kennedy Road Development Committee in alliance with other democratic structures in informal settlements on the Clare Estate including Burnwood Road, Foreman Road, Jadhu Place, Lacey Road, Palmiet Road, Puntan's Hill as well as Sydenham Heights and the Jimmy Carter Housing project in Sherwood.

IZINKULUNGWANE ZIZOBHIKISHA ZIPHIKISANA NOMPHATHI WESIGCAWU uYACOOB BAIG
NGO MHLAKA 14 SEPTEMBER 2005

Giya! Giya! Bathengisa Ngathi

NINI: Ngehora lesishayagalombili ekuseni, ngolwesithathu, zingu 14 September 2005.

KUPHI: Ukubhikisha kwabantu kuzosuka ehholo lomphakathi kuKennedy Road ose 286 Kennedy Road, nase Clare Estate. Ukubhikisha kuyophelela emahhovisini akhe umnumzane Baig elisekhoneni lika Randles no Spark's Road eSydenham.

NGOBANI: Lezinkulungwane zifuna imihlaba, izindlu, izidingo zomphakathi ezibalulekile kanye nenhlonipho, baphinde bamnikeza amaviki amabili okushiya esikhundleni umnumzane Baig. (Ungafunda encwadini yezikhalazo engezansi ukubona izidingo zethu eziphelele).

Wednesday - August 24, 2005
Dear All

It was, but all accounts, a great meeting in Wentworth last night. Hopefully someone can send a report. And now the informal settlements in Kennedy Road have decided to organise another march - they're confident that this time they'll get 2 to 3 times the number of people that they got last time. (last time the cops put it at 3 000 and the newspapers at 5 000) i'm sure that in all the meetings leading up to the march we'll be able to negotiate a broad platform that includes all the esf affilates, sydenham, wentworth, students, bayview struggles etc.

Sunday - August 21, 2005 5:57 PM
To:

Dear All

As many of you already know the trial of the Kennedy Road 14 on charges of public violence was scheduled to start on Monday last week. The state made a last minute offer to drop charges against 12 people if 2 would plead guilt to 'Assault with Intention to do Grevious Bodily Harm'. But it was decided not to accept this and to go ahead with the trial. But the state clearly had no real evidence and they dropped the charges and soon as they saw that people were prepared to go to trial.

Shanta Reddy did fantastic (and free) legal work.

Saturday - July 30, 2005 9:45 AM

another shack fire last night. kennedy road. 6 shacks were swept up at around
midnight. the fire brigade got there around 3 in the morning. the way people have to
live their ordinary lives is a complete crisis. and when the shacks don't burn
people still breath in posion in exchange for light and warmth...and all those
hundreds of millions of public money for uShaka.....and people are guilty of 'public
violence' when they burn tires on the road....maybe we should charge sutcliffe and
pather and the rest of the them with 'public violence'. the TAC's wanted posters for

Tuesday - May 23, 2006

it is this Sunday and starts at kennedy road at 7:00 a.m. the distance is 10 kms and all are welcome. all neccessary arrangements have been made. the police are investigating....

http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3255328

Housing crisis is everybody's problem - Sisulu
Minister calls for wealthy to dig into their pockets to help eradicate slums and promote better living for all

May 21, 2006 Edition 1

Christelle Terreblanche

Lindiwe Sisulu, the housing minister, has made a rousing appeal to South Africa's wealthy to help eradicate the country's slums in order to provide dignity for all.

Speaking at an international slum-dwellers conference in Cape Town this week, she said "shelter" was at the moment "a poor man's problem" and not seen as a universal issue.

http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=272180&area=%2fmonitor%2f

Mail & Guardian
19 May 2006

Mabuyakhulu Plans for War on the Poor

Every great city in this world, from ancient Rome to New York, was, at some point, ringed with shacks. Today around one billion people live in shacks and the numbers are growingly rapidly. In South Africa it is often confidently asserted that shack settlements are an apartheid hangover which will soon pass. In fact the number of people living in shacks has almost doubled in the last 12 years.

Two articles from yesterday's Daily News are pasted in below. In the first one the spokesperson for the eThekwini council, Vernon Mchunu, says that rats are carrying terrible diseases in Cato Manor, including the plague, and that council will respond by teaching shack dwellers how to be clean and by clearing slums. Of course this discourse is precisely, and I do mean precisely, the same as that used under apartheid and colonialism to justify previous state attacks on Umkumbane (Cato Manor). Of course the reason why settlements are dangerously unhealthy spaces is because the council refuses to provide decent sanitation and water or any refuse collection. This strategy of forcing people into dangerous squalor by withholding, and even withdrawing basic services, shooting at them when they ask for decent services, then blaming them for the unhygenic conditions, and then violently destroying their homes and communities to 'get rid of unhygenic conditions', seems to have a long term political utility.....

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=285&fArticleId=3240095

Thursday - May 11, 2006 10
Shack Fires are No Accident
The Mercury

by Raj Patel and Richard Pithouse

Before the Treatment Action Campaign successfully politicised AIDS it was widely assumed that people killed by the HI virus had died from natural causes. Now, outside of the Presidency, it is widely accepted that people who die from AIDS are most often killed by a profoundly immoral policy rather than a treatable virus.