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Outcry over new Slums Bill

May 13, 2007 Edition 1

Fred Kockott

PROPOSED new laws aimed at outlawing the rental of shacks and compelling municipalities to implement slums clearance programmes look set to spark debates about homelessness in the province.

Announcing the draft legislation, Department of Housing spokesman Lennox Mabaso said the "Slums Bill" revolutionised the powers of municipalities to act against land invaders and "slum lords". It also compelled municipal authorities to address housing backlogs.

http://www.sundaytribune.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2453595

Shack dwellers' fury erupts

March 20, 2005 Edition 1

Fred Kockott

Amid burning car and tractor tyres and flaming, lice-infested mattresses, Durban police battled for more than four hours yesterday to disperse a crowd of about 750 protesting shack dwellers who had barricaded a major arterial route into Durban.

"We are tired of living and walking in s . . t . The council must allocate land for housing us. Instead they are giving it to property developers to make money," said Alfred Mdletshe, pointing to a recently levelled site adjacent to the shack settlement.

The police reported that there were more than 6000 'illegal' protests in 2005. The vast majority of these protests were aimed at local targets, most were organised in shack settlements and many took the form of road blockades. This tactic was used with particular effect in Cape Town and has recently been used to good effect from the Orange Farm settlement in Johannesburg. The state responded to the 2005 national outbreak of road blockades by sending in the National Intelligence Agency to find the Third Force. Much of the NGO left responded by dismissing these protests, protests from which they were entirely alienated, as 'spontaneous' and continuing to obsess about which individual (with no mass constituency) made which (entirely futile) gesture of proposing what strategy for 'the left' at some or other NGO forum. Both views assume a lack of serious political thinking in the settlements from which these road blockades were being organised. Because the Kennedy Road blockade led to the emergence of a large and sustained movement it has now assumed something of a mythic character.