http://www.opendemocracy.net/christopher-mcmichael/cape-town-model-state-violence-and-military-urbanism

The Cape Town model, state violence and military urbanism

Christopher McMichael, Open Democracy, 5 January 2012

Lead by the pugnacious Helen Zille, the Democratic Alliance is South Africa’s official opposition party and the governing party of the Western Cape, the only one of nine national provinces not under the control of the ruling ANC. Despite recent successes the party has failed to win substantial support among South Africa’s black majority, due to a widespread perception that, notwithstanding its meretricious rhetoric of an ‘ Open Society’, the party remains a bastion of white privilege. Further scepticism has been created by the parties’ aggressively neoliberal policies which propose to reduce the country’s already partial post-apartheid social welfare system . However, the DA is hoping that the increasingly overt internecine fighting with the ANC will alter South Africa’s political landscape to give it a credible chance of becoming the ruling party by the end of the decade. With the ANC beset by corruption scandals, a growing intolerance for political dissent and the seeming inability to robustly tackle growing levels of social inequality, the DA is attempting to position itself as a pragmatic and efficient government in waiting.

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-14-the-rise-and-of-rastafari

The rise and rise of the Rastafari

NIREN TOLSI - Oct 14 2011

The reggae band Horry Quagga is busting a groove on a Sunday afternoon in Wesbank, a township near Delft, north-east of Cape Town.

Band member Barry Korana is tongue-twisting a series of clicks into the microphone, the quills in his animal skin crown dancing to crunchy guitar chords. The combination of reggae music, vocal acrobatics and plumes of marijuana smoke lends a spectral quality to the performance.

The one utopia that South Africa may be able to avoid?

Dylan Valley and Aryan Kaganof's documentary on the siege of Hangberg is a textbook of orienteering: it brings together the overarching questions South Africans use to make sense of their experience.

What would white-styled rule in post 94 South Africa look like? Valley and Kaganof show us the Western Cape's Helen Zille managing her way through civil disobedience. Her burial of history and larger issues in favor of bureaucratizing each social problem is caught in its zero hour. The Zillean society as well run corporation and parties as management stylists is shown as a simple failure of political imagination as blood flows and lives are ruined for the sake of a council by-law.

Contents

Editorial: 2011 Local government elections

Making sense of municipal revolts

The service delivery myth

Hangberg: A question of land denied

Xenophobia: Looking back, moving forward

Asset Based Community Development (ABCD): An overview

http://africasacountry.com/2011/02/22/the-uprising/

The Uprising of Hangberg

Sean Jacobs

“The Uprising of Hangberg” is filmmaking at its incendiary best. Part agitprop piece, testimonies, campaign document, and popular history, the film recounts the violent events of September 2010 when municipal police on the orders of the Cape Town’s Democratic Alliance (DA)-run council invaded the favela on the edge of the Hangberg mountain in Houtbay, outside Cape Town. What transpired is now the common response by authorities in South Africa when the poor majority demand rights. Houtbay, for those trying to place it, situated on the southern edge of Cape Town, is a combination of declining fishing industry and a reservoir of cheap black and coloured labor on the one hand, and, on the other, white privilege. With scenes recalling Apartheid’s police state, cops stormed into houses, dragged out residents, shot people in the eyes and assaulted pensioners and pregnant women. The residents are mostly coloured and loyal to the DA. The city council’s spin doctors quickly framed events in the local, compliant, media. As reports from Hangberg filtered over local radio and on TV news, a template emerged: the Hangberg residents were illegal squatters, were living on a firebreak, most of them were criminals selling drugs (especially the Rastafarians amongst them), and the city and provincial government (personified by its “Iron Lady” Premier, Helen Zille) had residents’ best interests at heart. Filmmakers Aryan Kaganof and Dylan Valley, decided to drive out to Hangberg and film events. What they pieced together–with help from footage shot by local activists–puts a lie to mainstream propaganda. Affected residents also turned on the DA. So much so that the city, and the DA tried to astroturf the film (see also below) with little success. With local government elections looming in South Africa, it is unclear whether the events will cost the DA, but the film suggests it may portend a shift in local politics–especially coloured working class politics–in the town and perhaps further afield in the Western Cape province. I sent Dylan Valley a few questions.

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Hangberg-protest-documented-20101102

Hangberg protest documented

Hlengiwe Mnguni, News24

Cape Town - On September 21, the community of Hangberg on the slopes of the Sentinel mountain in Hout Bay was catapulted into the spotlight when an operation by the City of Cape Town to demolish illegally built homes quickly degenerated into a violent confrontation between the police and residents.

The events of that day are portrayed in The Uprising of Hangberg, a documentary by Aryan Kaganof and Dylan Valley, which they say aims to tell "the other side of the story".