http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/national.aspx?ID=BD4A441217

UNITED Nations special rapporteur for adequate housing Miloon Kothari has criticised SA’s housing policy, saying there appeared to be an increasing gap between delivery of housing and legislation — which could affect development.

Kothari, who is halfway through a two-week visit to examine and report to the UN on the state of land and housing rights in SA, said yesterday that preliminary impressions after visiting Northern Cape, Limpopo and Gauteng were that policy at national level, such as the social inclusion policy, was not filtering down to local government, and so increasing segregation.

State land for housing
•Wed, 18 Apr 2007

By Bheki Mbanjwa

THE shortage of land suitable for housing developments is soon to be a thing of the past, according to the MEC for housing, Mike Mabuyakhulu.

“The National Department of Housing is currently leading an intergovernmental structure which is preparing the establishment of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to which all state-owned land will be transferred,” he said.

Mabuyakhulu went on to say that the “initiative is being undertaken to ensure that our housing programmes can access suitable, serviceable and affordable land in close proximity to areas of economic opportunities”. He was speaking during his budget speech for the 2007/2008 financial year.

http://www.sundaytribune.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3781473

Front Page
Bail for five in alleged killing of a thief

April 15, 2007 Edition 1

Jani Meyer

FIVE men accused of the murder of an alleged thief were granted bail in the Durban Magistrate's Court after a 12-day hunger strike.

Looking frail, the men stared in front of them during the proceedings, which only lasted a few minutes.

S'thembiso Ngcobo, 32, S'bongiseni Gwala, 34, Cosmos Nkwanyane, 31, Thina Khanyile, 27, and Mduduzi Ngqulunga of the Kennedy Road informal settlement have been charged with the murder of Mzwakhe Sithole, 26.

A left in our slums

The waves of destruction visited on human communities and nature by the increasing subordination of society to capital are ripping through the world with an ever more frenetic relentlessness. Everything sacred is profaned – destroyed, plundered and sold, and then simulated and resold. Nothing is safe: music, architecture, medicine, journalism, sport, spiritual yearning, community, the academy, resistance – nothing. Everywhere the poor are becoming poorer and the rich richer. But the left is generally failing to develop thinking about viable routes towards meaningful confrontations with domination. With the possible exception of Venezuela Third World nationalism has degenerated to an alibi for local relations of domination or, as in the case of NEPAD, an alibi for the rule of global capital. The old faith in ‘the party’ is, especially after the failure of the Brazilian Workers’ Party to use Lula’s victory to good effect, generally in tatters. The situation is such that most ‘left’ intellectuals are working for domination. This most commonly takes the forms of occupying a niche market in the business of mopping up scattered resistances and turning them into ‘civil society’ or seeking to mask their singularity, which is the original source of their power, via symbolic subjection to theoretical abstractions.

Dissent Can Still Get You Killed

On Youth Day we are asked to gather in stadiums to hear big men celebrate what our democracy offers to ordinary people. A better way to celebrate the spirit of the Soweto Uprising would be to listen to what ordinary people have to say to big men. But this, in Durban anyway, remains dangerous.

In the march local government elections there were two primary challenges to the ANC from within the poor and working class African constituencies that it claims as its own. In the shack settlements nestled into the valleys in the suburbs of Clare Estate and Reservoir Hills longstanding ANC supporters were unhappy with their councillors. They felt that the nomination process had been rigged and decided to boycott the election under the slogan ‘No Land, No House, No Vote’. Across town in Umlazi township, a group of longstanding ANC and SACP activists were unhappy with their councillor, Bhekisasa Xulu, and claimed that he had withheld ANC membership cards to engineer his renomination despite widespread unhappiness with his conduct. They decided to put up an independent candidate, Zamani Mthethwa, to oppose Xulu. In both instances the response to these expressions of open dissent was swift, brutal and clearly illegal.

Shack Fires to Lead to More Mass Action

by Kerry Chance

On Thursday 17 August, two hundred residents of various Durban shack settlements joined prominent religious, academic and political figures in a memorial service for Mr. Zithulele Dhlomo, 70, who died in a sudden fire last Saturday.

The memorial was held in the Kennedy Road community hall, where broken windows let in the chilly night air. Activists along with Archbishop Reuben Phillip and poet Dennis Brutus called for substantive and immediate improvement to housing and services. Amongst red-white-and-black banners that read: “We demand decent housing,” mourners lit candles and sang, intermittently dancing and toyi-toying.

Ndebele's Humiliation
16 January 2006
(See attachment for version with pictures)

by Raj Patel

This weekend, KwaZulu-Natal Premier, S’bu Ndebele went on the campaign trail, assisted by incumbent ANC councillors panning for our votes this election season. It was a shambles, with rallies postponed and backfiring in a number of constituencies. This didn’t happen because the ANC is unpopular. Far from it – the ideals of justice, equality, democracy and dignity for which the majority fought against apartheid are held more strongly than ever. It’s not the people who are rejecting the ANC – it’s the leadership.

Human Beings are Living There

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. Despite this politicians like KZN Housing MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu insist that shack settlements will be eradicated in time for the 2010 World Cup. While houses are being built they are certainly not being built at anything remotely like the rate to enable Mabuyakhulu to eradicate the 250 000 settlements identified by his department in his lifetime. His plan is to pass new legislation enabling municipalities to set up their own Red Ants units to destroy shack settlements. He is planning a legislated version of Operation Murambatsvina.