MEMORANDUM TO THE MAYOR OF CITY OF CAPE TOWN

Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape

Email: abmwesterncape@abahlali.org
website: www.khayelitshastruggles.com

Dear Madam Mayor
Date: 22 October 2008

We (the shack dwellers of Khayelitsha) would like to bring our concerns into your attention and we note with great concerns that people who are living at informal settlements within the City of Cape Town are ignored and undermined by the City and we therefore call on the City of Cape Town:

A Memorandum of Demands to Mayor Obed Mlaba

Submitted by Abahlali baseMjondolo and Allied Organisations on Friday, 28 September 2007

We the shack dwellers of Durban & Pinetown and our comrades from around the province are democrats and loyal citizens of the Republic of South Africa. We stand here because we are being evicted from our homes and forced off the farms and out of the cities. We stand here because we are dying in shack fires because we do not have electricity. We stand here because we are being raped when we try to find a safe place to go to the toilet in the night. We stand here because we are denied the right to visit the graves of our ancestors. We stand here because in many settlements thousands of people share each tap and toilet. We stand here because children are being forced to stay in their parent's shacks long after they are grown and have their own children. We stand here because we fear that 2010 will be our doom. We stand here because your Municipality breaks the law every time it demolishes our shacks and evicts us without a court order. We stand here because it is clear to us that the rich do not want to give us any space in the cities, in the rural areas or any where in the country and that the politicians have decided to be the partners of the rich. We stand here because our councillors do not represent us and so we have to represent ourselves.

MEMORANDUM HANDED TO SENIOR SUPERINTENDENT GLEN NAYAGER OF THE SYDENHAM POLICE STATION

Tuesday 10 April 2007

Glen Nayager you have vandalized our humanity. We are here to reclaim our police station. Neither you nor your powerful friends own this police station. This police station belongs to the people who live in this area. We live in shacks and we are wearing red shirts and demanding the right to continue live here in the city, to live in decent houses, to have access to electricity and water and toilets while we wait for these houses and for our children to be able to attend the schools here. But this does not mean that we are not people. None of this makes us criminals. We are part of the people to whom this police station belongs. You have broken the trust of a large part of the people for whom you are supposed to be working. You were supposed to be our servant, not our oppressor. Since you were entrusted with this police station the police in this area have treated all shack dwellers as criminals. And since we united as Abahlali baseMjondolo you have constantly harassed and attacked our movement. Your job is to protect all of the people in your area but you have decided to make the poor your enemy. You have made this police station famous across the whole city and sometimes the whole country and even in other countries for its racism, its violence, its cruelty, its criminality and its brutal oppression of an organisation that has only asked for what is right.

A Memorandum of Demands
Wednesday, September 14, 2005

We the people of Ward 25, democrats and loyal citizens of the Republic of South Africa, note that this country is rich because of the theft of our land and because of our work in the farms, mines, factories, kitchens and laundries of the rich. We can not and will not continue to suffer the way that we do and so we unite behind the following demands:

For too long our communities have survived in substandard and informal
housing, and for too long we have been promised land, only to be betrayed.
Therefore, we demand adequate land and housing to live in safety, health and dignity.