Slumming it with the NGO jet-set
NIREN TOLSI: COMMENT - Oct 20 2008 05:00

The national Housing Department and Slum Dwellers International (SDI) hosted a workshop in Durban last weekend focused on building partnerships between slum-dwellers and various governments.

From this talk-shop emerged the Durban Declaration, which, according to SDI president Jockin Arputham, will serve as a "rallying point for lobby and persuasion" at the World Urban Forum, a biennial meeting established by the United Nations to examine issues of urbanisation. It will be held in the Chinese city of Nanjing in November.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-10-16-three-horsemen-visit-durban

Three horsemen visit Durban
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Oct 16 2008 06:00

In the past weeks the streets of eThekwini appear to have been preparing for the horsemen of the apocalypse.

For three weeks a wildcat bus driver strike has left miserable commuters huddled in lashing rain waiting for taxis or simply forced to walk to their destinations.

The thunder of electric storms sounds like the hooves of Pestilence's horse drumming in anticipation as the rubbish piles up in the rain because garbage collectors have also been on strike. Nineteen municipal buses and five trucks from the city's Durban solid waste (DSW) department have been torched -- the flames resembling War's red horse.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-08-07-party-tricks-and-power-play

Party tricks and power play
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, KWAZULU-NATAL - Aug 07 2008 06:00

If enough wine has flowed during an evening, eThekwini municipal manager Michael Sutcliffe has been known to start balancing empty bottles on his bald pate.

This late night party trick serves as a metaphor for what Sutcliffe feels is the hardest job he's done: managing South Africa's third-largest metropolitan area with close to 3,5-million residents and an annual budget of R17,4-billion.

No end to woes for refugees
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Jul 22 2008 06:00

The signs of having lived for two months in a state of constant flux are evident on the face of Amsi Wilondga. A Congolese national displaced by xenophobic violence in Durban, his eyes are sunken and have gained a dullness from the stress of an uncertain future.

Forced from his home in Pinetown, he moved from a refugee site to a shelter, to sleeping on the steps of City Hall and now to a mattress in a makeshift tent in the central business district's Albert Park.

"Our very big problem is water. We don't have permission to get water from the municipality taps," he says. The park's community centre has running water, showers and toilets.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-07-10-destitute-cold-hungry-and-beaten-up

caught on cellphone:
* http://www.youtube.com/v/WBY0v2yx81Q
* http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8426042120707645558&hl=en

Destitute, cold, hungry — and beaten up
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Jul 10 2008 17:46

A pregnant Congolese woman was beaten by private security guards hired by the eThekwini municipality on Thursday evening as foreign nationals displaced by xenophobia staged a sit-in on the steps of Durban’s City Hall.

http://mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=332429&area=/insight/insight__national/

Shack dwellers take on Slums Act
Mail & Guardian

Niren Tolsi

16 February 2008 11:59

Shack dwellers in KwaZulu-Natal have set out to show that the provincial government acted unconstitutionally in promulgating its controversial anti-slums legislation in August last year.

This was disclosed in papers filed in the Durban High Court by the Wits Law Clinic, acting on behalf of the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, which represents about 25 000 people in Durban and Pieter-maritzburg.

http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=319877&area=%2finsight%2finsight__national%2f

An oppressive pall hangs over the Motala Heights informal settlement in Pinetown near Durban. It comes not from the dump site nearby the wood-and-iron houses nor from sewage, but rather from the clampdown on basic civil liberties -- the freedom of movement and political association.

“Ever since we became more aware of our rights and started fighting for them we have been living with this sense of threat from the landlord [Ricky Govender],” says resident Shamita Naidoo, who lives on a property adjacent to Govender. “He has sent me a letter saying I am prohibited from entering his land -- where my mother lives, in the house my parents built and where I was born. I will be arrested otherwise.”

http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=310165&area=%2finsight%2finsight__national%2f

State's cure for shack farms
Niren Tolsi

Critics of the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Bill have drawn comparisons between it and the corralling and deportation of Jews in Nazi Germany. The Bill’s defenders in government, however, consider it a “revolutionary” way of preventing slumlords from renting out shacks and controlling the proliferation of informal settlements.

“The Bill has less to do with people as human beings and more to do with property-owners, the rich and people as livestock,” says Sbu Zikhode, president of the shack-dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, commenting on the Bill’s proposal for “transit camps” in which evicted shack dwellers will be housed until permanent accommodation has been found.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=304570&area=/insight/insight__national/