Mail and Guardian
Submitted by abahlali on Thu, 2007-04-26 15:24.
Mail and Guardian | newspaper story | SAPA Available at
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=305766&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/
Pretoria, South Africa
24 April 2007 06:56
The United Nations's chief housing watchdog called on Tuesday for a halt to forced evictions in South Africa, saying people were being left homeless in breach of the country's Constitution.
"I am calling for a moratorium on evictions across the country until policy is brought in line with constitutional provisions," Miloon Kothari, the special rapporteur on adequate housing, told reporters.
Despite the fact that the right to adequate housing is enshrined in the Constitution, increasing numbers of people are being removed from dilapidated buildings by the security forces.
Submitted by abahlali on Tue, 2007-04-24 22:57.
Duncan Guy | Mail and Guardian | newspaper story http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=305591&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/
24 April 2007 07:16
Too often land for the poor is demarcated in apartheid fashion far from employment opportunities, President Thabo Mbeki told the South African Local Government Association (Salga) conference in Midrand on Monday.
"Except for a few cases, there is still a settlement pattern for poor black people to be on the outskirts of town, far from employment," he said. "It is unacceptable for the allocation of land close to employment centres to be solely for the upper end of the income market."
Submitted by abahlali on Tue, 2007-04-24 17:08.
Mail and Guardian | newspaper story | Sumayya Ismail http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=305261&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/
19 April 2007 06:16
Miloon Kothari, United Nations special rapporteur for adequate housing, was appalled at the living conditions of Johannesburg's poor. “These are emergency conditions … it's worse than I expected,” he said on Tuesday, walking through San Jose, a dilapidated, 16-storey building in Berea.
Kothari is on a two-week visit to assess the state of housing and land rights in the country. Guided by researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals), he visited poor peripheral communities and derelict inner-city buildings like San Jose to gauge the government’s efforts to care for the housing needs of the poor.
Submitted by abahlali on Fri, 2007-04-13 17:04.
Mail and Guardian | newspaper_story | Niren Tolsi http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=304570&area=/insight/insight__national/
Niren Tolsi
13 April 2007 07:30
Lying on beds, the Kennedy Five smile weakly and raise their fists as Anglican Bishop Rubin Phillip enters their hospital dormitory in Durban's Westville Prison. It is day 11 of their hunger strike.
S'thembiso Bhengu, S'bongiseni Gwala, Cosmos Nkwanyane, Thina Khanyile and M'du Ngqulunga, of the Kennedy Road shack settlement, were arrested in connection with the death of a suspected criminal, Mzwakhe Sithole.
Submitted by Abahlali_3 on Thu, 2007-03-08 09:23.
Mail and Guardian | newspaper article | Richard Pithouse 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.
Submitted by Abahlali_3 on Thu, 2007-03-08 09:18.
Mail and Guardian | Richard Pithouse Mail and Guardian
“No Vote” Campaigns are not a Rejection of Democracy
The Landless Peoples’ Movement (LPM) in Gauteng and Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban shack dwellers’ movement have both mobilised shack dwellers. And, at different times, both movements have, through democratic processes, arrived at a ‘no vote slogan’. The national LPM organised under the banner of ‘No Land, No Vote’ at the time of the 2004 national elections. More recently Abahlali baseMjondolo has organised under the banner of ‘No Land, No House, No Vote’ in the lead up to the forthcoming municipal elections.
Submitted by abahlali on Sun, 2007-02-18 18:12.
CSSS | Jadu Place | Mail and Guardian | newspaper story | Niren Tolsi Available, with photo, at
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=299197&area=/insight/insight__national/
17 February 2007 11:59
A three year old boy, naked from the navel down, squats and defecates outside the ramshackle crèche at Jadu Place, a shack settlement housing more than 3 000 people near the suburb of Puntans Hill in eThekwini (Durban).
His is a tiny contribution to the malodorous thickness where the pit latrines are found and around which snotty-nosed kids run. The municipality has provided the community with two flush toilets for women, and one for men, but they are down a steep slope at the very bottom of the settlement. Not easily found in the dark or if you are old. This is, undoubtedly, a shitty existence.
Submitted by Raj on Mon, 2007-02-12 04:48.
Mail and Guardian | newspaper story | Pearlie Joubert | solidarity Here's a story which mentions another 'no vote' campaign, this time in Khayelitsha, organised from within the shacks. Sadly, the article reproduces precisely the standard narratives of criminality in shacks against which Abahlali have consistently railed, in reports such as Make Crime History or The Strong Poor and the Police. Yet the existence of another no-vote campaign, mentioned even in passing in a national newspaper, points to a widespread understanding by poor people about their only recourse in getting elected officials to listen to them - other mechanisms of democracy having failed.
Submitted by Raj on Wed, 2006-12-13 10:47.
Mail and Guardian | newspaper_story | Niren Tolsi http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=292905&area=/insight/insight__national/
08 December 2006 11:59
On the far side of left
Niren Tolsi
Mass Action 101 User’s Manual: Chanting “Down Babylon!” is to be encouraged -- but not when directed at fellow far-left activists.
Chanting members of the KwaZulu-Natal shack-dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape’s Anti-Eviction Campaign raised major hackles when they invaded the Social Movement Indaba’s (SMI) five-day annual pow-wow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on Sunday, interrupting it for three noisy hours.
Submitted by abahlali on Sat, 2006-11-25 21:00.
Mail and Guardian | newspaper story | S'bu Zikode Letter to the Editor, Mail & Guardian, November 24 to November 30 2006,
http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?area=mg_flat&articleid=10182
We need Khans In the shackdwellers’ movement, we do not have the money to train as academics or send our children to train as academics. Therefore, we rely on others to bring back the fruits of their knowledge to the poor.
University of KwaZulu-Natal lecturer Fazel Khan is one of few academics who brings his learning to the people. For UKZN to bring him before a disciplinary committee is unacceptable.
The universities must work to build more Khans. If they try to destroy them, they, as institutions, will just be about individuals getting good jobs for themselves -- they will not be about the society any more.
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