Abahlali kwaLanga TRA Press Statement
19 January 2013

Residents in Joe Slovo and Langa TRA continue to be sidelined by corruption

We as Abahlali baseMjondolo (ABM) are not satisfied by the way the government treats our communities. The worst part is that those who are richer do not feel ashamed to steal from the poor. We have been crying to our government, but we have been ignored.

The only thing we are fed by these people we are looking up to is lies. In the Langa TRA’s, ever since the Housing Development Agency (HDA) took over, corruption has increased. People have been robbed of their houses. They have been told to sign in order to get their housing but nothing came up. Later they were told the houses they had signed for were not theirs. These families now are stranded. They are being kept by their extended families.

http://www.theweekender.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=83638

State turns against shack dwellers

by Jeanne Hromnik

Published: 2009/10/10 09:03:17 AM

THE appellants in the Joe Slovo shack dwellers’ case against Thubelisha Homes might be forgiven for thinking the law is an idiot and an ass (and a bachelor, no doubt) after a recent ruling of the Constitutional Court.

Five Constitutional Court judges unanimously upheld last year’s high court ruling by Judge President John Hlophe that the 20000-strong community be evicted and relocated from the Joe Slovo informal settlement adjoining Langa, Cape Town’s oldest township, to Delft, 34km away.

COHRE, the UN affiliated human rights NGO based in Switzerland, has just released a scathing report on the N2 Gateway project. Click here for an archive of entries on Joe Slovo and here and here for an archive of entries on the Symphony Way occupation.

For comment on how the N2 Gateway has effected the lives of poor people in Cape Town, contact:

Ashraf Cassiem at 076 186 1408 (Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign)
Kareemah Linneveldt 078 492 0943 (Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign)

Click here to read this article in a word document, here to read a version published by Pambazuka and here to read previous entries on the Joe Slovo settlement.

The deficiency of reality in the Joe Slovo judgment

Kate Tissington
15 June 2009

The highest Court in South Africa has decided the fate of the 20 000 Joe Slovo informal settlement residents to be evicted to Delft to make way for the N2 Gateway housing project, in what is a disappointing and frustrating judgment that orders their eviction, albeit on the proviso that engagement occurs and that certain mitigating measures are undertaken.

Video footage from the Cape Town High Court demonstration earlier in the year - from SACSIS

Housing and Evictions at the N2 Gateway Project in Delft
A Report for Abahlali baseMjondolo
Kerry Chance
May 8, 2008

Anti-Eviction Campaign Office, Symphony Way, Delft, Cape Town.

Click here to read this document in word with footnotes and here to see some photographs.

Solidarity: Widely distributed & read in AbM branches. Just as Izwe Labampofu was read in Cape Town

PDF copies of the pages are attached below.

Updates are being added below - scroll down to see them or click here to see the Joe Slovo solidarity digital archive.

http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=3131

Since the launch in 2004 of N2 Gateway, Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s pet ‘flagship’ project has run into problem after problem: delayed delivery, cost over-runs, above all lack of consultation. In their 2004-5 report the Development Action Group, an NGO, wrote “The top-down approach in the N2 project undermines its overall sustainability… The casual, continued and increasing practice of excluding people from decision-making about development processes that directly affect their lives is an obstacle that communities are unlikely to tolerate for much longer.”