Actually the report found that self organised electricity connections radically reduce the incidence of fires.....Anyone who has lived in a shack knows this to be true. Amazing that the state exploits this tragedy to take forward its campaign to deny shack dwellers access electricity instead of to provide it!

http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=17453

Anger over family’s fire deaths
16 Dec 2008
Shirley Jones

Survivors of a blaze that killed a family of five at the KwaDukuza informal settlement late on Sunday night waited with community members and local government officials for hours yesterday to discuss the tragedy with Welfare MEC Meshack Radebe.

http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=17407

Demolition: uMngeni gets court order; residents evicted
15 Dec 2008

Thando Mgaga

More than a hundred residents were left homeless after the uMngeni Municipality bulldozed their shacks to the ground at kwaKani informal settlement near the Cedara College yesterday.

Families with children — among them orphans in the care of neighbours — were left to fend for themselves in the rain.

They were left without blankets and food and the demolishers did not allow them to remove their belongings before bulldozing their shacks to the ground.

ugroundWork ehlangene nabasebenzi basefemini (edampi) ngaseSobantu
eMgungundlouvu

Sizobe simasha sisuka eCity Hall ngo LweSihlanu mhlazingu 12 ku Disemba

Sizohambisa inqubomgomo kumphathidolobha ngokungagculiseki kwethu ngalokhu:
* Ukungambandakanywa kwabantu bomphakathi lapho kuthathwa izinqumo
ngokuthuthukiswa kwezindawo lapho kulahlwa khona (edampi)
* Ukuphathwa kwedampi nemithetho engavumeli abasebenzi ukungena edampi
* Ukuhlanzeka kwedolobha laseMgungundlovu jikelele

Wonke umuntu wamukelekile

Masihlangane ekhoneni lemigwaqo uEast no Prince Alfred ngesikhathi

http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=17340

Dumpsite pickers protest
14 Dec 2008
Bongani Hans

“We may be poor, but we are not criminals. We need the right to pick up [waste] from the dump [Msunduzi landfill site] without being beaten up by your security guards.”

This was the plea from “fed up” waste pickers, who marched to the city hall on Friday to hand over a memorandum to the Msunduzi Municipality. About 100 protesters said they are angry about the everyday physical abuse they allegedly suffer at the hands of the municipality’s security guards stationed at the landfill site.

Residents told, no budget for homes
17 Aug 2008
Thando Mgaga

While frustrated Eastwood residents grabbed land owned by the Msunduzi
Municipality on Tuesday, nearby Thembalihle, Tamboville and Q-section
residents are fed up with living in mud houses and are demanding
low-cost housing from the municipality.

Chairman of the Eastwood Community Forum, Fred Wagner, said the
municipality allocated R58,6 million in the current financial year to
build houses in these communities, but there is nothing to indicate that