Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

“Leaders are meant to lead and to be led [by those who elected them]” - Lindela Figlan, Abahlali baseMjondolo movement

Fourteen years since the transition to democracy, leadership in South Africa is in a state of flux—and South Africans know a thing or two about leaders. For every Mandela, after all, there is an Mbeki. In his seven years of presidency, Mbeki has mistaken denialism for leadership and appeasement for diplomacy. The liberation victors in the ANC have tied up the ruling party in its own historical mythologizing, determined to hold its grasp on the state. Now, for every Mbeki, there is the possibility of a Zuma.
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It’s just been a few weeks since Nelson Mandela was taken off the United States terrorism watch list. No doubt so that they too could join in the celebrations of this living icon, without the embarrassment of hoisting up a revolutionary.

I gather that a revolutionary in America is, someone, not quite viewed through the same rose-tinted lens worn by us Southerners. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning a 2 month old baby, Wandile Cikwayo, was attacked by a rat that gnawed her fingers very badly. An ambulance was called but they refused to come and directed Wandile’s mother, Nonhlanhla, to the local clinic. However the security guards at the clinic were chasing people away saying that there were only two nurses on duty and that the people must come back another day.

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Hanover Park - In 1994, then president Nelson Mandela promised to build one-million homes. In 2000 the Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC), a private company, was entrusted to help make this promise of Mandela a reality by becoming a housing delivery vehicle for the government. In the process, they build 2,193 houses on a ‘rent to buy’ basis in 9 communities across the Western Cape.

In order to make the houses affordable to the poor, families were requested to save between R150 - R350 per month over a period of six months before moving into their new homes. They claimed that this amount would be equal to their monthly rental.

In the year 2000, when people first moved in to their new houses, the rental quadrupled to an averaged of R800 per month. Because the houses were poorly built with latent as well as patent defects (the walls had already begun cracking), thousands of residents collectively decided to go on a rent boycott to show their dissatisfaction. Immediately, the most vulnerable households (single parent households, pensioners, and disabled poor residents) were subjected to evictions from these houses. Yet, after the mobilisation of the community, residents were able to protect one another from eviction.

Then, in 2007, the NHDRC (together with the Department of Local Government and Housing, the City of Cape Town, and the CTCHC), as a result of the pressure from residents, finally embarked on a remedial programme in order to fix the houses. They promised that afterwards they would engage with the poor residents to find a fair payment solution for that would be affordable for each household.

However, during the course of the remedial programme, we have established that the NHBRC Forensic Audit and Assessment is flawed and full of shortcuts. Because the NHDRC cut corners in order to reduce costs of repairs, the houses are now, after the recent floods, in far worse condition than before. The Anti-Eviction Campaign also recently established that the CTCHC are illegally selling their state-subsidised houses to property agents at an enormous profit. The same house that was supposed to be sold for 44,000 Rand a few years ago are now being sold privately for between 350,000-400,000 Rand against the guidelines of the national housing code. As the CTCHC knows, proper procedure is to sell each house back to the government to be redistributed to poor residents.

And on top of all this, residents in the nine housing sites which CTCHC manages, are once again faced with the threat of evictions from homes that are still falling apart. But Anti-Eviction Campaign residents throughout these areas will continue to struggle until their dream of having a stable and secure home becomes a reality.

For comment, please contact:

The Anti-Eviction Campaign is demanding the release of two AEC activists, Jerome Daniels and Riedwaan Isaacs, who have been sentenced to 12 months in prison for their political activism in Delft.  In his statement, Magistrate Van Graan ‘argued that he needed to hold the defendants responsible and teach the Anti-Eviction Campaign a lesson’.

Please help Jerome, Reidwaan, their families and the entire Delft-Symphony community!

• Click here to sign our online petition.

• To download the petition and collect signatures in your community, click here for English and here for isiXhosa.

For the entire AEC press release, click here.

For comment, please call Ashraf at 076-186-1408 or Auntie Jane at 078-403-1302.

1. Since 2002 the eThekwini has refused to electrify shacks forcing people to rely on dangerous sources of heat and lighting like candles, fires and parafin stoves.
2. The eThekwini Municipality has failed to provide housing for its people while recklessly and irresponsibly wasting money on stadiums and themeparks and the AI Grand Prix, 2010 etc.

We are also concerned about the behaviour of the councillors and other officials. They are everywhere in the media talking about what they will do for us but they are not here with us talking to us and planning our future with us. We would like to remind everyone that we fired our councillor in 2005 and that since then we have spoken for ourselves. Some of the officials are saying that the people must not rebuild and will be moved into a transit camp tomorrow. Others have said that the council will provide building materials. Abahlali rejects transit camps as a new form of oppression. PEOPLE NEED DECENT HOUSING IN THE CITIES AND PROPER SERVICES IN THE SETTLEMENTS WHILE THEY WAIT AND NOT TRANSIT CAMPS WHICH ARE JUST A NEW FORM OF OPPRESSION.

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Those living in The Backyards of Gugulethu, Langa and Nyanga have accused the government of not doing enough to help them.

The backyard-dwellers feel that government only help those involved in high profile cases and ignores the plight of people living in the backyard.
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Scores of Guguletu’s back-yard dwellers protested outside the municipal buildings yesterday in a bid to highlight their winter plight.

They said that elderly backyard dwellers and children had become very ill during the recent floods and had been overlooked during the city’s relief efforts.

“We are not happy that we don’t get blankets and medicines during the winter floods even though we are also flooded on a yearly basis,” the group’s representative, Mncedisi Twalo, said.

Cape Town mayoral committee member Dan Plato said it was “a tall order to provide everyone with blankets and medicines every year”.

Twalo estimated that there are almost 10 000 back-yard dwellers in Guguletu. He said there are up to three shacks in most back yards, and up to eight people living in each of these shacks.
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SCORES of shacks went up in flames in the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Clare Estate this morning, as firefighters battled to bring the blaze under control.

Black smoke billowed into the sky, drifting across Durban, and could be seen kilometres away.

By 10am, firefighters had doused most of the flames and had managed to contain the fire to a corner of the settlement. Read the rest of this entry »

The critical housing question in the province hit the big screen with politicians, activists and beneficiaries heading to the movie house to catch a provocative production focused on the housing crisis in the Western Cape.

Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille, Housing MEC Richard Dyantyi, mayoral committee member for housing Dan Plato and Ashraf Cassiem of the Anti-Eviction Campaign, among others, were part of the audience who watched Shamila’s House on Saturday afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »