Dear Comrades,
This letter was drawn up by the Cape Metro Human Rights Cluster (12 advice offices), and is supported by the Anti-Eviction Campaign, KTC Concerned Residents Movement, and SAMWU. They asked if the APF can also endorse it. It is to be sent to the press tomorrow afternoon. If any of the APF organisations have a serious problem with us endorsing it please let me know before tomorrow. However, it falls within all our objectives as the APF.
Will be sent by fax to other members.
Thanks
Anna
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Open letter to the City of Cape Town Council (26th November 2001)
We are a group of organizations concerned about the evictions and water cuts taking place in the City of Cape. We are especially alarmed by the Council’s decision to short-circuit a process of public discussion on the draft policy on arrears and are forming a coalition to challenge this decision.
At this very moment, the Council is gearing up to evict and disconnect the water of thousands more households. It is acting in terms of a draft arrears policy.
However, the Council seems in hurry to finalise the policy and has decided to block affected communities from having their say on this policy before it becomes law.
On the 16 October the Executive Committee of the City of Cape Town Council approved a draft Credit Control, Debt Management and Indigent policy. On 1 November, the Council published a tiny advert in the local papers, inviting public comment on the draft arrears policy. It gave affected communities just over two week, until the 16th November to submit their response to the
policy in writing.
Despite a request for an extension on the deadline by a Cluster of eleven advice offices in the Cape Metro area, the Council has effectively put a stop to the possibility of a genuine public participation process.
In the response to the advice office Cluster, the Council has indicated it will proceed with finally adopting the policy. In the meanwhile, it says it will consider any submission on proposed changes.
This is unacceptable.
We believe the Council’s approach is clearly a breach of the right to just administrative action, as well as the Chapter on Community Participation in the Municipal Systems Act of 2001.
We also believe that the Council is acting in bad faith. It has failed in its duty to encourage maximum participation, to set reasonable deadlines, to communicate with affected communities and their structures and facilitate discussion between the Council and community organizations
Why then has the Council proceed in such an unfair and irresponsible way?
Firstly, it has obviously not been keen to allow public discussion on
arrears policy.
In May of this year, then Mayor Pieter Marais failed to respond to the memorandum handed over to him by the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.
Since then, instead of addressing the points raised in the memorandum, the Council has proceeded to draft and implement a harsh and punitive interim policy.
Now it has short-circuited public discussion and indicated it will finalise policy without even hearing the views of affected communities.
Surely, as a minimum requirement for democratic accountability, on a matter of such great significance for poor communities, Councillors should reflect on the views of the public before finally determining policy.
Poor communities need to be alerted to the harsh and punitive nature of the policy document and of their right have a say. If it is adopted in its present form it will only serve as an instrument of further lowering the living standards of poor households.
We have agreed to campaign jointly within communities for the draft policy to be discussed and challenged through as many submissions as possible.
What is wrong with the draft policy?
In the first place, the policy is about money and not people. The objective is to “. Collect as much of the debt in the shortest possible time”.
This approach is a recipe for disaster.
The signal to Council officers is to get tough on debtors. Yet already there are widespread complaints about harassment and intimidation of debtors. Poor communities can only expect even further arbitrary action and bureaucratic highhandedness.
It fails to consider the plight of hundreds of thousands of households, whose living standards and income levels have sharply declined in the past five years. In all the townships of the Cape Metro unemployment and cuts in social grants are a leading cause of the high levels of debt. As is presently the case, under the draft policy, people will be asked to choose between food on the table for their children or to pay off arrears.
In other words, the Council’s arrears policy will inflict even greater
hardship in communities that are already showing signs of serious
disintegration.
The policy offers protection for households earning less than R800 per month. Clearly the Council is out of touch with the realities in poor working class communities. According to academic standards, the Minimum Living Levels for a Cape Town family of five is in the region of R1700 per month, i.e. double the level the Council has set in its draft indigency policy. Surely the Council is aware of these facts.
By pressing on with finalizing the draft policy, it seems the Council is therefore prepared to evict and cut of the water of tens of thousands of households that it knows does not have the means to pay. It is therefore criminal for the Council to proceed to adopt the policy without considering the view of affected communities.
Furthermore, the policy will be adopted in the absence of a staff that is sensitive to the plight of poor households and trained in just
administration and the principles of batho pele.
In conclusion:
* We urge the Council to reconsider its decision to cut short the public participation process around the draft arrears policy document.
* We demand a moratorium on all evictions, repossessions and cuts in services, until those most affected by the draft arrears policy have had their say.
* If the Council ignores our demand for a genuine process, we will
initiate legal proceedings to force the Council to do so.
* In the meanwhile, we will press ahead with organizing a genuine public participation process around the draft policy.
* Our aim is to facilitate discussion of the draft policy within
affected communities and ensure that written submissions that express the view of affected communities are drafted and placed before the Council for consideration.
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