Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) Press Statement
Thursday 6th November 2003 2pm

Khayelitsha community to hold mass rally at Magistrates Court tomorrow

Hundreds of Ilitha Park and Mandela Park, Khayelitsha, Cape Town residents will hold a peaceful rally outside the Khayelitsha Magistrates Court tomorrow (Friday 7th November), where the bail hearing of Anti-Eviction activist Max Ntanyana is being held. Different organisations from Cape Town will attend in support. The rally starts at 11am.

Right now, the entire community is out on the streets marching on the offices of Phambili Nombane, a private electricity company which has been entering peoples’ homes by force and ripping out electricity boxes (even if the people are fully paid up), and replacing them with pre-paid boxes.

Tomorrow’s rally will also see the community calling for the dismissal of racist Investigating Officer Esterhuisen. Members of the Anti-Eviction Campaign who have been beaten by Esterhuisen and suffered racist verbal abuse from him on many occasions have laid charges of assault at the local police station. The members are currently at the offices of the Independent Complaints Directorate in Cape Town pursuing these charges and intend to pursue the instances of racism through the South African Human Rights Commission.

Ntanyana is not the only person who has been arrested. Up to recently, about 400 arrests have been made in Mandela Park in eviction related matters. Community members keep appearing in court on bogus charges, which eventually get dismissed by the magistrate. For example, Ntanyana was also charged with public violence for no apparent reason and this charge was dropped last week in court. Out of all the charges that have been laid against Ntanyana and others over the past two years, there has been not one conviction.

Ntanyana has been prevented, in an apartheid style interdict issued by the five biggest banks and a bank-government owned housing company, from attending any community meetings, speaking about evictions to any member of the community, and from speaking on the community radio stations about evictions. Ntanyana has already spent two lengthy periods in Pollsmoor prison for breaking the interdict, and has lost his job as a sewerage plant worker as a result. Ntanyana was living under these interdict conditions as well as new bail conditions of house arrest from 6pm – 6am every day when he was suddenly kidnapped in the night on October 2nd 2003 by a group of policemen – of which only one could be identified. The driver of the car was wearing a scarf covering his head except his eyes. Ntanyana was taken to the beach and offered R5000 to act as a police spy against the Anti-Eviction Campaign. He refused and he also refused to sign an agreement to that effect.

Ntanyana then laid a charge against the police for intimidation and corruption. This was taken up by police’s Internal Affairs. On 9th October, the policeman who offered Ntanyana the bribe threatened him, saying that he was “coming to get him”. A few days later, Ntanyana was suddenly charged with attempted murder and jailed. The charge sheet states that Ntanyana entered a local community radio station and pointed a gun at staff even though he had not visited the station since the interdict prohibiting this, and even though he has no access to a gun. Ntanyana was due to be bailed out of Pollsmoor prison one week ago but hundreds of National Intelligence Agents and police invaded the inside of the courthouse, threatening to arrest other AEC activists and sowing pandemonium in the area. Hence the campaign has mobilised observers to attend court to record police activity.

It has become clear that the ANC is using its members to lay bogus criminal charges against Anti-Eviction Campaign members in an attempt to have these members jailed ahead of the national elections. These ANC tactics are also being used against other social movements like the Gauteng Anti-Privatisation Forum and Landless Peoples Movement, whose members have been in and out of court with increasing frequency also all on bogus charges which have never resulted in a conviction. The Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign has joined other social movements in urging communities in Khayelitsha, a former ANC stronghold and the second fastest growing township in the country, not to vote at all in next year’s elections.

The community is sick and tired of the ANC is abusing its powers – it was the ANC who promised houses for all, yet are now evicting elderly pensioners who have nowhere else to go and at one point even re-deployed the entire police Anti-Hijacking Unit into Khayelitsha to “deal with the Anti-Eviction Campaign”.

The methods of the ANC in Khayelitsha have sparked international outrage with communities from as far as New Zealand and Canada marching on South African consulates. Next Wednesday 12th November, the Anti-Eviction Campaign will host a legal mass march from District Six in Cape Town on the offices of the MEC for Safety and Security, Leonard Ramatlakane.

For comment, call Fonkey on 072 2910451 or Neliswa on 073 1546555