Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

by Verashni Pillay

19 February, 2008

Source: 24 News

Cape Town – Evicted Delft residents were stranded on the streets around the Delft N2 Gateway housing on Tuesday afternoon, with their belongings either broken or taken far away.

More than 1 000 backyard dwellers are illegally occupying unfinished government housing units in Delft. Police moved in early on Tuesday morning to aid the eviction process, carried out by the Sheriff of the Court.

On Monday the backyard dwellers’ application for leave to appeal the eviction order was dismissed in the Cape High Court.

“They don’t know where their belongings are going to. They don’t know where they are going to,” chairperson of the Western Cape anti-eviction campaign, Ashraf Cassiem told News24. “That’s why they’re just sitting where they are because they don’t have anywhere to go to.”

The Sheriff of the court, Mr J A Sassen, said that the belongings were taken to Saxenburg Storage facility in Blackheath.

“We explained to them we are going to store it in Saxenburg and they can go there and they can fetch it,” said Sassen.

However, Cassiem has not heard about the storage place at all and said that the day workers the sheriff had hired to carry out the evictions had broken many of the people’s possession.

Waiting for hospital treatment

Blackheath is about 15km away from where the people were, according to Cassiem, making it very difficult to retrieve their possessions.

Furthermore, there was no guarantee of finding one’s own possessions as many of the belongings were not tagged.

“When they took the stuff there was about eight different family’s stuff on one truck,” said Cassiem. “So how are you going to find your stuff?”

Meanwhile, the people who were shot and injured by police rubber bullets have yet to be treated at a nearby hospital, according to Cassiem.

“The doctors said they’re in a meeting and they can’t assist people now.”

The injured, amongst them a three-year-old boy who was shot in the foot, had been waiting for three hours for treatment at Delft Day Hospital according to Cassiem.

“They’re helping everyone else but not the people who were shot at,” he said.

The hospital could not be reached immediately for comment on Tuesday afternoon.

Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu said in a statement that she had instructed building company, Thubelisha Homes, to do “everything in their power to assist the people of Delft who have occupied the newly built houses to move back to their previous places of accommodation”, and to provide them with transport for the relocation.

Nowhere to go

However, Thubelisha project manager Prince Xhanti denied that any such directive had been given when News24 contacted him on Tuesday.

He said the Sheriff of the Court was solely responsible for the people’s removal.

But Sassen said it was not his responsibility to ensure the people were taken somewhere.

“The order says I must evict the people and remove their belongings to a place of safe custody and that is what I did,” he said.

Many of the residents were sitting on the road outside the houses, with nowhere to go. Police were tasked with ensuring they did not re-occupy the houses.