CAX Press Release
Coalition Against Xenophobia to picket outside the Hillbrow Magistrates Court this Wednesday 25th February at 09h00 in support of our comrade Pastor Mulumba, being tried on bogus charges laid against him by xenophobic police. Read the rest of this entry »
Residents who were evicted from homes at the N2 Gateway housing project in Delft have demanded their grievances be addressed.
Dozens of people were still living in temporary shelters along Symphony Way, more than a year after they were forcibly removed from the houses. Read the rest of this entry »
Source: Voice of the Cape
Posted on: 2009-02-21 07:53:04
Informal dwellers on Symphony Way in Delft spent 17 hours on Thursday commemorating their evictions in February last year, to highlight the plight they have suffered since living on the roadside for the past year. The event made headlines last year when some 1000 residents illegally occupied newly completed N2 Gateway homes in Delft after being on government’s housing waiting list for years. The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC), who has been at the forefront of the Delft community’s resistance against their eviction from the N2 Gateway homes, led Thursday’s campaign on Symphony Way.
Read the rest of this entry »
Today almost 130 Delft families living on a pavement marked the first anniversary of their eviction from the N2 Gateway houses they occupied illegally.
The families, which include 200 children, woke for a 4am prayer meeting to mark the date of the eviction.
They were also due to hold a slide show depicting their evictions and life on the street before concluding with a mass meeting to discuss what to do next.
The Delft pavement dwellers were evicted from houses which Democratic Alliance councillor Frank Martin had told them to occupy, said resident Jane Robert.
She said the experience was traumatic, particularly for the children.
In a statement this week, the City’s multi-party disciplinary committee found councillor Martin “guilty of writing and distributing numerous letters, in terms of which he purported to authorise members of the ward he represented to occupy houses in Delft”.
He has been suspended from the council for a month without pay.
But yesterday the angry homeless families said Martin should be sacked because he had betrayed them and rendered them homeless.
“Frank should lose his job. It’s surprising that he still has it. We are deeply disappointed with corruption in government,” said Frances Arnolds.
The Cape Argus visited the community yesterday, where some families live in makeshift shelters.
Wind-blown sand batters the shelters and blankets the belongings of residents.
“Promises by the government come to zero when it concerns the poor. We should not vote for any political party,” said Robert.
She said she was worried about how the families would survive the looming winter rain and cold. “It’s hard to live here. Last winter it was terrible,” she said.
Mathilde Groepe, 55, said: “When we occupied the houses, Frank promised to take political responsibility (for) the whole thing.
“But he damned and denied us in the high court. It is agonising,” said Groepe, breaking into tears.
She said she had been on the housing list for 13 years but three years go discovered that her name had been deleted from the database. Read the rest of this entry »
MIAMI, Florida, Feb 18 (IPS) – With foreclosures skyrocketing and U.S. families sinking deeper into poverty, a number of organisations are turning to a new strategy to end homelessness: moving families into vacant, foreclosed houses that are currently owned by banks or the government.
About 15 percent of the housing units in the United States in the fourth quarter 2008 were vacant, representing 19 million units, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Read the rest of this entry »
Delft AEC Press Update
19 February 2009
Today, as promised, Symphony Way residents spent about 17 hours commemorating last February’s violent evictions, as well as taking note of the significant effect that living on a road has been for the community.
We started the day by waking up at 4am – the same time as the evictions began on 19th February 2008. The entire road came together in prayer and then held a candle lighting vigil. We then watched a very emotional slide show of our experiences with one another including the mass meetings with Frank Martin that set our community on the path to occupation in the first place (Martin has now received a slap on the wrist for committing mass fraud and abandoning us to face the wrath of the Province and the police during the evictions).
After the slide show, residents told their personal histories and how the evictions had effected them. This was the most emotional time of the day as we recounted both the good and the bad of our struggle. After breaking for a while, the children brought us back together with a series of plays which they came up with themselves. Themes varied from recounting last year’s unjust evictions, fictional accounts of how school and life weave together for communities in struggle, and even a comedic sketch of how the children interpret the roadside politics of the adults. Finally, the children came up with a few personal histories of their own. Differing from the parents in that it challenged the parent’s own account of the evictions but still no less emotional. Read the rest of this entry »
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Release
Yesterday at around 10am ten cars of Sydenham SAPS and Securicor Security Guards came with their guns to the Arnett Drive settlement to disconnect electricity from 200 households. The private police came into Gertrude Cele’s house and said “Can you please turn on your radio.” She turned it on. Then, they said “The electricity is working so now we are arresting you”. She said “You can’t arrest me because I am just a visitor here, and I don’t know anything.” They said, “We found you in this house, so we are going to arrest you.” This is how the police and private security make it a criminal offence to be a poor person in South Africa.
Read the rest of this entry »
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HUNDREDS of backyarders under the banner of the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) led by Mncedisi Twalo converged at Gugulethu Sport Complex to listen to MEC of Housing Whitey Jacobs about their plight on Sunday.
Before the meeting could be official, Twalo gave the attendees a highlight about an incident of the previous week where police allegedly harassed, assaulted and arrested ACE members including himself.
As Twalo subjected the MEC to a tongue lashing, Jacobs sat quietly listening.
He said about sixty old people were shot with rubber bullets and about nine are still nursing injuries in hospital. Hundreds lost their cell-phones, cash and clothes. Read the rest of this entry »
A statement of Solidarity by a group of Danish students who will be joining us for our festivities on the road in Symphony Way.
Today, a group of Danish students will join the people in the struggle of the Symphony Way Settlement and in their commemoration of the year that has passed since the South African government’s unlawful eviction of them from Delft Housing.
We stand in solidarity with the people here in their fight for their constitutional right to adequate housing and we call for the South African State to live up to its announced claim of progressiveness and decent people-based politics.
We will be taking to the streets with the heroic people of Symphony Way to show that the deceit and inherent unfairness of the present South African housing policies are not going internationally unnoticed and are rousing anger across continents.
In Solidarity,
Concerned Danish Students
Today, the residents of Symphony Way will be commemorating last years evictions on the 19th of February 2008. We have now lived a full year on Symphony Way and have, in protest, blocked traffic on this major road the entire time. Residents have nowhere else to go and refused to go to Blikkiesdorp TRA which they see as a refugee camp. This may be the longest and most difficult protest undertaken by any community in the history of South Africa.
The event will be both a time of mourning and protest as well as a celebration. We are protesting the fact that we still do not have land or houses and that the government continues to lie to us and oppress us. However, we are also celebrating the wonderful friendships we have made on the road. We have built a community here.
We are a silver lining in the dark cloud that is this oppressive society we live in today. We are nurturing the culture of rebellion that saved us from Apartheid and this culture of rebellion provides us with hope that change is both possible and necessary.
We are joined in solidarity with a group of Danish students.
The agenda for today’s festivities are as follows (we are starting at 4am exactly when the police first began to evict us):
4am-5am = Prayer 5am-6am = Lighting of candles 6am-8am = ActionsNo Land! No House! No Vote!
For more information, contact:
Mncedisi Plaatjies at 079 3051 066 Kareemah Linneveldt at 078 4920 943 Ashraf Cassiem at 076 1861 408
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