Informal settlers living along Symphony Way in Delft have warned political parties not to try and campaign in the area for their votes.
Residents told Eyewitness News on Wednesday they had grown disillusioned with election promises and were not planning to vote in the April polls. Read the rest of this entry »
CARRYN-ANN NEL
20/03/2009 09:21:16 PM – (SA)
Source: Die Burger
Kaapstad. – Die sypaadjiebewoners wat al langer as ’n jaar in Symphonyweg in Delft bly en deur ’n moontlike
Talle inwoners op die sypaadjie van Symphonyweg in Delft het gister voor die Wes-Kaapse hoë hof betoog teen ’n moontlike uitsettingsbevel. Foto: TARYN CARR
uitsettingsbevel in die gesig gestaar word, verkoop nou koeke en bak roti’s om geld in te samel om die saak te probeer wen.
“Ons eie lawyers sál ons kry om die saak te wen. Ons is baie vasbeslote mense. As ons iets wil hê, dan gáán ons daarvoor,” het me. Karima Linnerveldt, ’n inwoner, gister op die trappe van die Wes-Kaapse hoë hof gesê.
Sy was gister deel van sowat 100 inwoners van die gebied wat na die hof opgeruk het uit protes teen die Kaapse stadsraad wat hulle na ’n ander gebied wil verskuif. Dié inwoners was deel van die sowat 2 000 inwoners wat verlede jaar ingevolge ’n hofbevel uit die huise van die N2 Gateway-projek gesit is.
Van die inwoners het hierna na die sypaadjie in Symphonyweg getrek terwyl ander na sinkhuise (Blikkiesdorp) getrek het wat deur die Kaapse stadsraad voorsien is.
Dit is weens die besetting van die sypaadjie in Symphonyweg dat die aansoek nou by die hof is.
Read the rest of this entry »
We, the Delft Symphony Residents received an application of eviction from the City of Cape Town. We must appear in the High Court on the 20th of March of 2009 at 10h00. On the 9th of March of 2009 we went to advocates in town, Cliffe, Dekke, Hofmeyr, Number 11, Buitengracht Street, Cape Town, and to the Cape High Court to hand in our notice of intention to defend. We are disgusted that we are about to be evicted for the second time and political parties are trying to use us for their own good. The state and parastatals are playing games with our children’s future and our dignity as South African citizens.
Down with the government and the party system. To hell with Helen Zille and her stooges. Because of this mayor we are being evicted for the second time. We will fight to the end and we will stick to our only hope, which is “No Land, No House, No Vote.” We will fight to the end. We are indigenous South African people. Our children and we have a right to a home.
We will meet tomorrow morning, March 20, 2009, at 8h30 at the Gardens in downtown Cape Town and then proceed from there to the Cape Town High Court.
We will show that we are people tomorrow morning. We are bringing our children and we are fighting for their future.
Contact: Ashraf Cassiem 0761861408
Today in the Cape Town Magistrates Court the respondents’ (St James Street) attorney Mr Zehir Omar argued that they are not unlawful occupiers. He argued that they signed a proper lease agreement and have paid their rent on time.
On the 18th of September 2008, however, the tenants received an eviction letter from Steer & Company to inform them to vacate the property on the latest by midnight on the 30th of November 2008. Nonetheless, Steer and Company failed to realise that the standing lease agreement between the lessor (Beverly Hofmeyer) and the lessee (St James Street) had a clause which stipulated that the lease agreement renewed automatically every year on the 1st of December. After various submissions Mr Omar also argued that under Section 27 of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction (PIE) Act it was not just and equitable that the respondents be evicted from the property and most importantly the applicants failed to provide the Honourable Court with a proper report from the City of Cape Town Municipality on alternative suitable accommodation. As a result, Mr Omar suggested to the Court that the case be dismissed with costs.
Most disturbingly the applicant’s lawyer – Ms Maria Christodul - argued that in the past it had not been necessary to apply for a report on alternative accommodation from the City of Cape before evicting tenants. She said that in the past the City of Cape Town employees had been too busy to consider such applications, and in her words had thrown such applications in the “rubbish bin”. With these words she closed her argument. If Ms Christodul is to be believed, then this means that the rich capitalists have been evicting people without even following proper procedures and have used their power to remove the poor to the outskirts of the City.
The Judge will give her verdict on the case on the 8th of April 2009.
Mr Omar will also be representing Gympie Street residents on the 7th of April 2009 against Pastor Robertson, who is once again attempting to evict them from their homes.
The people of St James Street and Gympie Street would like to invite all social movements, trade unions, and NGOs to come to the Court on the 7th and 8th of April 2009 in solidarity.
For further information contact:
SIYANDA – 17 March 2009 – At 5am on a rainy Tuesday, 50 Siyanda families in Siyanda Section C began to dismantle their shacks in compliance with a negotiated relocation order to the Richmond Farm transit camp. The Department of Transport and the eThekwini Municipality had sought their eviction to make way for the new MR577 freeway. People had agreed to go to new houses in the Khalula Project but then their houses were sold off corruptly. They were then told to go to the Richmond Farm Transit Camp (government shacks) with no garuantees of when, if ever, they would get houses. They refused this and rebelled. Eventually they went to court and they won in court – they won an investigation into the corruption, that various measures would be put in place to ensure judicial oversight over conditions in the camp and that no one would spend more than one year there before being given a formal house
Homeless
The court order, issued by the Durban High Court last week, stated that all respondents in the case would be allocated transit camp structures. But 3 families cited in the case are now homeless. In South Africa it is a criminal offence to leave any person homeless in an eviction. In this case it is also contempt of court. Read the rest of this entry »
The Cape Town city council has filed an eviction notice attempting to force about 400 refugees out of the Blue Waters safety camp near Muizenberg, despite rumbling xenophobic violence that has seen nine foreign nationals killed in the past six weeks in the Western Cape.
Last week the city council asked the Western Cape High Court for permission to evict the refugees.
The camp opened in May last year after xenophobic attacks that left more than 100 foreign nationals dead and another 60 000 homeless across South Africa. Although the majority of the country’s refugees have either reintegrated within South Africa or returned to their home countries, hundreds still fear violent retribution.
Peter Cronje of the City of Cape Town says the group at Blue Waters represents a small minority of the initial refugees from the xenophobic attacks. “We had more than 20 000 people [in the Western Cape] in safety sites … and 19 600 of those have now relocated. We are now down to the last [few] people.”
Cronje says that the Blue Waters residents have “refused repeated offers of help by all the agencies involved … We made it clear that this was not a permanent solution. You cannot have refugee camps in the middle of society.”
But according to volunteer Tracey Saunders, who has worked with refugees at the camp since last May, the population of Blue Waters constitutes the “most vulnerable of the vulnerable”. Read the rest of this entry »
We condemn what Verryn is doing – MahlanguNote on articles: The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, Joe Slovo residents and residents of Symphony Way were accomodated by the Central Methodist Church when we travelled up to Joburg for Joe Slovo’s Constitutional Court case last year. The church is an important resource for poor people everywhere including poor South Africans, foreign nationals and all other vulnerable peoples.
Central Methodist Church Bishop Paul Verryn has decried as “absurd” a
statement by Gauteng’s local government MEC that he is endangering the
lives of thousands of Zimbabwean refugees seeking sanctuary at his
church.
“I don’t think that in the midst of this gigantic crisis, where in
fact people have got to work together, that we can point fingers and
try to abdicate responsibility. I think it’s an absurdity,” Verryn
told the Saturday Star.
Read the rest of this entry »
12 March 2009
Maureen Mnisi, with comrades Kajola, Lekhtho & Maas – in Maureen’s home in the Protea South settlement, November 2008
Leader of Landless People’s Movement (LPM) Fears for her Life and Children: Calls for Solidarity and Advice from all Comrades
As a single mother of five and a prominent activist who has come under threat by the police, government and now even the middle-class in her own community, Maureen Msisi asks for solidarity and advice to give her more courage to push forward the struggle of the poor. This is not the first time that Maureen’s life and family has been in danger because of her campaigns for the interests of poor people. In 1995, Maureen formed the branch of the ANC in Protea South hoping it would bring about a change that would better our lives. But members of the local civic at the time felt that she was challenging their power and they responded violently by attacking her. She was shot in the back and stabbed 3 times with a machete, breaking her leg and scarring her neck and hand. Almost 15 years into our new democracy, she continues struggling for the same changes in the lives of her people in Protea South, but now under the banner of the LPM. Today, she fears that if she continues on with the struggle, her life and her children’s futures will be in danger. Read the rest of this entry »
UGPTA Press Release
14-03-2009
Cell: 082 656 1600
Mail: aquarose@telkomsa.net
The scene on Saturday 16h00 at Blackpool hall in shelly road Salt River resembled a food line at a UN compound in an impoverished African country. That people were forced to wait in queues in the sweltering heat for a chance to register was an injustice. That the registering authority (gpfta) could sit cool and comfortably inside the walls of the complex and debate whether they would indeed proceed with registration, added an element of contempt to the equation. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted to the web on: 14 March 2009
Source: The Weekender
Life is uncertain for the residents of Blikkiesdorp, and they fear its thin tin walls may be permanent, writes JEANNE HROMNIK
BLIKKIESDORP won’t be found on any South African map. Its official name is Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Area and it is not supposed to exist for more than a short time.
The residents prefer their nickname Blikkiesdorp — Tin Town — as it accurately describes the 1000 or more structures that the city of Cape Town erected in Delft last year to house them.
The temporary relocation area is a stone’s throw from the shacks of the Symphony Way pavement dwellers . The 100-odd families have been living illegally along a blocked-off section of Symphony Way since February last year.
On March 2, the city notified the pavement dwellers of its intention to seek an eviction order in the high court to remove them. But last week, the Durban High Court granted judicial oversight of a transit camp in KwaZulu-Natal, and now the Cape Town residents intend to use this precedent to defend their eviction.
Provincial governments across the country have been using these settlements — known as temporary relocation areas in Cape Town, transit camps in Durban and government shacks in Gauteng — to “temporarily” house residents from squatter camps and inner-city slums until formal housing is provided for them.
“Transit camps often look like concentration camps with razor-wire fencing, spotlights, single entrances and 24-hour police guards,” says shack-dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, which won the Durban High Court victory . “Residents are often highly controlled in these places, as if they are in prisons.
“In most cases, these camps are far from the cities where people live, work and school. People are taken there against their will with no guarantees about the conditions there, how long they will be kept there and where, if anywhere, they will be taken next.”
Unlike Tsunami, a neighbouring temporary relocation area , Blikkiesdorp does not look like a slum. The tin walls and roofs of the dwellings gleam in the afternoon sun. There is little space between the structures which are arranged in blocks, with one toilet shared by four households . The toilets appear to be functioning and do not emit the foul smell coming from those in Tsunami. There are taps with running water, but no ablution facilities.
Ashraf Cassiem, chairman of the Anti-Eviction Campaign in the Western Cape, says “the toilets (at Blikkiesdorp) are concrete, the pipelines are concrete” — an unexpected feature in a “temporary” camp .
At the entrance to Blikkiesdorp, three police vehicles and an armoured truck, manned by the Land Invasion Unit, are permanently stationed to maintain order and monitor the area .
Cassiem says there are no temporary relocation areas. The city, he claims, was given R20m to build Blikkiesdorp. It built 1200 structures for people evicted from the adjacent N2 Gateway houses in February last year and is planning to build 1200 more units.
Instead of a temporary stop and a prelude to permanent housing, it is being used to house everyone: people evicted by the council and other homeless families. The city has a 22-year lease on the land on which Blikkiesdorp is erected.
Blikkiesdorp, says Cassiem, is part of a strategy to move unwanted people — “like cattle … as if you are doing them a favour” — to the fringes of cities and outlying areas where they are less visible.
Temporary relocation areas in the Western Cape — such as Happy Valley, built more than 12 years ago outside Stellenbosch and now a vast informal settlement — are permanent relocation areas. Read the rest of this entry »
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