Media: D-day for CT land invaders

30 08 2011

Catherine Rice | EWN

Final arguments are expected to be heard in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday as city bosses continue to try and evict hundreds of people from council land in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain.

People gathered in front of the courthouse to protest the lack of land and housing for Cape Town’s poor.

The steps of the high court were cordoned off and a line of police officers were stationed at the entrance to protect the building.

A two-year-old child stood at the front of the crowd carrying a placard with the words: “No to Blikkiesdorp”.

About 23 families remain on two fields in Tafelsig but the city wants to move them to the notorious temporary relocation area in Delft.
Read the rest of this entry »





Mitchell’s Plain Backyarders Association return to Cape High Court today

30 08 2011
 Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Release
30 August 2011

The poor communities and social movements in Cape Town are in solidarity with the poor landless people of Mitchell’s Plain who are being victimised by the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape Province.

The Democratic Alliance-led government has blood on its hands. The people of Hangberg and Imizamo Yetho were attacked by the government not a long time ago. Recently, the Mitchell’s Plain Backyarders have also born the brunt of DA-led state violence against the poor.

The rich and wealthy people who are mostly whites enjoy themselves in the most unequal city in the world at the expense of the poor. This is why we rebel.

The issue of the Mitchell’s Plain landless, like the rest of Cape Town’s housing crisis, cannot be solved through state violence. It must be solved politically. Read the rest of this entry »





10 days left for a US/UK book tour to fix the publishing industry

29 08 2011
To all supporters of the Symphony Way and Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign,

We cannot humanise our world through a vanguard media. The right to a voice cannot be held only by elite academics, authors and politicians. To fix the publishing industry, we must turn freedom of speech on its head. This is why the first ever pavement dweller book tour of Europe and North America is so necessary. On behalf of the Symphony Way community, we ask you to help us bring our new anthology, No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way, to the world!
http://www.indiegogo.com/project/badge/32369?a=175527
If we can raise the $6,830 (usd) needed for the plane tickets, we plan to visit universities, bookstores, organisations and movements the following cities:

London / Oxford
New York / Boston
Philadelphia / Washington DC
Chicago / Milwaukee
San Francisco / Los Angeles
Ottawa / Toronto

Vancouver

In order to make this happen, however, we need to raise an additional $5,666 within the next 10 days before our campaign ends.

If you believe in the importance of providing a platform for authentic voices from below, this is your chance to make sure these voices get heard. Please contribute to our campaign and you will receive free copies of the book, DVDs, signed copies by Raj Patel, and even a specially arranged visit to the city of your choice by the authors.

But please contribute here now before we run out of time!


Thanks for your support. Aluta continua!

The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers
Contact: symphony@antieviction.org.za or 0845930255

To bring the book tour to your city, contact jaredsacks@gmail.com





Media: South African wine industry rooted in human misery, says report

23 08 2011
in Johannesburg
The Guardian, Tuesday 23 August 2011
Unsuitable housing, pesticide dangers and barriers to union membership catalogued by Human Rights Watch monitors
South African vineyard worker
Just 3% of workers in the Western Cape agricultural sector have union representation. Photograph: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images

There is no question of its flair for producing a world-class chenin blanc, cabernet sauvignon or pinotage at an affordable price. But the provenance of South Africa‘s wines is altogether less savoury, an investigation by human rights monitors has revealed.

Workers on the country’s wine and fruit farms lead “dismal, dangerous lives,” according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which found on-site housing unfit for habitation, exposure to pesticides without proper safety equipment, lack of access to toilets or drinking water while working and barriers to union representation.

Farm workers contribute millions to South Africa‘s economy, with products that are sold in Tesco and other British supermarkets, yet they are among the lowest wage earners in the country, the group’s report says. Read the rest of this entry »





Calls for serviced land close to city to house poor

15 08 2011
Thursday Aug 11, 2011 – Cape Times

Shack dwellers and housing NGOs have dismissed sentiments expressed by Human Settlement MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela that affordable housing would provide a lasting solution for the province’s housing needs.

Madikizela made the statement during an Affordable Housing Development, Human Settlement and Finance Summit in Durban recently. Read the rest of this entry »





Show us the audit on our houses, Minister Sexwale!

15 08 2011

R2K and AEC Western Cape Statement

The residents of Newfields Village are still waiting for Minister of Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale to respond to their demand for access to an audit of the low-cost housing provided by the controversial Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC).

The Auditor-General conducted a preliminary investigation of houses provided by the CTCHC in November 2010, following years of residents’ complaints of the shoddy quality of houses and mismanagement of funds.

On 24 May 2011, residents of Newfields Village approached the National Department of Human Settlements to make a formal demand for access to the audit in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). When the Minister failed to respond within the 30-day period stipulated in the Act, our attorney submitted a Notice of Internal to Minister Sexwale for a response within an additional 30 days.

The legal deadline for Minister Sexwale is Monday 15 August 2011. Read the rest of this entry »





Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers in Grahamstown to speak about their new anthology

10 08 2011
Press Release – 9 August 2011
Students for Social Justice
Unemployed People’s Movement
Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign

Event 1: Pavement Dwellers to speak at Rhodes University
Venue: Sociology 1, Rhodes University
Date/Time: Thursday 11 August @ 19h00 – 21h00

Event 2: Symphony Way authors meet the Unemployed People’s Movement
Venue: Duna Library in Joza Township
Date/Time: Friday 12 August @ 3pm

‘A beauty, extraordinary in every way.’
Naomi Klein, author of ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and ‘No Logo’

Students for Social Justice, the Sociology Department, and the Unemployed Peoples Movement in Grahamstown have organized two unique talks by four of the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers, authors of No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way. This extraordinary anthology of struggle it testimony and poetry written on the pavement of one of the longest running civil disobedience protests in South Africa’s history. Read the rest of this entry »





Poster: Rhodes University book launch of No Land! No House! No Vote!

9 08 2011





Review of No Land! No House! No Vote! for Amandla Magazine

8 08 2011
Amandla Magazine, South Africa – Jun 1, 2011
by Martin Legassick

On 19 December 2007, encouraged by their Democratic Alliance (DA) councilor, backyarders in Delft illegally occupied unfinished houses in the N2 Gateway scheme. After battling in court, they were evicted on 19 February 2008. Many of them decided to remain across the road from the N2 Gateway houses, and built shacks along the pavement of Symphony Way. After a further 20 months of contestation these people were evicted again, to the nearby Blikkiesdorp Temporary Relocation Area (TRA).

Read the rest of this entry »





Op-ed: Freedom of speech is upside-down

5 08 2011

Note: Versions of this article have appeared in the Catalogue of the 2011 Jozi Book Fair and 5 August 2011 edition of The New Age.

We live in a world turned on its head, a desolate, de-souled world that practices the superstitious worship of machines and the idolatry of arms, an upside-down world with its left on its right, its belly button on its backside, and its head where its feet should be… It’s a world where children work and don’t play, where ‘development’ makes people poorer, where cars are in streets where people should be, where a tiny minority of the world consumes a majority of its resources…If the world is upside-down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?

-Eduardo Galeano

Celebrated Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano would surely also agree that there is something upside-down about the way freedom of speech is meted out in our society. Read the rest of this entry »








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