In the Backstage area of Langa a policeman has illegally evicted a woman from her house and is now living in it. (Backstage is near the cemetery and the railway station). Mrs Rhulashe, the former owner, now has to sleep under the bridge between Bonteheuwel and Langa. On Saturday 30th January at 10am a joint demonstration by the newly-formed Vukani ma-Afrika and the Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign will reinstall Mrs Rhulashe in her house.
For more information contact Mncedisi at 078-580-8646
CAPE TOWN June 30 Sapa
Hundreds of residents of the flagship N2 Gateway housing project marched through central Cape Town on Tuesday to plead for Western Cape provincial government intervention in the project.
Chairman of the residents committee Luthando Ndabamba said they were unhappy at the way state housing developer Thubelisha homes was running the project. Though there were 704 units, Thubelisha had no office on the premises.
“If we have any complaints we have to go to the city centre,” he said. “We won’t get help [there], they will refer us to places like Johannesburg. That’s not nice.”
He said there were structural defects and plumbing problems, and the 704 units in the complex were becoming havens for drug dealers. “Everything is just wrong in that complex,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »
Sunday 22 March 2009
11am
The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign decided at its provincial meeting yesterday to take up the case of the deceased one year old, Unabantu Mali, who died on her grandmothers back last week after being turned away from three clinics in Nyanga, Gugulethu and KTC. Unabantu’s grandmother walked from Nyanga East to Gugulethu to KTC, barefoot, seeking help for Unabantu and being rejected at each clinic. She had no money to get to Red Cross hospital.
The family have welcomed our support and we will be with them every step of the way until criminal prosecutions are carried out.
1. We condemn the department of Home Affairs. They have refused for the past three years to rectify the ID document of Unabantu Mali’s grandmother, Ntombizodwa Mali. She is 62 years old and looks her age, yet her ID book says she was born in 1970. This has created endless problems for her and her family.
2. We condemn the DA city and the ANC provincial government. Nobody has stepped forward to offer to pay for baby Unabantu’s funeral which takes place in Nyanga East this Tuesday. Yet after she died, you had MEC’s and Mayors all taking advantage of the situation to appear on TV seeming sympathetic to the family. The family is utterly destitute – there is no breadwinner and there are no windows or burglar guards on their house – people keep breaking in and stealing what little they have. Why has the MEC Marius Fransman not mobilised some kind of support for the family?
3. We condemn Helen Zille and city manager Achmat Ebrahim for saying that they conducted an “investigation” into Nyanga Clinic and found that baby Unabantu was never there, according to their records. This is utter nonsense. They questioned a couple of nurses who tried to cover up for their murderous behaviour – what nurse will make a note in her records to say a sick and dying baby appeared and was turned away? The fact that the city took a mere three days to do this pathetic investigation shows their disdain for the Black citizens of Cape Town (which is nothing new).
4. The Anti-Eviction Campaign will set up a desk to monitor the situation in clinics in Gugulethu and Nyanga. A community meeting offered great support for this initiative. We want to assure the public and the government that we will be on their case like they have never imagined possible.
5. We also blame the Red Cross childrens hospital for releasing baby Unabantu while she was clearly still sick.
6. Tomorrow, we will go with the family to open criminal cases against the city and the provincial governments.
The funeral will be at the family home in Nyanga East on Tuesday – please call AEC number below for directions.
Every step of the way, the Anti-Eviction Campaign in the province has decided to be with that family.
For comment call Mncedisi Twalo on 078 5808646
In our last public meeting with MEC for Housing on the 2nd of November 2008, Mr Whitey Jacobs told our community and reporters that, for the past 15 years, there has been “no provincial housing plan for backyard dwellers in Cape Town”. As media from the Argus, Times, the Sun, the Daily Voice and the Sowetan witnessed, he further promised that if he did not come up with a plan that satisfied residents within 2 months, he would resign from office.
At our weekly meeting on Sunday 15th of February 2009 at 2pm, the MEC will be presenting his ‘comprehensive plan’ for the backyarders of Gugulethu, Langa and Nyanga that, he says, includes dishing out over 200 houses for AEC backyarders. He will also get back to us about his promise to build public housing for backyard dwellers in wealthy areas such as Muizenberg, Constantia and Mowbray.
We look forward to the MEC being the first minister to not break his promise to the poor. But in the likely event that he does break his promise to provide us with houses, we will hold him to accountable to his promise – to resign if he does not deliver.
Contact Mncedisi at 078 5808 646 and Pule at 073 6448 919
Note: The new MEC had promised after last Saturday’s march to come to our mass meeting. The place was full and residents were angry and upset that he wasted their time and that he is not willing to engage with residents.
By Natasha Prince
September 15 2008 at 07:57PM
Source: Cape Argus
Gugulethu backyard dwellers have given newly-appointed Housing MEC Whitey Jacobs seven more days to determine what will be done about their housing situation, after attempts to protest outside his home were thwarted by police.
The residents, who host weekly meetings at a local community sports hall, issued the ultimatum after they were prevented from marching on Jacobs’s house in Malunga Park near the Gugulethu police station on Sunday when he allegedly failed to arrive for a meeting they had called. Read the rest of this entry »
September 9, 2008
Gugulethu AEC Press Statement
CAPE TOWN – The Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign marched on Helen Zille’s office at noon today.
We are angered that backyard dwellers in Gugulethu continue to live in overcrowded, inhumane conditions. Despite the fact that we have carried out an exhaustive audit of Gugulethu backyard residents who have been on the waiting list for housing for more than 20 years, we have yet to be offered housing.
We live in backyards, with up to 8 families in one backyard. We always get flooded out every time it rains but the city and province do not provide us with any relief because they seem to see us as private tenants.
We are demanding the same food parcels, blankets and building materials that are supplied to residents in informal settlements.
We also want back the building materials that the metro police stole from us on the weekend. This was when we identified an empty piece of land and tried to move on to it. We have every right to do this because the government has failed for 20 years to provide us with houses.
for more information contact Mncedisi Twalo on 0785808646
Housing MEC Whitey Jacobs faced the ire of some Gugulethu, Nyanga and Langa backyard dwellers who marched to his house in Gugulethu and dumped their refuse in his garden.
The backyarders kept a promise they made in August when they invaded a piece of land off Lansdowne Road on Saturday, but Metro Police arrived and blocked their progress.
Incensed, the 300 people walked a kilometre to Jacobs’s house, emptied rubbish bins in his garden and demanded he address their housing concerns.
“People decided to go to the MEC’s house in Malunga Park near the Gugulethu police station. We collected rubbish bins on the way and waited for the MEC as we wanted to show him we mean business. He came with bodyguards and lots of police. He appeared upset when we told him how long people waited for houses,” said Mncedisi Twalo, Gugulethu chairperson of the Anti-eviction Campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
Update on this weekend’s attempted land occupation:
While attempting to occupy vacant land in Gugulethu (see original statement below), residents were interrupted by over 50 police officers who, at gun point, illegally stole residents’ building materials and threatened to attack residents if they resisted. Angry about the situation, residents decided to march on Housing MEC Whitey Jacob’s home in the upscale Malunga Park area of Gugulethu.
In order to get the attention of Jacobs who, like his predecessor, has not been listening to the grievances of Cape Town’s poor, residents decided to clean up the trash from a near-by informal settlement and place it in front of the MEC’s home. After Jacob’s arrived in his brand-new volvo SUV with his body-guard and four police vehicles at his side, he was presented with this attached memorandum.
Once Jacobs agreed to engage with residents at their weekly meetings, residents decided to clean up all the trash as a good-will gesture. But angry residents warned the MEC that if he continues with the anti-poor policies and the authoritarian approach of his predecessor, more mass action will take place.
For your interest, here are some pictures of the march and peaceful protest at the MEC’s home and a short video with some Toyi-Toying.
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On a more humorous note:
The MEC asked the Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign for the physical address of the Gugulethu branch of movement. Residents replied that the address is the Gugulethu Sports Complex where they hold their weekly mass meetings. Confused, the MEC replied that as an organisation, the AEC must have an office of some kind. But residnets were adamant: We are not an organisation, we are a social movement. We exist only because residents attend our actions. We don’t have an office. Our meeting places is the Sports Complex, and if you want to correspond with us, you must come to our mass meetings held there every Sunday. Because the MEC has no understanding of working with the people instead of on their behalf, he is oblivious on how to engage with residents of Gugulethu. Hopefully, at our meeting next sunday, we can teach him a thing or two about democracy.
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Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement Saturday September 6, 2008 at 12:30Gugulethu – After attempting to highlight pervasive corruption in the allocation of housing by occupying empty flats in a Langa housing development last month, Backyard Dwellers are now taking action against the City and the Province by occupying empty land in Gugulethu.
While all different levels of government continue to refuse to allocate well-located land to shackdwellers, backyarders and other poor people, government officials see no problem releasing land for new Shoprite developments, malls, golf-courses, and other big-business oriented “urban renewal projects”. Officials continue to claim that there is no open land in Cape Town. Yet this city has one of the highest rates of urban sprawl and has more open land than most big cities in the Global South.
Even though the South African government doesn’t seem to understand this hypocrisy, backyard dwellers (some of whom have been on the waiting list for over 20 years) no longer have the patience stay cramped up in peoples backyards any longer. This is why Anti-Eviction Backyard Dwellers from Gugulethu, Nyanga, New Crossroads and Langa have decided to take matters into their own hands.
The AEC Backyard Dwellers are currently setting up their new informal homes in Gugulethu just off of Landsdowne Rd. The ELF# for the piece of land is RR448. Press and well-wishers are invited to come to the scene immediately to support the residents in their action to secure a livelihood for themselves and their families.
The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign would also like to use this action to welcome Mr Whitey Jacobs, the MEC for Housing in the Western Province, to his new job. We hope that he will have the political courage and humility to listen to the words of Cape Town’s poor and oppressed rather than follow the demands of his bosses and the private sector.
The poor must claim their right to drive the so-called Peoples Housing Process.
Power to the poor people!For more information and for directions, please contact Mncedisi Twalo at 0785808646
Gugulethu backyard dwellers who tried to occupy unfinished flats in Langa at the weekend, on Sunday told of the “horror” they experienced when people armed with knobkieries and bricks launched a violent attack on them.
Saturday’s occupation, led by the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC,) was meant to be peaceful and to protest against the long wait for housing, but yesterday a number of its supporters told how the vicious attack left them with bruised limbs, fractured ribs and head injuries. Read the rest of this entry »
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