AEC’s Ashraf Cassiem on the World Cup

14 07 2010





Press: Kicked Out for the Cup?

10 06 2010

Watch Christopher Werth’s multimedia report from South Africa: “Out of Bounds? Cape Town’s Cleanup for the World Cup.”

Kicked Out for the Cup?

South Africa is accused of clearing Cape Town slums to clean up for the big event

Newsweek Magazine, 4 June 2010

by Christhoper Werth

Victor Gumbi sits pensively beside a smoldering fire in a newly cleared lot, literally in the shadow of the recently renovated Ellis Park Stadium, one of the many venues where South Africa will host the World Cup football tournament, which kicks off this week. South Africa billed the world’s most popular sporting event as a boon to development that would help lift millions out of poverty, but Gumbi, a 35-year-old day laborer, says things are only getting worse. Not long after South Africa was awarded the tournament, an entire city block in the neighborhood where he lives was slated for destruction as part of a larger urban-regeneration scheme around the stadium, as Johannesburg began preparing for the throngs of tourists expected to come pouring in over the next few weeks. Late last year, the run-down building where Gumbi was squatting was torn down, leaving him in a small, jerry-built shack in the middle of a block of half-demolished houses that local residents have nicknamed “Baghdad.” Now many residents who’d been living in the area’s abandoned buildings for well more than a decade feel they’re being forced out because of the World Cup. “They want to hide us. They don’t want the Europeans seeing the people living here, so they demolished these dirty houses,” says Gumbi, who’s convinced he’ll be removed once and for all before the games actually begin.

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Solidarity: In the U.S., Wood Co. man forced from foreclosed home

7 05 2010

UPDATE: The Stony Ridge 7 are out of jail and free. All were charged with criminal trespass and impeding police business, both misdemeanors, and released.

STONY RIDGE, OHIO — Wood County Sheriff’s deputies swarmed the home of Keith Sadler Friday morning in an attempt to force him out of the foreclosed property.

Sadler and five others barricaded themselves inside the Stony Ridge home five days ago in protest of his bank’s foreclosure of the US 20 (Fremont Pike) property.  Sadler’s home was sold after he was unable to keep up with the payments.  According to protesters with The Toledo Foreclosure Defense League (TFDL), Sadler exhausted all other options.

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Tin Town: A short documentary on the Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign

6 02 2010

Promised housing by the South African government, more than a hundred Cape Town families found community through their struggle as squatters on a sandy road known as Symphony Way. Recently moved by court order to an indefinitely temporary relocation area dubbed ‘Tin Town’ or ‘Blikkiesdorp’ in Afrikaans, community members reflect on that road in their past and on the road ahead.
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Title: Tin Town

A Film By: Nora Connor, Clementine Wallace & Colton Margus

Produced By: Barefoot Workshops, Inc

Instructors: Alison Fast, Teddy Symes & Chandler Griffin

Sponsors by: Canon USA, Sennheiser, Bogen Imaging, Lowel, Litepanels

Created: December 2009, Cape Town, South Africa





How the World Cup will impact poor communities in South Africa

30 11 2009

Eva Davids from the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) in South Africa talks about the impact of the 2010 Football World Cup on her community in Athlone.





When the mountain meets its Shadow Trailer (english)

16 11 2009




A video by American students of the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers

16 11 2009

a 6 minute short film, made to raise awareness of the eviction situation in Cape Town, South Africa.

 





DemocracyNow! Video and radio interviews

1 10 2009

South Africa’s Poor Targeted by Evictions, Attacks in Advance of 2010 World Cup

Thousands of South Africans are being displaced in preparation for the 2010 World Cup. While Durban completes the finishing touches on its new stadium, thousands of the city’s poor who live in sprawling informal settlements are threatened with eviction. On Saturday, an armed gang of some forty men attacked an informal settlement on Durban’s Kennedy Road, killing at least two people and destroying thirty shacks. We speak to two South African activists who are fighting back.

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AbM: Eyewitness Video Testimony

1 10 2009

New video has been put together from the scene at Kennedy Road. Eyewitnesses to the menacing mob on Saturday night directly contradict both the official ANC story that ‘Abahlali-connected people’ perpetrated the attack and the ridiculous comment by Ward Councilor Yakoob Baig that the community is ‘terrified of Abahlali’. The slightest scrutiny reveals that in fact Abahlali was the target of the vicious 36 hours plus of deadly mob violence. In the 3 days since at least 4 people have been killed, many injured and over 1,000 have been displaced from the settlement under threats of violence. Their safe return has no secure guarantee and has not even been addressed by the ANC or police. The ANC’s persistent support and connection to the actual attackers proves that the government is at a minimum complicit in the violence. At the moment no member of the armed mob these witnesses were threatened by has been arrested while 8 unarmed members of the Kennedy Road safety committee, which was protecting Abahlali members that night, are in police custody facing possible murder charges. Abahlali President S’bu Zikode and Vice President Lindela Figlan remain refugees, unable to return to their homes at Kennedy Road while the armed mob holding death threats over their heads roams free to terrorize the remaining residents at the settlement. In fact anyone with even the most cursory connection to Abahlali, for example the ladies who cook for children in the crèche near the Abahlali office are being threatened and forced to leave. Please watch this video as it is an important counter to the blatant lies being peddled by the ANC and swallowed whole by much of the South African media. You can watch on YouTube here.

Click here to sign the petition asking Zuma to intervene and stop the  violence





Txaboletan bizi direnak – Video of PPA at the Concourt

10 08 2009

Video of Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Poor People’s Alliance protest against the KZN Slums Act at the Constitutional Court.

Click here for the video: http://vimeo.com/5971780

Txaboletan bizi direnak from elkartasunbideak on Vimeo.

Qina!