Brother Alfred Arnolds and his family have refused to move into his new house. He explains that he has made a commitment to everyone on Symphony Way that he will continue to occupy the road with them until the last family has received the keys to their house.
For more information about the families’ refusal to move into the houses, click here
News: Take Back the Land installs homeless families in foreclosed Miami-Dade County properties. Here’s what the neighbors think.
Above Video: Take Back the Land’s Umoja Village Shantytown
Mamyrah Prosper steps gingerly over ankle-high grass strewn with plastic bags and empty soda bottles in the yard of a vacant redbrick house in Miami’s Liberty City. She peers through a gap in a boarded-up window. “It looks in good shape,” she says. “I mean, the walls aren’t falling down. This is definitely one of our stronger options.” Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Mandela tells the story of shack dwellers coming together amidst epidemic levels of poverty and inequality in the new South Africa.
For the AEC press release, click here.
Symphony Way terrorised by the police - again!
Our Word is Our Weapon: While the city of Cape Town intimidates residents with shotguns and tank-like vehicles, the people of Symphony Way respond with their words - and a round of applause.
Source: South African Civil Society Information Service
Threatened with mass eviction, the residents of the Joe Slovo settlement in Langa, Cape Town gathered outside of the South African Constitutional Court in Johannesburg on 21 August 2008 to appeal the judgement of High Court Judge Hlophe that would forcibly remove them to Delft, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town, to makeway for the completion of the N2 Gateway Housing Project.
The featured clip below (part one), is of an earlier protest at the Cape High Court where residents air their grievances with government’s plans for them. See Part 1 and Part 2 below:
Eyewitness footage by a community worker in Delft. This is video shot on his cell phone with a minute by minute account of how police opened fire on residents:
Video #1 - this was the situation about 10 seconds before the police started shooting. As you can see it is tense. However, there is no violence from any of the residents. The guy in the red shirt is a community leader with the Anti-Eviction Campaign. He is on the truck instructing residents to stay calm and sit down. Abut 10 seconds later, after someone tried to remove his mattress from the truck, the police started shooting into the crowd andstun grenades began exploding. The police claim that they were provoked by people throwing rocks, but as you can see, there were no rocks thrown at either police or the sheriff of the court before the police started shooting.
Video #2 - this was about 2 minutes after the first video was shot. As you can see, pretty much everyone has already run away. I took cover next to a group of media people assuming that the cops would not shoot at them. The cops were running after people and shooting at them even though everyone was running away and posed no threat to them. You can hear some gun shots in the video and some police running with their guns raise ready to shoot. At the end of the video, a policeman came running at me and the group of media with his gun raised. We ran away fearing we’d get shot (I personally was shot at about a minute earlier and was lucky not to get hit by the bullets).
Result: About 20 residents were shot. Most of these residents were women and children who were unable to avoid the bullets. Six children were shot and I personally brought three of them to the hospital. One of the children, who was only 3 years old, was shot three times and almost killed by the rubber bullets.
I also spoke with numerous residents who claimed a lady with a child in her hands was held at gunpoint by a police officer and ordered to run so he could shoot her from a non-lethal distance. She refused, lay down on the ground and curled up into a ball to protect her child. I spoke to this lady who confirmed that this was true.
Ashraf Cassiem from the Anti-Eviction Campaign presents a memorandum to First National Bank in protest of the Bank’s support for forced removals.
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