Threatened with mass eviction, the residents of the Joe Slovo settlement in Langa, Cape Town will be gathering outside of the South African Constitutional Court in Braamfontein, Johannesburg on 21 August at 9am. They are appealing 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.

As a national housing project, the N2 Gateway is supposed to provide the residents of informal settlements along the N2, some of the most visible informal settlements in Cape Town, with formal housing. Yet the project’s plans were developed with little community input and when they were announced, provoked strong reaction as they could not accomodate most of the 20,000 residents of Joe Slovo.

When the ministry of housing and their principal agent, Thubelisha Homes, were unwilling to change the project to accomodate all of the residents of Joe Slovo, residents responded by blocking the N2 highway in September 2007. In response, Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu sought their removal from this strip of land at the south and east of the Langa township.

Residents challenged the eviction order in court, only to have High Court Judge Hlophe find them illegal occupants of land they have lived on since the early 1990s and determined that they had no reasonable expectation that most of them should be accomodated in the homes to be constructed.

To attend this court case, the residents of Joe Slovo have traveled by train with Delft backyarders who been living on the pavement on Symphony Way for the past six months, opposite the N2 Gateway houses they were evicted from after illegally occupying them in December 2007. They are also joined by the ratepayers of Joe Slovo phase 1 flats, who are currently on a rent boycott to call attention to their high rents and poorly constructed apartments. These communities are also joined by <!–
D(["mb","\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003eThe Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign supports these communities impacted by South African government\u0026#39;s failed top-down planning process, epitomized in the N2 Gateway project. In support of the demands of the Joe Slovo residents to have quality and affordable houses built for them where they currently live, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign and Abahlali baseMjondolo have also brought representatives from various communities, including Khayelitsha, Delft, Wes Bank, and Mitchell\u0026#39;s Plain. They are also supported by the Landless Peoples Movement.\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor more information, contact:\u003cbr\u003eAshraf Cassiem, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign 076 186 1408\u003cbr\u003eMzwanele Zulu, Joe Slovo Task Team - 076 385 2369\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eS\u0026#39;bu Zikode, Abahlali baseMjondolo - 083 547 0474\u003cbr\u003eMaureen Mnisi, Landless Peoples Movement - 082 337 4514\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cbr\u003e-----\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIssued by: Joe Slovo TaskTeam\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo evictions from Joe Slovo shack settlement, Langa, Cape Town!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAsiyi eDelft!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e            We, the residents of Joe Slovo shack settlement in Langa, Cape Town, are going to the Constitutional Court to contest the order obtained by Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu in the Cape High Court in March to evict us and send us to the outskirts of Cape Town in Delft! She wants to house better-off people along the N2 highway to make it pretty for tourists to the 2010 World Cup!\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e            In Delft we would pay more for transport and have less chance of jobs. We won\u0026#39;t go to Delft! Asiyi eDelft! We want houses built for us in Joe Slovo!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e            We are going to the Constitutional Court because it is supposed to protect the rights of the poor.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e            We are supported and joined by residents of Joe Slovo phase 1, known officially as N2 Gateway phase 1, whose flats were built on land taken from the Joe Slovo settlement. They are on rent boycott because their rents are too high and their flats are badly constructed. We support their demands.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e            We are supported and joined by backyarders from Delft who want houses in Delft, and therefore occupied the N2 Gateway houses built there. They were evicted, and now live on the pavement next to the houses. We support their demand for housing in Delft.",1]
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The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign supports these communities impacted by South African government’s failed top-down planning process, epitomized in the N2 Gateway project. In support of the demands of the Joe Slovo residents to have quality and affordable houses built for them where they currently live, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign and Abahlali baseMjondolo have also brought representatives from various communities, including Khayelitsha, Delft, Wes Bank, and Mitchell’s Plain. They are also supported by the Landless Peoples Movement.

Update:20 August 16:46 Word has just been received that another home in Motala Heights is burning….

This morning an eThekwini Municipal official invaded the Motala Heights settlement with a group of security guards. They drew their guns, said that they were there to disconnect what they call ‘illegal electricity connections’ and what every one else calls ‘lifesaving community connections’ and threatened to shoot anyone that resisted.

The Municipal Official is known to be a friend of local gangster landlord Ricky Govender and often drinks in Govender’s bar. When the official was challenged he told the community that “you are living on Ricky’s land and you must go.” Municipal officials are always saying this but in fact AbM went to the City deeds office in 2006 and it is clear that the settlement is on government land . In a democracy government land should be the peoples’ land. In fact all vacant land should be the people’s land. During the attack Bongo Dlamini, the Chairperson of the Abahlali baseMjondolo youth league whose shack burnt down on 31 July, was injured when the security guards deliberately rammed him with their car.

Immediately after the attack the entire community marched on Ricky Govender’s offices to protest against the attack on the settlement, the injury to Bongo and the disconnection of electricity at gun point. Govender was informed that neither he nor the Municipality has any right to enter the settlement without the permission of Abahlali baseMjondolo. He agreed to this demand.

The Motala Heights Abahlali baseMjondolo branch will call a mass meeting of all residents in the area to discuss this latest attack and will issue a more detailed press statement after that. But right now it is important to note that:

1. The last time the City attacked Motala Heights was in 2006 when their security guards, clearly acting under the direction of Ricky Govender and many of them drunk after drinking in Govender’s bar, came to demolish the settlement. That attack was stopped by legal action because the City had no court order and were illegally destroying the peoples’ homes. In the end the police chased the Municipal Security out of the settlement.

2. It is a disgrace that the Municipality chooses to make its self the servant of a well known gangster who is trying to drive all the poor, African and Indian, out of the area rather than to work to develop the area with and for all the people of the area.

3. It is a disgrace that in the middle of all the shack fires the City, the same City that is responsible for the shack fires because it decided to stop electrifying shacks in 2001, continues to send men with guns to disconnect people who have done the work of making their communities safe themselves.

4. It is a disgrace that the City sends out armed security guards to attack its poorest residents rather than negotiating with them to solve their problems.

For background information on Motala Heights please see: http://www.abahlali.org/node/2377

For information on recent armed attacks oon other settlements to disconnect the people from electricity see:

Kenned Road: (Clare Estate): http://abahlali.org/node/3342
eMagwaveni (Tongaat): http://abahlali.org/node/3490

To see the recent Abahlali baseMjondolo call for a City Wide Shack Fires Summit see: http://www.abahlali.org/node/3882

For more information please contact the following residents of Motala Heights:

Bongo Dlamini, Chairperson, AbM Youth League: 0748756234

Lousia Motha: Treasurer, AbM: 0839504122

Shamita Naidoo, Chairperson, Motala Heights AbM Branch: 0743157962

Bheki Ngcobo, Deputy Chairperson, Motala Heights AbM Branch: 0785346007

The Protea South Branch of the Landless People’s Movement Has Won a Breakthrough Court Order Against the City of Johannesburg

Since 2003 the Landless People’s Movement in the Protea South shack settlement in Soweto has been trying, without success, to engage the City of Johannesburg around the future of the settlement. The Protea South LPM branch has clear demands:

1. There must be no evictions.

2. Every effort must be made to build houses for the people in Protea South.

3. If it is genuinely not possible to build houses for all residents in Protea South then discussions must be held to find the closest possible alternative site.

4. The settlement must receive all essential services while waiting for housing development.

5. All planning for the development of the settlement must be undertaken with and not for the residents.

It has become clear to the LPM that the City of Johannesburg does not take shack dwellers as human beings. It has become clear that the City will have to be forced to recognise the humanity of shack dwellers. It has become clear that the City will have to be forced to learn to think with and not for shack dwellers.

All requests for discussion have been ignored. All protests have been violently repressed. Activists, their families and journalists have been arrested, assaulted and intimidated.

For instance on 1 October 2006 over 100 SAPS officers from Protea North Station raided the settlement one day after over one-thousand residents marched in Johannesburg to demand housing. The raid resulted in the beating and pepper-spraying of the 16-year son of the LPM Protea South’s Chairperson. The incident marked the second time the Chairperson’s children have been targeted for assault by the police. At one point in the raid, police opened fire on peaceful residents, but only succeeded in shooting one of their own officers.

On the 5th of September 2007 the Freedom of Expression Institute made the following comments in a statement:

FXI staff were eyewitnesses to acts of police harassment against Protea South residents Monday morning. Maureen Mnisi, a community leader and Gauteng Chairperson of the Landless People’s Movement, was arrested while trying to speak with the media. She and at least five other community members were taken into custody and released, without being charged, after spending the night in jail. FXI staff overheard a police captain admitting that he had “always wanted to arrest” Mnisi.

We were shocked by the police violence. SAPS members fired at random towards the protesters, leaving the pavement covered with the blue casings of rubber bullets. Police also deployed a helicopter and water cannon, and we saw at least two officers using live ammunition. One Protea South resident, Mandisa Msewu, was shot in the mouth by a rubber bullet, and several other residents were attended to by paramedics due to police violence.

There has not been any apology from the City for all of this illegal violence and intimidation. In June this year the City of Johannesburg issued a press statement in which they said that Gauteng MEC for housing, Nomvula Mokonyane “warned those who attempted to derail service delivery. ‘We should be on the lookout for those people who always try but fail to destabilise our commitment to provide decent houses for our people’.”

These attitudes have forced the LPM to approach the High Court. The matter was heard in the High Court on 12 August and judgment was handed down on the same day. The court has ordered that the City of Johannesburg must, within one month:

1. Provide evidence of its plans to provide life saving basic services to the settlement including water, toilets, refuse removal, lighting and access road for emergency vehicles.

2. Provide evidence of its plans to provide housing for the residents and, in particular, to show what steps it has taken to explore the possibility of in-situ development and/or relocation to a site or sites as close as possible to the Protea South settlement.

The full text of the order is available in pdf here and attached below.

The LPM welcomes the judgment as do Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. The LPM would like to thank Moray Hathorn of the Webber Wentzel law firm for his pro bono work.

The LPM will, together with its allied movements, continue to struggle for land and housing in the cities and radical land reform in the rural areas. The struggle will be waged in the settlements, in the streets and in the courts.

For comment on this judgment please contact:

Maureen Mnisi, Protea South Branch of the Landless Peoples’ Movement: 0823374514.

Moray Hawthorn, Webber Wentzel Law Firm: 0832661081

S’bu Zikode, Abahlali baseMjondolo: 0835470474

Ashraf Cassiem, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign: 0824805489

More than 100 residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa will travel from Cape Town to Johannesburg today to attend the Constitutional Court appeal against the forced removal of 20 000 of their community.

The residents said they were prepared to sleep “on the steps of the Constitutional Court” ahead of the case on Thursday.

The Joe Slovo community has lived next to Cape Town’s N2 highway for about 18 years.

Three years ago the provincial and national housing department were awarded an eviction order against the residents to make way for the “N2 Gateway” housing project.

The Legal Resources Centre lost an appeal against the eviction order in the Cape high court last December .

Thubelisha Homes project, which was to construct the houses with FNB, has since been declared bankrupt.

Joe Slovo task team leader Mzwanele Zulu says the community wants free RDP houses in Joe Slovo.

“Many residents only survive by doing casual work in the city centre and nearby suburbs, and at the Epping Fresh Produce Market,” he said .

Justin de Allende, head of the provincial ministry of housing, refused to comment.

No evictions from Joe Slovo shack settlement, Langa, Cape Town!

Asiyi eDelft!

            We, the residents of Joe Slovo shack settlement in Langa, Cape Town, are going to the Constitutional Court to contest the order obtained by Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu in the Cape High Court in March to evict us and send us to the outskirts of Cape Town in Delft! She wants to house better-off people along the N2 highway to make it pretty for tourists to the 2010 World Cup!

            In Delft we would pay more for transport and have less chance of jobs. We won’t go to Delft! Asiyi eDelft! We want houses built for us in Joe Slovo!

            We are going to the Constitutional Court because it is supposed to protect the rights of the poor.

            We are supported and joined by residents of Joe Slovo phase 1, known officially as N2 Gateway phase 1, whose flats were built on land taken from the Joe Slovo settlement. They are on rent boycott because their rents are too high and their flats are badly constructed. We support their demands.

            We are supported and joined by backyarders from Delft who want houses in Delft, and therefore occupied the N2 Gateway houses built there. They were evicted, and now live on the pavement next to the houses. We support their demand for housing in Delft.

            We are supported by the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, which includes communities in Mitchell’s Plain, Gugulethu, Athlone, Hanover Park, Ocean View, Khayelitsha, Atlantis and elsewhere in the province. People from these areas are also coming with us to Jo’burg.

            We are supported by Abahlali baseMjondolo, representing more than 30 shack settlements in Kwa-Zulu Natal, as well as Abahlali baseMjondolo (Western Cape) which represents numerous shack settlements in Khayelitsha.

            Millions of people around South Africa have problems with housing and service delivery. We support all these struggles!

            Support us! Join us at the Constitutional Court where we will be demonstrating from 9am on Thursday 21 August!

Issued by: JOE SLOVO TASK TEAM

For more information contact Mzwanele Zulu 0763852369

The Protea South branch of the Landless Peoples’ Movement has secured a break through court order against the City of Johannesburg compelling it to take immediate steps to upgrade the settlement. See the attached pdf below.

LPM_Court Order.pdf

Source: SACSIS

Despite all the confident government talk about ‘eradicating slums by 2014′ the fact is that the number of people living in shacks is growing. Recent statistics show that the percentage of the population living in shacks has now increased to 15.4 percent from 12.7 percent in 2002.

South Africa is not the first country where the government has simply announced a date by which shacks will be ‘eradicated’. In 1968 the military dictatorship in Brazil declared that shacks would be ‘eradicated’ by 1976. When attempts to achieve this goal by forcibly relocating people to peripheral housing developments were resisted the dictatorship resorted to trying to burn people out of their shacks. Things have not degenerated to this level in South Africa. But many municipalities, with eThekwini and Erkhuleni being amongst the worst, are trying to reduce the number of people living in shacks by way of unlawful and in fact criminal mass evictions that are often accompanied by state violence.

The talk of ‘eradication’ is clearly a form of denialism. It is a denial of the realities of urbanisation, it is a denial of the realities of poverty and it is a denial of the realities of the politics of space. We need to accept that people will continue to migrate to the cities in search of opportunity, that shack settlements will continue to be an important safety net for city people who cannot afford formal housing and that being able to live close to opportunity will continue to be more important for many people than living in a formal house. In some instances politicians are trying to cap the demand for urban housing by effectively criminalising urbanisation by the very poor. The KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act is the most egregious example of this. Measures like the Slums Act come down to a return to the use of state violence to keep the poor out of the cities.

The fantasy that shacks will be eradicated by 2014 also leads to a failure to provide basic services to shack settlements. Now that they have all been rendered ‘temporary’ at the stroke of a bureaucratic pen the provision of services appears to be wasteful in the eyes of elite planners. But the reality is that many shack settlement are up to 30 years old and could easily continue to exist for another 30 years. In many of these settlements the provision of water, toilets, refuse removal and electricity is either non-existent or wildly inadequate. The failure to provide these services leads to all kinds of health problems and lays particular burdens on women’s time and, in the case of the absence of toilets, safety.

One of the most acute consequences of the failure to provide services to shack settlements is the relentless fires. They can happen any time but across the country winter is particularly feared as the burning season. The huge Kennedy Road settlement in Durban has had 6 fires already this year. In Cato Crest, also in Durban, 8 people including 5 children recently burnt to death. Old people, disabled people and children are most at risk of death in the fires but everyone stands to loose their homes and possessions including the ID books and school uniforms essential for access to some state services.

The ultimate solution is clearly the provision of decent housing. But the housing crisis in South Africa is not reducible to the provision of houses. There are all kinds of smaller interventions that could immediately reduce the threat of fire. For instance, if there were taps spread throughout the larger settlements people would be able to fight the fires more effectively. And community fire fighting efforts would clearly be much more effective if fire extinguishers were provided. Fires would be less likely to start and to spread if people were given fire resistant building materials. Fire engines would be better able to access the large settlements if roads were provided into the settlements. But the biggest issue is that of electricity. In settlements or parts of settlements that have been electrified, whether by the state or by residents, the incidence of fires is greatly reduced. There is a direct link between the fires and failure of most municipalities to electrify settlements, and in Durban the 2001 decision to cease all attempts to electrify settlements. This is compounded by the regular and often violent police raids to remove life saving self organised electricity connections.

If the state is unwilling or unable to electrify settlements it must accept that, as happens across the word, people will do the job themselves. Electricity is about many things. It means that children don’t have to do homework under street lights, that meals can be cooked, clothes ironed and families kept warm with much more safety and much less time and effort, often by women. It also means that people have much better access to the national public sphere via television discussion programmes. But most of all it means that people are not at constant risk of fire.

Almost invariably government spokespeople respond to shack fires by blaming the victims. We are told that the fires are the fault of a parent who wasn’t watching a child carefully enough or someone who was drunk and so on. These stories are often simply fabricated. But even when they are true the point is that when people have electricity an exuberant child, a drunk adult or someone who has grown tired at a funeral vigil might knock over a lamp but the result will be trivial - perhaps a broken globe. In a shack that is lit by a candle and where people are warmed by a brazier and their food cooked on a paraffin stove a tiny slip in concentration can quite easily result in catastrophe. For this reason the solution to shack fires is not, as government spokespeople say, to train people in fire awareness. The solution is to electrify the settlements.

People cannot be expected to live in constant fear of fire until they get government houses. Many people now living in shacks will, like Irene Grootboom, end their days in a shack. Shack fires are an emergency and electricity is a life saving essential service.

By Richard Pithouse, an independent writer and researcher in Durban.

QQ Section - Tomorrow, the recently formed AbM Western Cape will be hosting a walkabout through Khayeltisha’s informal settlements for Cape Town mayoral committee member Dan Plato and other city officials.

After assembling at Mew Way Hall, we will visit over a dozen informal settlements on foot, including QQ, RR, VT, VV, TR, AT, XA, QA, LB, and YA.

This walkabout will provide the residents of these communities with an opportunity to demonstrate directly to city officials the lack of even rudimentary services in their communities. Residents will be able to show officials what they have and what they lack, what they want and how they want it. It will offer our communities a chance to instill the accountability lacking in the process of upgrading informal settlements.

The purpose of the walkabout is also to demonstrate the failure of the current top-down approach to development, demonstrated in the City’s Master Plan. It follows up on last Saturday’s workshop on the City’s Master Plan, where we gained a better sense of what the plan is and saw for ourselves the ways its top-down approach to community developments in fact undermines communities. Our current lack of services is a direct result of this plan’s failures.

This walkabout also follows our last meeting with Dan Plato on 26 July.

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a community-based and community-controlled movement and we do not believe in this so-called ’stakeholder approach’ to development which seeks to make top-down government policies seem democratic. We are committed towards seeking alternatives with regard to these neoliberal-based policies which affect people living in informal settlements. We believe in the principles of participatory democracy where such alternatives only come from below and to the left.

For more information, please contact 073-256-2036

Irene Grootboom died last week, but we hardly noticed as we were all too busy obsessing about yet another court appearance of Mr. Jacob Zuma. She died homeless and penniless, not yet fifty years old, in the same week that robbers broke into the garage of ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s upmarket home in Sandton and stole stuff from his C-Class Mercedes.

The ANC Youth League did not have time to issue a press statement about the death of Mrs. Grootboom. They were too upset about the break-in at the fancy house of Mr. Malema. Breaking into a C-Class Mercedes is apparently not a revolutionary act - especially if that C-class belongs to Comrade kortbroek Malema. Thus the Youth League did have time to pontificate on this break-in: who cares about a poor and destitute woman who made legal history if there is a revolution to be fought and a man of dubious ethical standards to be defended. The Youth League statement reads in part:

We hold a firm view that this dastardly act of cowardice is the work of desperate forces who believe they can intimidate us into submission. It is a sad day in our country to realise that we still have apartheid-style tactics where one’s residence is ransacked with impunity. We dare these forces of darkness to confront us openly in broad daylight. The Youth League condemns this act of cowardice in the strongest possible terms. An attack on leaders of the ANCYL is an attack on the ANCYL itself.

For me this juxtaposition seems to sum up much of what is wrong in South Africa (and with the ANC and the debate about Jacob Zuma) in 2008. Mrs. Grootboom made legal history when the Constitutional Court (those pesky counter-revolutionaries!) delivered judgment in a groundbreaking case that carried her name, giving some content to the right of access to housing guaranteed in article 26 of the Constitution.

Eight years ago the Constitutional Court ruled in Grootboom’s favour, saying that she and others living in an informal settlement on Wallacedene sports ground near Kraaifontein had a right to demand from the state to act reasonably to provide access to housing to all South Africans by devising and implementing a housing policy that did not neglect the most poor and vulnerable members of society.

Because the state’s housing policy did not cater at all for homeless people - those in urgent need - the Court declared the state’s housing policy to be unreasonable and thus invalid. But because it was careful to respect the separation of powers and because it feared that it did not have the institutional competence to dictate to the state exactly how it had to act to progressively provide more and more South Africans with better and better access to housing, the Constitutional Court found that Mrs. Grootboom could not demand a house from the state. She could only demand that the state act reasonably to implement a housing policy.

Implicit in the Court’s judgment was an assumption that the state really cared about people like Mrs. Grootboom and that, given some guidance, the government would eventually address the needs of Mrs. Grootboom and others like her. It assumed that the members of government would not spend its time fighting about positions and power, but would really try to help people like Mrs. Grootboom who had placed their names on housing waiting lists many years before in the hope of accessing housing.

Eight years later this assumption seems rather optimistic, to say the least. As the disastrous anti-poor N2 Gateway project has shown, the government often seems more concerned about what Sep Blatter and rich overseas visitors might think as they drive from the airport to the new R300 million 2010 soccer stadium, than what is best for the poor and homeless citizens of South Africa.

And aided and abetted by “revolutionary” judges like Judge President John Hlophe, the state’s housing policy now often seems to consist of attempts at removing destitute citizens from prime land close to job opportunities near city centres to far-away townships in order to make way for middle income houses for people with the necessary ANC connections to jump to the front of a housing queue.

Although many houses have been built by our government and many people provided with access to housing, the needs of the really poor and destitute - like Mrs. Irene Grootboom - still do not seem to be a priority for politicians who drive around in fancy cars and live in leafy suburbs among the despicable white racists they so enjoy to deride and whom they need to give legitimacy to their (mis)rule.

Mrs. Irene Grootboom was a true revolutionary. She put her trust in the law, our courts and in politicians to help her to get access to a house. But true revolutionaries hardly ever live happily ever after. Unlike the fake revolutionaries who steal our money and spew populist platitudes masquerading as concern for the people, true revolutionaries often die young, penniless and homeless.

Mrs. Grootboom’s death shames us all. Is it too much to ask that her death might galvanize us into re-focusing our attention on the real pressing problems facing South Africa - on poverty and the lack of opportunities facing many people like Mrs. Grootboom who do not know and could not care less about Jacob Zuma or Julius Malema or anyone else driving a Mercedes (or a Porsche)?

Naaah, I am obviously being naive. Who would care about a poor destitute woman when one has so much more important things to do - like getting into one’s C-Class Mercedes to go and give another revolutionary speech about how one would kill or die for a man who took more than R4 million in bribes from a convicted crook.