What?           Interfaith Andries Tatane memorial ceremony, testimonial against police brutality, and march to Harare Police Station
When?          Sunday 22nd April 2012 at 12h30
Where?         Way of Life Church / Multi-purpose centre, Mandela Park, Khayelitsha
Directions?   Visit http://g.co/maps/ucmky or contact Moza @ 0791176943 / 0213672122

–

We are all Andries Tatane!

There is a little bit of Andries Tatane in each and every one of us.

As he fought for service delivery for his community in Ficksburg, we fight for toilets, electricity, houses and land here in Cape Town.

As he lived in the hellish township of Meqheleng, many of us are stuck in hell-like conditions in Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Delft and Manenberg.

As he was attacked, shot, beaten and ultimately killed by police for standing up for what he believed in, many of us are at times also attacked, shot, beaten and a few of us have even been killed at their hands.

As he believed in freedom and dignity for himself and his community, we know that we remain unfree and that it is only through continued struggle that we may liberate ourselves and one another.

We are all Andries Tatane!

To commemorate the life, activism and the death of Tatane and countless other victims of police brutality, we are holding a memorial ceremony and testimonial on Sunday the 22^nd of April. Through this event, we hope to build a shared consciousness about our struggle for dignity and against police brutality. Following the memorial, we will march to Harare Police Station where we will hand over a memorandum to the police and demand that they sign an undertaking that they will no longer engage in any acts of intimidation, violence and brutality against the people of Khayelitsha.

We are all Andries Tatane!

In 2009, police shot dead at least 556 people in South Africa. Police suppression of protests have occurred recently in Hangberg, Blikkiesdorp, Khayelitsha, and Rondebosch Common. In the townships, almost everyone we know has had at least some negative experience with the police.

Thus, as long as we remain quiet and divided, the police will continue to arrest us without cause, beat our youth, repress our movements, and kill our most vocal community members.

All are welcome so please join us this Sunday.

For more information see our Program below:

• 12h30 – Opening
• 13h00 – Memorial ceremony conducted by Pastor Skosana
• 13h30 – Testimonials: expressing our disgust at the treatment by the police – by Nkwame Cedile
• 14h30 – SOS space → art and music against police brutality – by Soundz of the South
• 14h50 – Mkhonto to Andries Tatane
• 15h00 – March to the police station
• 16h00 – Closure

Revolutions do not spring out of the blue.  Revolutions are organised through the united action of men and women, rural and urban, which spring from their needs.  Revolutions happen when ordinary men and women begin to discuss their own lives and their own futures and to take action to take control of their own lives. – Ayanda Kota, UPM

South Africa has seen a surge of localised protests which continues to spread and gain momentum. “The rebellion of the poor” has evolved out of a new generation of discontented youth, primarily amongst the unemployed.

There are many reasons for the protests:  unequal and segregated distribution of land in both rural and urban areas, poor service delivery and housing, government corruption and municipal mismanagement, the ‘undemocratic’ structuring of wards and development forums, authoritarian approaches to governance, evictions and forced removals, crime and unemployment, police brutality, and provincial border demarcation issues are all concepts they address.

These issues have been brought to the forefront in Grahamstown by the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM). The movement has been active since 2009 under the leadership of Ayanda Kota. The collective strives to place focus on the needs of the poor and unemployed of the country.  In Grahamstown, the unemployment rate is around 70%, while in South Africa as a whole over 40% of the potential South African workforce is unemployed.

According to Kota, the movement formed largely in reaction to the “oppression at the hands of the African National Congress that has driven [them] into the rebellion of the poor.” The number of dissatisfied, politicised and radicalised poor is increasing, and movements across the country are combining knowledge and strategies to form a unified alternative to what Kota describes as “sectarianism and political intolerance” on the part of the ruling party.

Movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Poor Peoples’ Alliance, the Landless Peoples’ Movement, the Anti-Eviction Campaign, Mandela Park Backyarders, Sikhula Sonke, and the UPM are unifying and standing for the same right to direct participatory democracy. “We have a right to organize ourselves and speak for us,” said Kota. “Nothing is for us without us.” They contest what they call the centralised and hierarchical culture of ANC. They support the notion of a living politics – a form of politics which ‘speaks’ in a language that everyone can understand. They aim to build alternative spaces where a participatory, democratic, decentralised, and inclusive form of politics is cultivated; spaces that recognise the humanity of all.

Thursday July 28th 2011 – West Cape News

The city’s application to evict thousands of people from city-owned land in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain was today postponed by the

Ibrahim Moosa from the Mitchell's Plain Backyarders Association leads about 400 people on a march to the Civic Centre today. The march coincided with the Western Cape High Court's postponement of an application by 16 backyarders opposing evicition from city-owned land. Photo: Sandiso Phaliso/WCN

Western Cape High Court to August 30.

Judge Nonkosi Saba postponed the matter as the respondents (backyarders) had only filed their papers on Monday. As a result the city could not file their reply in time for today’s court date.

Sheldon Magardie from Lawyers for Human Rights, said the LHR was representing 16 of the 4000 backyarders who were evicted from city-owned land in Tafelsig on May 14. The 16 respondents are those who have remained on the land.

About 400 people from Mitchells Plain Residents and Backyarders Association, Proudly Manenberg, and sympathetic NGOs, gathered in front of the High Court in support of the backyarders’ application and to protest the lack of land and housing for Cape Town’s poor.

Demonstrator Mary Petersen from Elsies River said about 50 people from Leonsdale Community in Elsies River had come to support the backyarders.

“We are here because we have the same issues like them in Elsies River where backyard dwellers are being evicted,” she said.

The demonstrators held placards with slogans proclaiming: ‘Give us houses not hassels (sic),’ ‘Take my Tent…Kill me Quick?, ‘Power to the People. We support the Tafelsig Occupiers! 74 days, no shelter…slow death’.

Shortly before noon the crowd embarked on an unauthorised march to the Civic Centre to hand over a memorandum to Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille.

Police, armed with batons, followed the chanting crowd.

Chairperson of the Mitchells Plain Backyarders Association, Charles Adams, said the memorandum had several demands. These included that land be made available for housing for the poor, that the city’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit be dissolved, that backyarders whose shelters were demolished in May be compensated, that public violence cases pending against 19 of the Tafelsig residents be withdrawn, that the city meet with community organisations to look at alternative ways of resolving the issue of land for the poor, and that the court case between the city and the backyarders be withdrawn.

Adams said the court case would be a “struggle” and a “long fight” for the backyarders and they would prefer that land be made available for housing.

Although the organizations did not get a permit from the city for the march, they decided to go ahead nonetheless.

Adams said the permit was denied because they refused to abide with city stipulations that a maximum delegation of three representatives meet with the city.

He said de Lille accepted their memorandum and said she would respond within 14 days.

The Independent Complaints Directorate is currently investigating allegations of Metro police brutality towards the backyarders when they were evicted from city-owned land in Tafelsig. Charges of brutality have also been laid against Metro Police after a mother of three sustained a broken ankle and a pregnant woman was allegedly thrown to the ground during a scuffle between Metro Police and backyarders on June 3 when the Anti-Land Invasion Unit prevented the backyarders from occupying land on the edge of the disputed Tafelsig field. — Fadela Slamdien

Police withdraw from invaded CT land
Rafiq Wagiet | 18 May

Cape Town police withdrew from the Swartklip Sports Field in Mitchell’s Plain on Wednesday after forcing illegal dwellers off the vacant municipal land.

The city secured a court interdict on Tuesday allowing it to evict the land invaders.

Wednesday’s stand-off was rather short and subdued compared to the violent clashes seen at the weekend when police were met with the barrage of rocks and in turn fired rubber bullets at the illegal occupants.

A representative of the Mitchell’s Plain Backyarders’ Association kept the crowd calm.

The association said it would attempt to secure a meeting with city officials about the illegal occupation.

In the meantime, the city’s anti-land invasion unit dismantled some of the structures and removed them from the land.

(Edited by Lindiwe Mlandu)

http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/05/17/residents-to-boycott-elections-over-houses

Residents to boycott elections over houses
17 May 2011 | Moses Mackay

HUNDREDS of people living in back-yards in Mitchells Plain, Cape Town, said they would not vote in tomorrow’ elections and accused police of brutality.

The large group occupied a piece of vacant land in Tafelsig on Saturday and built about 2500 shacks, saying they had been on the waiting list for many years.

But police opened fire on them with rubber bullets and sprayed the crowd – which included pregnant women and pensioners – with tear-gas.

“We have been on the waiting list for between 16 and 30 years,” an elderly woman said.

A man sustained serious injury when he was shot in the eye. Resident Ismail Abrahams was also injured and admitted to Groote Schuur Hospital. Twelve other people were arrested.

Yesterday, people were busy re-building their shacks after an incident on Saturday.

Police, accompanied by several ambulances, gathered near the area. Sympathetic residents from Khayelitsha and ZilleRaine Heights, about 20kilometres away, came to give their support.

Back-yard dweller Faizel Lee, whose family and four others were staying in a big tent, said they would not vote in the local government elections tomorrow.

“Both the DA and the ANC have failed to address our housing crisis. We have decided not to vote,” he said.

Lee, a father of three, said the ANC and DA had visited on Saturday and gave them food, which only showed that they were trying to buy their votes.

Terence Hoskins said he was also beaten by police armed with batons and that he had suffered injuries to his body.

Hoskins said they had been told by city officials that though there was land, there was no money to build houses.

Mastera Collop of the NGO Women of Action in Tafelsig, said people were tired of false promises and had decided to build their houses in the area.

“Residents will fight for their rights until the bitter end,” Collop said.

She said that they were not happy about the situation and have threatened to disrupt tomorrow’s elections.

ANC mayoral candidate Tony Ehrenreich was set to visit the area today to persuade the group to vote ANC. The withdrawal of hundreds of voters in Mitchells Plain would be a blow to the DA as this area is one of their strongholds.

City of Cape Town spokesperson Rulleska Singh said 18 people had been injured but defended the police’s shooting of pregnant women.

“Yesterday some of the occupants on the land were using women and children as human shields.

“Law enforcement officers were also attacked with bricks and stones, necessitating the use of a water cannon and rubber bullets” Singh said.

She said the city had plans to build houses on that land and would not allow land invasions.

–

On the Murder of Andries Tatane

By Richard Pithouse – SACSIS

There are moments when a society has to step back from the ordinary thrum of day to day life and ask itself how it has become what it has become. There are times when a society has to acknowledge that it cannot go on as it is and ask itself what must be done to set things on a new and better course.

The historians of our children and grandchildren’s generation will write the history of our failure to redeem the promise of our democracy and the struggles that brought it into being. They will debate the significance of the various moments that have marked the plunge from the soaring language of the Freedom Charter and the Constitution to the stupid, ugly, strutting fascist camp of Bheki Cele and Julius Malema.

We can be sure that they will agree that when we confronted, for the first time, the sickening spectacle of an unarmed man being murdered by the police on the television news, a decisive point was reached. When the police murdered Andries Tatane in Ficksburg on Wednesday they murdered a man who had, with thousands of others, taken to the streets in protest at the unconscionable contempt with which the poor are treated in this country.

All these years after the end of apartheid, abundant rivers of Johnny Walker Blue have been drunk while millions live in shacks without water, electricity or toilets. We still have a two tier education system that condemns most of us to a precarious, dangerous and difficult life. More than 50% of young black men and 60% of young black women are unemployed. This is an entirely unviable and unjust situation. The protest in Ficksburg, and the ongoing national rebellion of the poor of which it is part, are an entirely legitimate response to the sheer contempt with which the ANC treats the people in whose name its leading members grow richer as their language and the public performance of their power becomes more infused with violence.

Andries Tatane’s sister, Seipati, told reporters that he was ‘forever reading books’ and that he volunteered to help the matrics with maths and science at the local school. He helped, we are told, the Boitumelo High School to improve its pass rate from 38% to 52%. A witness said that he was singled out by the police after asking them why they were targeting an elderly protestor with their water cannon. He had planned, as is his unquestionable right in a democracy, to stand as a candidate in the local government elections next month.

The officers who murdered Tatane were still on duty in Ficksburg on Friday. The day after Tatane was killed Elizabeth Mtshali, due to give birth in a month’s time, was shot in the neck by the police with a rubber bullet while carrying a plastic drum to fetch water. At times like this you’d be forgiven for thinking that the shack settlements of South Africa were in occupied Palestine.

Of course Andries Tatane is not the first unarmed person to have been murdered by the police during a protest after apartheid. In fact he’s not even the first person from Ficksburg to be killed in this way.

More than ten years have passed since Michael Makhabane, a student from Ficksburg, was murdered by the police on the campus of the former University of Durban-Westville during a protest against the exclusion of poor students from the university. He was shot in the chest at point black range and from above with a shot gun.

In August 2004 around four and half thousand young people, many of them school pupils, from Intabazwe in Harrismith occupied the N2 in protest. On the first day of the protest twenty four children were injured, thirty eight were arrested and a seventeen year old boy, Teboho Mkhonza, was shot dead.

But 2004 was the year in which the rebellion of the poor was just beginning. By 2009 the number of protests was ten times higher than it had been in 2004 and it was still higher last year. There is no record of the number of people that have been killed as this rebellion has spiralled around the country. The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) is, plainly, neither a trustworthy or effective organisation. It has often been deliberately obstructive and has failed to investigate many clear instances of serious police repression including torture. But its 2010 report confirms that, despite its obvious failings, it investigated 1,769 cases of people dying in police custody or as a result of police action last year. Let’s be clear. The state is, cheered on by Bheki Cele’s swaggering machismo, waging some kind of war on its people.

We’re just under a month away from the local government elections and things may well get worse in the coming weeks. Elections are generally a dangerous time for grassroots activists and poor people’s movements but local government elections are invariably the most dangerous time.

On election day in 2004, Landless People’s Movement activists were tortured in the Protea South police station in Soweto. The day after the 2006 local government elections, the police shot Monica Ngcobo dead and seriously wounded S’busiso Mthethwa in Umlazi in Durban. They claimed that Ngcobo had been shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet. They lied, as their spokespeople habitually do. She was shot in the back with live ammunition.

The elections next month will be bitterly contested in many areas with various parties running credible candidates, popular independent candidates entering the fray and boycotts being organised. If decisive action is not taken to persuade the police that their job is to facilitate rather than repress the right to protest, we may have to add more names to those of Solomon Madonsela, murdered by the police in Ermelo in February, and Andries Tatane, murdered by the police in Ficksburg last week.

In 1976 Sam Nzima’s photograph of a dying Hector Pieterson being carried away from the police by Mbuyisa Makhubo planted a clear image of the brutality of apartheid in the global imagination. Events without enduring public images are often only private traumas. But an event with a public image, like the murder of Hector Pieterson, can divide a society into a collective awareness of a time before and after a public trauma.

In October 2005 two teenage boys, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré were killed by electrocution while fleeing the police in Paris. France was wracked with riotous protest for the next two months. In December 2008 Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a fifteen year old boy, was killed by the police in Athens leading to a month long insurrection across Greece. In December last year Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia after enduring one humiliation too many at the hands of the police. The consequences of the reaction to his death are still playing out in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya and Swaziland.

In the past it has been possible for much of South African society to deny the increasing brutality with which our police repress grassroots dissent. The police have generally had a vastly better capacity for public relations than any poor people’s organisation and so the average newspaper reader is usually confronted with the police spin on events or, at best, two very different versions of what has happened when a body is left battered or broken after a protest. But the video footage of the murder of Andries Tatane leaves no room for doubt about what kind of society we have become.

The ANC likes to pretend to itself that it is a revolutionary organisation that, alone, can claim fidelity to the struggles against apartheid. It likes to pretend to itself that all opposition is motivated by malicious reactionary schemers. It is time that those of us in and out of the party face up to the plainly evident fact that the most dangerous reactionaries are the ones leading the country. The new struggles to ensure that every woman and man in our country is treated with the dignity that every human being deserves are entirely legitimate.

Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University.

Residents have vowed to continue their protest against the eviction of a poor family and against Thursday’s police brutality that has left 3 residents seriously injured. Residents will submit a petition to police today and fight for the rights and dignity of resident’s vulnerable to greedy banks and politicians.

Wednesday

As we saw all over the news, on Wednesday the 13^th, the Sheriff of the Court came to E Section with police and security guards to evict Nomachina Magodla and her 7 children because the greedy banks have no interest in helping her find a way to repay her dead husband’s loan. Community members mobilised in support of the family blockading the road, burning tyres, and trying to remove the private security guards the bank has placed inside the home.

Negotiations between the community of E Section and the police on Wednesday provided no solution to the Magodla family. The community then went to night court to find relief for the Magodla family but at night court there was still no solution.

Thursday

The following day, Thursday the 14^th of April, community members went to Bellville Magistrates Court with the Magodla family to support their efforts to get back into the house. The court did not rule in the family’s favor and would not allow any stay or reversal of the eviction.

The community of E Section were not happy with these results and it became clear to them that the law protects the rich people and the banks at the expense of the poor. While the eviction was carried out by the sheriff of the court with a legal eviction order, the legal process was unfair, unjust and was based on selective reading of the Constitution and the PIE Act. In particular, the clause asserting that an eviction cannot take place unless there is adequate alternative accommodation made available to those who are evicted. Because the court did not ensure that the Magodla family had access to another place to live, the eviction is not acceptable under South African law. The South African government should help the family pay out their loan, which they are willing to pay. However, since the poor are viewed with contempt by government, Nomachina and her family will not be allowed to get their house back.

Thursday afternoon following court the community of E Section, united with anger at the banks, the government and the judicial system, gathered once again outside the home of Nomachina and reported on the events to those who had not made it to court. The community collectively agreed that the protest should continue and they resolved that no one will be allowed inside the house including security guards, government officials or police.

The community, led by a large contingent of women from the area, protested. This time, there was no burning of tyres or road blockade. Singing freedom songs and dancing, the protest was entirely peaceful until the police arrived in numbers and immediately began shooting at the community.

Three community members were seriously injured by so-called non-lethal bullets. Nkosinathi Thafeni was shot in the leg. An old man not involved in the protest and who was just passing by was also shot in the leg when the police sprayed community members with bullets.

Asive Phatiswa Gaji was shot directly in the face from close range and she remains in hospital until this day. Her injuries will have a serious long-term affect on her life.

Friday

The following day, the police came again to the community apologising and appealing to the community that they did not mean to start shooting. However for Asive, Nkosinathi, the old man, and everyone else who was traumatised by the incident, their words rang hollow.

Sunday

During a meeting yesterday, the community resolved to write a petition and send representatives of the community of E Section to submit their grievances at Lingelethu West Police Station

The community has resolved to keep meeting everyday to find a way forward that will help the Magodla family and also help other families in the area who are under threat of eviction.

With the support of community members from all over Khayelitsha including QQ Section, TR Section, Makhaza, Mandela Park and other Abahlali baseMjondolo and Anti-Eviction Campaign communities, E Section residents have decided that they will not vote until their grievances are resolved. They have no interested in politicians who are out campaigning and lying to them. Government officials must come to them to resolve their issues at hand: evictions, lack of service delivery, electricity cut-offs, etc. If they come to the community to campaign, they will be kicked out.

Monday

There will be a mass meeting in E Section after 5pm to discuss the way forward. People are welcome to attend in solidarity.

Police and government contempt for the poor

It is clear to us now that the majority of the elite, of government officials and of police have contempt for the poor. To them we are not human beings and we deserve to be evicted, shot and made homeless. To them we are not quite civilised, we are lazy, and we have a culture of non-payment and of violence. But we are none of these things. We are force into rebellion because our jobs are taken away from us, because our homes are taken away from us, and because those from above continue to try to take away our dignity.

In the past few weeks, there have been an increase in evictions all over the Western Cape. The Magodla family is only one example. We have received reports of evictions all over Khayelitsha, Philippi, Gugulethu, etc. The Gugulethu AEC has a list of evictions they have prevented in the Gugulethu area – many of them at the insistence of the big 4 banks. In Gugulethu though, it seems that Standard Bank stands out as the most serious perpetrator of evictions of the poor. But all the banks just want the same thing in the end: money.

On Thursday (unlike Wednesday), the police were out of control. Perhaps they got the message from Zuma and Cele that police can act with impunity just as they did in Ficksburg. But then again, Ficksburg is no anomaly: there were over 1,000 deaths at the hands of SAPS in South Africa last year. The only thing Ficksburg showed us is that on rare occasion police violence might be caught on SABC for the entire country to see.

When will government take action against the banks who are destroying our communities?

When will government take police violence against protesters seriously?

Most police come from poor communities. But most police carry out the directives of the rich, the elite, and the corporations like Standard Bank. We therefore ask police to respect us in the same way that we respect them when they take to the streets in protest at their horrible working conditions, low pay, and substandard training. We ask that police who come from poor communities be in solidarity with us and not allow their managers to force them to shoot-to-kill. All they are doing is killing their own sisters and brothers.

As the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, we send out our condolences and solidarity to the family of Andries Tatane, the community of Ficksburg, and all other communities who have had their friends and neighbours shot and killed during protests since 1994.

For more information, contact these residents of E Section:

• Mrs Thafeni, Mrs Gulubela and Mrs Njengele @ 0829715840 (witnesses/victims)
• Nomachina Magodla @ 0797475592
• Also contact Mncedisi Twalo from the WC-AEC @ 0785808646

Shocking images of police brutality were broadcast to the nation on television yesterday – they showed an unarmed man being beaten to death by a mob of policemen.

Pictures of the attack on the 33-year-old man by at least six policemen simultaneously, during a service delivery protest at Setsoto, in Ficksburg, eastern Free State, were shown on all SABC news bulletins last night.
The visuals show how the armed policemen cornered Andries Tatane, striking him with their batons and kicking him in an assault that lasted for a few minutes.

Tatane, from Masaleng township, Ficksburg, is seen holding his hand against his chest after the assault. He collapsed about 20 minutes later and died before an ambulance arrived.

As well as being beaten, he had been shot twice.

Last night Tatane’s brother, Lefu Tatane, told The Times of the “shocking murder” of his elder brother.

“We are very angry. I can’t even describe it. He was no danger to the police or anyone. Why did they have to kill him?” said Lefu.

Tatane was part of a group of about 4000 protesters who marched to the Setsoto municipal offices yesterday morning demanding a response to a memorandum of demands they had sent to the mayor, Mbothoma Maduna, and the municipal manager, Bafana Mthembu.

The people of Setsoto, like many others across the country, are fed-up with the lack of services in their area and demanded that Maduna and Mthembu speed up their provision.

According to Lefu, the demonstration had been peaceful until a rock was thrown into the crowd of protesters.

Police reinforcements were called in and, according to at least two eyewitnesses, chaos erupted when police water cannon were used against the protesters.

One eyewitness said that Tatane had jumped in front of an elderly man who was being sprayed by the water cannon.

“The only thing he did was to ask that they not spray the old man and then all hell broke loose. The next minute, police were all over Tatane. He was defenceless.”

According to his brother, Tatane sustained two bullet wounds, one to the chest and one in the back.

But the police claim that they were trying to arrest Tatane. They said they did not know who shot him.

Police spokesman Captain Phumelelo Dlamini said: “They were trying to arrest him. While he was being arrested, there was a gun shot so we don’t know who shot him but we’re going to investigate.”

Police also shot at the crowd, which, after witnessing the beating of Tatane, turned violent.

A number of witnesses said it was the police that shot Tatane.

Last night, Lefu said his brother’s wife was too distraught to talk and the family was taking her for medical treatment.

Tatane is also survived by a three-year-old child.

Maduna, the mayor of Setsoto, said: “It’s really unfortunate to have a person dying as a result [of the protests]. We regret it . it was not supposed to have happened. We will contribute towards the burial and show that we care.”

Free State Premier Ace Magashule said: “We will sit down and talk and work together [with the people of Setsoto]. We are sending condolences to the family.

Lefu said officials of the Independant Complaints Directorate visited the family home at about 3pm yesterday and would return today.

The ANC last night condemned the killing and called on Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa to set up a commission of inquiry

ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said the police responsible for the killing should be brought to book.

“We are shocked and disgusted by what we saw on television. No reason can be raised about the behaviour of the police.

“Our people have a constitutional right to protest and the action by the police is reminiscent of the apartheid police force,” Mthembu said.

David Bruce, senior a researcher at The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, said that there had been an increase in the number of people killed by the police in recent years.

The peak year was 2008-2009.

ICD statistics show a steady increase in complaints of serious non-fatal police violence, assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm and attempted murder.

** Click link to download the interview which is in .m4a format *

Book synopsis:

Many outside South Africa imagine that after Mandela was freed and the ANC won free elections all was well. But the last two decades have led to increased poverty and inequality. Although a few black South Africans have become wealthy, for many the struggle against apartheid never ended because the ethos of apartheid continues to live.

Early in 2007 hundreds of families living in shacks in Cape Town were moved into houses they had been waiting for since the end of apartheid. But soon they were told that the move had been illegal and they were kicked out of their new homes. They built shacks next to the road opposite the housing project and hundreds organised themselves into the Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign, vowing to stay on the road until the government gave them permanent housing.

This anthology is both testimony and poetry. There are stories of justice miscarried, of violence domestic and public, of bigotry and xenophobia. But amid the horror there is beauty: relationships between aunties, husbands, wives and children; daughters named Hope and Symphony. This book is a means to dignity, a way for the poor to reflect and be reflected. It is testimony that there’s thinking in the shacks, that there are humans who dialogue, theorise and fight to bring about change.

** Click link to download the interview which is in .m4a format *

Praise:

“The Symphony Way pavement dwellers are the voices of struggle from below – of the landless, homeless and shelterless. The book is a compelling testimony to the ingenuity of the people to organise themselves and invent ever-newer forms of struggle. In their summation of ‘No land! No home! No vote!’ the pavement dwellers are denying what is an oppressive state, despite its democratic pretensions, the means to legitimise itself – the vote.
- Issa Shivji, Mwalimu Nyerere Professor of Pan African Studies, University of Dar es Salaam

“I put the telephone off and went to the local park to read the manuscript this afternoon. It was an extraordinary experience. This book really does capture something of the texture of an actually existing popular struggle.”
- Richard Pithouse, Department of Politics and International Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa

“The Symphony Way occupation was a real attempt at an insurgent and tenacious solidarity against increasingly exclusionary and brutal society. It was an experiment at the outer limits of the often innovative and courageous grassroots militancies that have emerged in South Africa in recent years. This book is an experiment at the outer limits of radical publishing. It gives invaluable and often moving insight into the lived experience of the occupation. All the tenacity, beauty, pain, desperation and contradictions that breathe their life into any popular struggle haunt the pages of this searing book that must, if we are to do it justice, inspire rebellion against the social logic that dismisses some of us as less than others.”
- Richard Pithouse, Department of Politics and International Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa

“There are moments of excitement when one recognises transformational action is already ongoing and moments of recognition that new ways of knowing are being produced. This is one of those moments. An extraordinary collection of writings from the spirit of resilience and strength of the collective which lay bare the betrayal of the people in post-apartheid South Africa.”
- Sokari Ekine, author and award-winning blogger

“This book carries not only the suffering of the Symphony Way communities but of the millions of poor people of the world. I, in my capacity as a leader of South Africa’s Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement, commend this work of political empowerment of the poor by the poor. We all know that when the poor gain their power through mass mobilisation, it is often violently resisted by elites and that any social progress will be hard won and at considerable personal cost. It is through this courage that we can all hope for the real struggle that intends to put human beings at the centre of our society.”
- S’bu Zikode, a leader of the Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement, South Africa

“A magnificent and moving account of a long and hard fought struggle over not simply the space of the pavement and for social justice in the post-apartheid city No Land, No House, No Vote is a clarion call for basic of human rights and for human dignity. A powerful insider’s view into the landscape of poverty in neoliberal South Africa.”
- Professor Michael Watts, director of African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, author of Curse of the Black Gold.

“Voices from Symphony Way evinces a world-weary longing that stretches back through the history of class struggle and should evoke a storm of protest worldwide. These powerful and poignant testimonies that have emerged from the blockade of Symphony Way are voices ensepulchered by the South African state yet they refuse to be silenced, voices that are struggling against great odds for a future of human dignity, voices that cannot be stopped by razor wire or police vans, or choked into submission by pepper spray or batons. In attempting to sweep away the detritus of apartheid, the South African government is merely echoing the brutality of its former colonisers. This is a story of horror conjugated with hope, compellingly told with a brutal directness and an eloquence that often springs up from the abysms of despair.”
- Professor Peter McLaren, University of California, Los Angeles, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution

“It is hard to be heard above the din of mainstream debate in contemporary South Africa, with its heavy doses of elite squabbling, white middle class angst, and celebrations of consumerism. But of course the reality is that the majority of the people in the country of my birth live on a planet far removed from the one reflected in most of our public discourse, a planet where they struggle to maintain even very basic lives. This book – unmediated, raw, written in the voices of ordinary, marginal people rebuilding communities and reclaiming democracy in small ways – points to the hard, cold struggle South Africans still face to achieve full citizenship in their own country.”
- Sean Jacobs, born on the Cape Flats, teaches international affairs at The New School in Manhattan

“To read this book is to be humbled by the crassness of our presumption as middle-class African journalists and activists to know the best interests of those deliberately excluded from ‘Mandela’s Miracle’, the poorest amongst us. We thought we were telling their tale of painful transition fairly, but here we are surpassed, and now the people themselves speak truth to power – including our own. In this, the world’s most unequal society, it is a direct, revolutionary challenge to hear the voices of the poor on their own terms – not mangled by the way we would prefer them to speak, but unfiltered. Their truths, spoken with their hearts on their sleeves and in their sharp vernacular tongue, fly straight to the heart of the matter: the betrayal of hope by the shadowy forces behind a false dawn of ‘liberation’; and the transcending belief in the popular classes’ common destiny as the lever that can – and will – shift the burden of our history to create a more equal society.”
- Michael Schmidt, journalist and co-author of Black Flame: the Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism