Gugulethu residents protest on election day declaring No Land! No House No Vote!
See this Sowetan article on the protest for more info
Photos + video of Gugulethu No Land! No House! No Vote! Protest
30 04 2009Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: 2009 Elections, boycott elections, No Land! No House! No Vote!, No Vote!, protest
Categories : Anti-Eviction Campaign, Archives, gugulethu, Photo, Video
Media: Anti-eviction group boycotts elections
23 04 2009
23 April 2009
Anna Majavu Source: The Sowetan
Anna Majavu Source: The Sowetan
The elections went off without a hitch in Gugulethu and only time will tell if the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign’s boycott of the polls had made any impact on the political scene.
About 50 members of the group held an impromptu protest outside Gugulethu police station yesterday as part of an
DISGRUNTLED: Members of the Anti-Eviction Campaign hold a protest outside the Gugulethu police station.PHOTO: ANNA MAJAVU
elections boycott also supported by Durban’s Abahlali base Mjondolo and Johannesburg’s Anti-Privatisation Forum.
In a statement released yesterday, the Anti-Eviction Campaign said real issues, like the lack of housing, had been swept under the carpet by politicians.
Parties spent too much time focusing on the personal lives of other party leaders and on promising “vague slogans” such as “hope” and “change”.
A protester, Margaret Sxubane, 42, said she was “very hungry”.
“I didn’t eat all day and I rarely have food in my backyard shack.
“I voted three times before but why should I vote now?”
Sxubane said if someone from the ANC came to give her a key to one of the empty houses in nearby Nyanga, she would vote immediately.
Violet Skosana, 70, said she had been living in a backyard shack for 30 years.
“How can I vote when I was born in Cape Town, have been on the waiting list for a house for 15 years and yet I still live in a backyard?” she asked.
David Boqwana, 57, said he was boycotting the elections because “we get fokol from voting.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: 2009 Elections, backyard-dwellers, Belinda Landingwe, boycott elections, Dan Landingwe, No Land! No House! No Vote!
Categories : Archives, gugulethu, Mainstream and Other News
Media: Election boycott in Alexandria
22 04 2009South Africa: Stolen ballots discovered amid Protests
Wednesday 22 April 2009, by Sakhile Modise
(this is an excerpt of a longer article)
Protests
Meanwhile, a group of about 300 protesters gathered at River Park in Alexandra, Johannesburg before dawn this morning.
Reports say they are all residents of a nearby squatter camp, and embarked on a protest against a lack of housing.
The toyi-toying crowd stood on an embankment on London Road, chanting “No house, no vote”.
Community leader Thabo Modisan is quoted saying people were not happy about the election and refused to vote until they got houses.
“We have been waiting since 1994 and we are still living in shacks. We were promised basic services and have not received them, and that is why we are boycotting the election,” he said.
Police, while stationed a distance away, were observing and ensuring that the peaceful protest did not get out of hand.
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Tags: 2009 Elections, no house no vote, No Land! No House! No Vote!, toyi-toyi
Categories : Archives, Mainstream and Other News
Statement of support fo the election boycott by ICAN (Tafelsig)
22 04 200922 April, 2009
We as the Independent Community Action Network hereby forward our position on the 2009 Elections:
We will definitely boycott the coming elections as they are bourgeoisie elections. None of the parties in this election represent our needs as the poor and the working class masses of this country. We will not partake in an election to choose a new oppressor, a new custodian of capital, a new guardian of poverty.
As ICAN, we will seek to engage with the masses in terms of their needs. By participating in organisational building, we do not need your vote, rather, we need you to partake in ‘action’ to free us all. Participatory democracy is a necessary in order to achieve freedom for all. We fully support our comrades in the Anti-Eviction Campaign and we support their No Land! No House! No Vote! Campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: 2009 Elections, ICAN, Independent Community Action Network, No Land! No House! No Vote!, Tafelsig
Categories : Archives, News & Press Release, Solidarity, Tafelsig
BBC reports on Jozi family withholding their vote
21 04 2009‘One house, one vote’ for South Africans
The government says it has built millions of houses in the last 15 years
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Down by the banks of the Jukskei river which winds its way through Alexandra, Johannesburg’s oldest township, there is deep and growing anger.
The tin shacks of the Setjwetla “informal settlement” have been there for nearly 25 years, and residents say they are being ignored by the South African government, passed over in favour of outsiders.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) is building new houses a few yards away, but the residents of Setjwetla suspect they will not benefit. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: 2009 Elections, BBC, No Vote!
Categories : Archives, Mainstream and Other News
UK Media: Grassroots movements plan to boycott South African poll
20 04 2009
By agency reporter
20 Apr 2009 Source: Ekklesia
20 Apr 2009 Source: Ekklesia
As South Africa prepares for its national elections on Wednesday 22 April, many grassroots organisations in South Africa plan to boycott it in protest, reports UK development agency War on Want.
During elections in 2004, the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) initiated the ‘No Land! No Vote!’ campaign to express a vote of no confidence in the range of political parties on offer in the elections.
The group Abahlali baseMjondolo (ABM, literally ‘people living in shacks’) joined the boycott during the 2006 local elections and changed the campaign slogan to ‘No Land! No House! No Vote!’. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: 2009 Elections, 2010, boycott elections, No Land! No House! No Vote!, repression, War on Want
Categories : Archives, Mainstream and Other News
‘Our Responsibility Doesn’t End at the Ballot Box’
20 04 2009The South African Civil Society Information Service (Johannesburg)
by Glenn Ashton
When we vote in South Africa we enter the voting booth burdened by the weight of history and by our responsibility to the future.
We weigh up some increasingly obscure choices and make our mark. But is this then the total sum of our democratic interaction? Are we fulfilling our social obligations by voting? Or is there more to it than this?
The world is not in particularly good shape. There is an economic hurricane building and we don’t yet know how hard the winds will blow. The world population is pushing the limit of our ecological carrying capacity, with water and food supplies on the edge. People are directly and indirectly responsible for a mass extinction unique in that it is caused by living organisms, not a natural occurrence. The gap between rich and poor is not only growing, it is unprecedented.
These issues are intimately connected. Just as the natural world is exquisitely sensitive to disruption, so too do human impacts on life on earth create massive, unpredictable and potentially catastrophic chain reactions on our support mechanisms.
So, to return to the question, when we vote are we actually considering the full importance of what is ostensibly the most significant democratic interaction most of us have with our chosen political and governmental leadership? Are we doing enough?
The problems that assail society and the world are long in the making. The growth in the power of a banking and corporate elite has occurred within a brief historical time span yet it has had phenomenal repercussions. Besides effectively creating what amounts to a modern feudal system, it is important to reflect how the rise of corporate power has seriously impacted personal democratic freedoms.
Democracy is theoretically driven by mortal individuals who are responsible for their actions. Corporations on the other hand are immortal and without morals, ethics or conscience; they exist simply to maximise profit. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: 2009 Elections, Glenn Ashton, No Land! No House! No Vote!, SACSIS
Categories : Archives, Mainstream and Other News, opinion / academic articles
Excerpt: Langebaan resident vows not to vote
19 04 2009
Excerpt from Cape Argus April 18, 2009 Edition 1
by Lynette Johns
by Lynette Johns
Clifton Blaauw, who lives close to Smith in the largely coloured area of Langebaan, is angry. He says he is angry because he is no longer allowed to fish and because white people are still privileged. Expletives and racial jibes pour from his mouth as he laments the plight of the coloured community.
Blaauw vacillates between voting and not voting, eventually settling on: “I don’t want to vote, I no longer believe in all these promises. I’m a fisherman, I love to fish, all I want to do is fish.”
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Tags: 2009 Elections, No Land! No House! No Vote!, No Vote!
Categories : Archives, Mainstream and Other News
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