VOC-FM: AEC calls for election boycott

8 01 2009
Posted on: 2009-01-07 06:57:14
Source:

The South African government might be in for a surprise at this year’s general elections, as discontent campaigners are urging the impoverished communities around the country not to vote this year. Provincial coordinator of the Anti Eviction Campaign (AEC), Mcebisi Twalo, told VOC on Tuesday that the new Government is marginalising the poor.

‘Over the last 16 years the new Government has only serviced the BEE, black elite and their families, while the plight of the poor is ignored,’ he said. He criticised members of government that lived in townships during the struggle and have opted for the wealthier more developed suburban areas instead of giving back to their original communities.

The AEC said that they expected a very troubled run up to elections, couple with ‘chaos when the results of the elections are announced, and we know that no one will accept the results’. Twalo referred to the elections as a ‘power play between politicians’, one where the ‘needs of the poor do not even fit into the agenda.’  He urged all communities that found themselves inflicted by poverty and dire situations to boycott the elections in a bid to avoid what he called voting their own poverty.

The AEC accused all the parties contesting the elections this year of being corrupt and said that the South Africans were not able to trust their own government. Twalo accused the ruling African National Congress (ANC) of only furthering their own interest while promoting members of their family into powerful positions and selectively only granting certain people grants such as food parcels and housing.

He also lashed out at the newly formed Congress of the People (COPE), expressing his concern about its members ‘being in parliament for over 14 years and not doing anything for the poor.’  Another issued he raised was the lack of service delivery for theses under developed communities who Twalo said was not a priority for the government.

‘Everyone from the Police Department to the Court is against the poor’.  He suggested that the only solution to the on going plight of the poor was a complete revolution of the government that ‘needed to realise that sub economic communities would not tolerate being lied to.’

The Campaigns coordinator called on Archbishop Desmond Tutu - who last year publicly announced his unwillingness to vote - to join forces with the AEC and its alliance partners to take this matter as far as possible. VOC (Aisha Mouneimne)





Cape Times: Anti Eviction Campaign urges poor to boycott elections

8 01 2009
Note: The Anti-Eviction Campaign is in alliance with the Landless People’s Movement (its not called the Homeless People’s Movement)
January 05, 2009 Edition 1
Aziz Hartley
Source: Cape Times

THE Anti Eviction Campaign is planning to launch a national campaign calling on voters to boycott the general elections because, it says, the government has failed the poor and politicians cannot be trusted.

Mncedisi Twalo, a leader of the organisation in Gugulethu, said the campaign slogan would be, “No land, no house, no jobs - no votes”.

“We have been preparing for months and talking to our alliance partners, Abhahali Base Mjondolo in KwaZulu-Natal and the Homeless People’s Movement in Gauteng.

“The campaign is going to all nine provinces. As the poor people of this country, we will not be voting for our further suffering, joblessness and homelessness.

“We are going out there to convince all poor communities that elections are all about power-mongering and promoting politicians.”

Twalo said the Anti Eviction Campaign was active in 46 communities across the Western Cape and represented thousands of homeless and disadvantaged families left in the lurch by politicians.

“Our main message to politicians is that we feel, as the poor, we have been left on our own. We will not participate in what is now a neo-colonialist state. We will keep pressuring whoever takes up public office.”

Jane Roberts, an Anti Eviction Campaign leader in Delft, said about 130 families evicted from incomplete houses they invaded in December 2007 were continuing to live in squalor on the pavement of Symphony Way.

She said nothing had come of numerous promises made by housing officials.

“We are going out across the Western Cape … to urge people not to vote. Politicians make promises and not a single political party can be trusted.

“Some people were told by politicians that an election boycott meant their votes would go to some other party and would be lost, but we are telling them that this is not so.”

Roberts said five Symphony Way families had been given formal homes, but the others had a bleak festive season.

Symphony Way resident Karima Linneveldt said three of the shacks burned down on Saturday morning, leaving four families homeless.

“We can’t continue like this,” she said.

“About 24 babies have been born here in tough conditions.”





Legal Brief: Poor urged to boycott elections

6 01 2009

Date: Tue 06 January 2009
Category: General
Issue No: 2226

The Anti Eviction Campaign is planning to launch a national campaign calling on voters to boycott the general elections because, it says, the government has failed the poor and politicians cannot be trusted.

Mncedisi Twalo, a leader of the organisation in Gugulethu, said the campaign slogan would be, ‘No land, no house, no jobs - no votes’. According to a Cape Times report, he added: ‘We have been preparing for months and talking to our alliance partners - Abhahali Base Mjondolo in KwaZulu-Natal and the Homeless People’s Movement in Gauteng.’ Twalo said the Anti Eviction Campaign was active in 46 communities across the Western Cape and represented thousands of homeless and disadvantaged families left in the lurch by politicians. Jane Roberts, an Anti Eviction Campaign leader in Delft, said about 130 families evicted from incomplete houses they invaded in December 2007 were continuing to live in squalor on the pavement.
Full Cape Times report (subscription needed)





Media: Rights group to launch election boycott campaign

6 01 2009
January 05, 2009 Edition 1
Aziz Hartley
Source: The Mercury

CAPE TOWN: The Anti Eviction Campaign, an organisation that fights for the rights of the homeless, is to launch a national campaign to boycott the coming general elections because it says the government has failed the poor and politicians cannot be trusted.

Mncedisi Twalo, a campaign leader in Gugulethu, Cape Town, said yesterday the body was using “no land, no house, no jobs - no votes” as its slogan.

“We have been talking to our alliance partners, Abhahali base Mjondolo (shack dwellers’ movement) in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Homeless People’s Movement in Gauteng.

“The campaign is going to all nine provinces. We are going out there to convince poor communities that elections are all about power-mongering and promoting politicians,” said Twalo.

“We feel, as the poor, we have been left on our own and will not participate in what is now a neo-colonialist state. We will not vote, but we will keep pressuring whoever takes up public office.”





Housing MEC tells backyarders to keep up the pressure on the City; AEC obliges

14 11 2008

Gugulethu AEC Press Statement
Friday 14 November, 2008

On the 2nd of November, Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign met with Whitey Jacobs, the province’s Housing MEC. At the meeting, the ANC appointee (who is responsible to house shackdwellers like ourselves) continued the usual party politics - blaming the DA run city for our predicament.

While we know that the Province (not the City) is responsible for building houses for us, we were also happy to receive support from the MEC in terms of ‘keeping up the pressure‘ on the City to release land in Gugulethu for us to occupy. Jacobs claimed to support our activism and numerous attempts to occupy vacant land on Lansdowne Road next to the Fezeka in Gugulethu.

Therefore, with the support of the MEC for Housing, the Gugulethu Backyard Dwellers will again attempt to occupy the this land in order to pressure the City and Province into providing us with our constitutional rights: land and housing.

We hope that since we have the MEC’s support, that we will also have the protection of the SAPS so that we are not assaulted by the city police.

No more party politics! No Land! No House! No Job! No Vote!

Location: ELF# RR448 on Lansdowne Road next to the Fezeka in Gugulethu
Time: 11h00am
Date: Saturday 15 November, 2008

For more information, contact:

Mncedisi at 646
Speelman at 725





Opportunistic press release by DA mentioning the AEC

5 11 2008

AEC Note: The Anti-Eviction Campaign refuses to get involved in the opportunism and politics of the DA/ANC rivalry.  We are not stupid and we know that both political parties tell lies to our communities - yet we still engage with them to try towards change.  Both the City and the Province are failing to provide basic services, land and houses to our people.  This opportunistic press release (below) should be seen as such.

PRESS RELEASE BY COUNCILOR MZUVUKILE FIGLAN
SUB-COUNCIL CHAIRPERSON- SUB- COUNCIL 14
DA MEMBER N2 DEVELOPMENT CONSTITUENCY
MIRANDA NGCULU ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
Date: 05/11/2008

I am dismayed by the manner in which MEC for Housing Whitey Jacobs can not handle questions from the Anti Eviction Campaign. In his address he alleges that when raising the question of back yard dweller with government and Municipality they speak about N2 Gate way. My borne of contention to his speech was, he was representing the government at the meeting as MEC but have chosen to flatter them. Read the rest of this entry »





QQ Section, tired of waiting for government, install first toilet in the settlement

13 06 2008
Press Statement: QQ Section Concerned Residents
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 13 June, 2008

Khayelitsha – While the Democratic Alliance and the ANC fight with one another over service delivery in order to gain votes for the upcoming elections, a small community has decided that they are tired of relying on politicians and their false promises. After a highly participatory process that has included 10 committee meetings and more than 10 mass community meetings, the Abahlali (residents) of QQ Section (an informal settlement in Khayelitsha) are on their way towards establishing their first crèche in the area and installing the only toilet in the settlement

More than 20 years after QQ Section was established, its 600 families still have no access to basic services guaranteed by the Constitution. While its 3000 Abahlali rely on only 8 water taps for drinking, washing and bathing, they do not even have the option of sharing toilets because not a single bathroom has been installed on site.

If one of the legacies of Apartheid is the dehumanization South Africa’s nonwhite population, the legacy of the current government will not be very different: people all over South Africa continue to be humiliated every time they have to go to the toilet.

However, six months ago, the Abahlali of QQ came together to take matters into their own hands. First and foremost on the minds of families was the education, health and safety of their children. After extensive deliberations, they decided that the most effective way of helping the children of the community was to set up a community-run crèche. This would not only prepare the children for school, but would take a huge burden off of working parents. It would provide a safe place for children to play and a warm place for the children to nap during the day.

But during one of the meetings a concerned parent questioned the idea: “how would the children go to the bathroom when there are no toilets in QQ? We cannot send our kids to the bushes – its dirty and dangerous!” So, Abahlali decided that they must install their own toilet specially for the children.

Months later, the new Children’s Committee, which will oversee operations at the crèche, has just finished going door-to-door collecting 5 Rand from each household to pay for the new structure and the toilet. They have raised enough money to build both the crèche and a special environmental ‘waterless toilet’. Quite different from the unhygienic ‘pit toilets’ that the government installs, this toilet will not smell and will decompose waste so that it can eventually be used as fertilizer.

While the opening of the crèche is still a few weeks away, Abahlali are already excited and proud about their achievement. But residents are still angry that the government continues to ignore them. Says Mzonke Poni, chairperson of QQ Section Concerned Residents: “The toilet cost us over 3,000 Rand. As poor residents, we should not have to bare this burden since it is the government’s constitutional obligation to provide us with basic sanitation. The government should pay us back immediately for the cost of the toilet”.

For more information and for comment, please contact .





Press Alert: Pavement Dwellers to tackle Mayor Zille

13 05 2008
Delft-Symphony Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement
May 12, 2008

Tomorrow (the 13th of May, 2008), all 300 families of the Delft-Symphony Anti-Eviction Campaign will be going tomorrow to the Cape Town Civic Centre. The pavement dwellers will be coming to Town with the purpose of personally delivering handwritten letters indicating our wishes to Mayor Helen Zille.

We are upset because our opinions and needs are being ignored by the city. The letters will, amongst other things, demand a change in the way the city treats its poor. We demand to be treated as citizens of this country and to be respected as equal human beings by city officials.

We invite the press to join us at the Civic Centre tomorrow morning to find out the details of our grievances and support us in holding the city accountable to the South African Constitution.

For comment, please call Auntie Jane at and Jerome at .





Delft squatters banish memory of evil

10 04 2008
April 08 2008 at 02:25PM
Source: IOL

Along with the shrubs and desiccated undergrowth, Delft’s “Bush of Evil” was cut from people’s thoughts a long time ago.

Even Delft squatters sleeping on the ground that was once a hotbed of child rape and murder have shoved the sordid memories, like that of six-year-old Kim Abrahams or six-year-old “Little Rock” who survived after being abused and set alight, to the back of their minds.

But for Esmeralda Josephs, the mother of Kim Abrahams, it is difficult to forget.

“Most people don’t know what it is to lose a child, you never get over it,” she says, gently rocking the pram of her son, Waslie.

‘Most people don’t know what it is to lose a child’
She keeps him close, not letting him out of her sight for even a moment.

Every few seconds, she looks up at the faces of the other squatters standing in the food line, and while she knows most of them, she trusts very few.

She was pregnant with Waslie, she says, when Joey died just two years ago.

Her three-year-old daughter was lured from her home by a stranger offering her 50c. Her half-naked, battered body was later discovered just 3km away, concealed deep in the bushes near Leiden, Delft.

Now, this same piece of dune-like land has, ironically, become a safe haven to hundreds of families who were forcefully removed from unfinished N2 Gateway houses in February.

‘It feels like a refugee camp’
Josephs is just one of many with a heart-wrenching story to tell.

“When they evicted us, I just lost it. Those same policemen couldn’t arrest my child’s murderer, but they can kick us poor people out of the only houses we have.”

As she edges further towards the front of the queue, Josephs tries to recall how many times she has moved but eventually gives up, saying: “There’s too many times to count.”

She has set up a makeshift “hokkie” towards the back of the Section One camp.

It is positioned on the very spot where Joey’s body was uncovered.

She says it may seem strange to some, but it has helped her come to terms with her daughter’s murder.

“All I want is a house of my own where my son will be safe.

“Joey never had that,” she says.

But Josephs is not the only former backyard dweller fighting for a house to call her own.

The Delft families, who have set up camp on the outskirts of the N2 Gateway project for the past seven weeks, have all demanded formal housing.

They squatted there in a defiant act against the Cape High Court’s eviction order, enduring appalling living conditions in the hope that they will one day be given one of the finished two-bedroom houses.

In reality, only 30 percent of them will eventually get one.

“It’s a race thing,” explains resident Aziza Rhoda, as she washes sand from her crockery for the sixth time that day.

Like many other members of the tight-knit community, she believes she is being sidelined because she is “coloured and not black”.

“The African people from Joe Slovo don’t want to move here because it’s too far. If they don’t want it, why should we, as the people of Delft, not get it? The government only cares about the coloured people when it’s time to vote.”

As Rhoda speaks, she struggles to move around in her part of a 4×4-metre tent, provided by the City of Cape Town and shared with three families.

Nonetheless, she is thankful that she recently moved from the bigger tent, where even more families were housed together.

“When I was there, there were two times when women woke up in the night screaming because there were men trying to rape them. that’s when I decided to move,” she says.

And the last few days have been even harder on Rhoda and Josephs, both of whom had pinned their hopes on a move to a new Delft site in the next few days.

However, these hopes swiftly evaporated when the city announced that, as a result of building material setbacks, residents would remain where they were for at least another three months, well into the cold winter season.

Some hopeful residents still cling to a pamphlet they were handed by the city long ago, promising each family a 7×7-metre piece of land and materials to build a waterproof 18m? iron structure with a door and window.

It appears a cruel situation for the squatters, who wake up every day to see the “real houses” they so desperately fought for lying empty, just over the wire barrier that fences them in.

One woman, identifying herself only as Priscilla, describes life on the dusty dunes of Delft as a constant battle - if they weren’t fighting for houses, they were fighting off the cold and sand at night with nothing but a few blankets and the shelter of flimsy tents.

As winter approaches, they fear this could worsen.

A mother of two, Hania Albshary, says she would have no qualms about moving back into the vacant houses if her family could not bear the cold, in spite of the consequences that may follow.

“My husband is sick, he can’t work. I must think about him. I must think about my children,” she says.

Children as young as two, seemingly oblivious to the dire circumstances, occupy their time by scooping up buckets of sand or climbing in and out of a large rubbish container near the boundary of the site.

Most have stopped going to school because their parents fear they will be taunted for being dirty, others are too sick with diarrhoea and the flu, which they have supposedly picked up in the surroundings.

“It feels like a refugee camp,” says Priscilla angrily. “We are closed in with fences like animals and we’ve been living in tents for weeks. If we are on the housing list, why should we have to go through this?”

Twice a day, residents are given a warm meal, a load shared by the municipality and Islamic Relief South Africa , but at meetings residents make their feelings heard.

“We don’t want food,” one man shouts, “it’s not food we need, it’s houses!”

The same sentiments echo through the Gateway’s second camp, a group settled on a Symphony Way pavement bordering Section Two.

This group has largely been perceived as rebellious because it has declined the help of the city.

More significantly, the members have fervently refused to move to the new site, even if that means a repeat of February’s violent evictions.

Like Josephs they fear that, even after 14 years of democracy, they may just be forgotten.

Behind the empty promises of politicians, the frantic fight for houses and an immense housing backlog they will remain just another name on an ever-growing housing list.





City’s failure no surprise: AEC

6 04 2008

2008-04-06 09:22:11
Source:

It was no surprise that the City of Cape Town was unable to deliver on its promises to the evicted people of Delft, Anti-Eviction Campaign Chairperson Ashraf Cassiem told VOC News on Friday. Cassiem was responding to City mayoral committee member for housing, Dan Plato’s announcement that the City was unable to meet its deadline to temporarily relocate the Delft people living on Symphony Way. Plato said suppliers could not provide galvanized iron sheets on time for the construction of the temporary homes, which had surpassed its deadline.

“We believed from the start that the City had no recovery plan to house the evictees or relocate them to another area. The fact that they are using money as an excuse is unacceptable. We have therefore chosen to liaise with the Provincial Department of Local Government and Housing, who we believe is fully capable of resolving this problem. This is much more than what the City can offer us,” Cassiem said.

Assertions by Plato that the AEC had “influenced” the Delft evictees was misunderstood, Cassiem said, reiterating that the organisation had chosen to support the people in a positive manner. “We have been there for these people from the beginning. If we have influenced them, it is because the City’s emergency relief efforts will not go any further than that. The evictees will stay where they are living in poverty and the City will not deliver on its housing promise. It is clear that the City is dealing with the housing issue in a political way and the Delft people have to open their eyes to that.”

Cassiem said negotiations with the Provincial government would have a better impact than discussions with the City of Cape Town. “The vision for the people of Symphony Way is a positive one and our discussions with the Minister of Housing seem fruitful. We know they are capable of delivering housing and we will continue our negotiations with them.” VOC (Tasneem Mohamed)