Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

Nothing for Us, Without Us!

There has been much discussion about the Cornubia housing development in the press. The City and the political parties have had their say. Tongaat-Hulett, the company that owns the land, have had their say. The technical experts have had their say. Shack dwellers’ organisations have not had their say. We who live with the rats in the mud and the fires have not had our say. We who were publicly promised houses in this development in November 2005 have not had our say. We who have been beaten and arrested while defending our right to speak for ourselves, defending our communities from eviction, and defending our right to decent housing in the city have not had our say.

When ever we have asked the eThekwini Municipality to fulfil the promise to house the poor they have told us that they want to build houses but that land, not money, is the problem. They have always told us that there is nothing that they can do because there is no land left in the city. But everyone can see that there is lots of land. The real problem is not that there is no land. The real problem is that the land is privately owned and that most of the land is owned by one big company – Tongaat-Hulett.

The Freedom Charter said that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. The Freedom Charter said that the land should be shared. These were clear goals of the peoples’ struggles against apartheid. We are still committed to these goals.

It is clear that building democratic cities where everyone has a proper space and real hope for a better life will require the end of the private ownership over huge lands. Some of our members believe that God made the land as a gift for everyone and that is a sin for one company to own so much land. We all agree that there can be no justice in this city, no safety and no hope for a better life for the poor while one company owns so much land. Everybody in the city needs to be matured and to face this reality.

The Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC) first demanded the expropriation of Tongaat-Hulett land to house the poor on 13 May 2005 when the KRDC organised a mass march to bury Councillor Yakoob Baig. After Abahlali baseMjondolo was formed on 6 October 2005 this demand was placed at the centre of our struggle. We made this demand because Tongaat-Hulett is the largest land owner in Durban. We also made this demand because it was never right for Tongaat-Hulett to own that land and because many generations suffered on their plantations. We also made this demand because Tongaat-Hulett has continued to separate the rich from the poor after apartheid by building a separate gated world for the rich on the old sugar cane fields. In 1994 that land should have gone for housing for the poor. That would have been real democracy.

The Cornubia development was first announced in November 2005. That was just before the 2006 local government elections and just after the world’s media reported that the eThekwini Municipality had illegally banned our march on Obed Mlaba from the Foreman Road settlement and then sent in the police to shoot at us when we marched in defiance of the ban. The Mayor clearly stated that the announcement was due to pressure from Abahlali baseMjondolo. He said in the New York Times that we were being used by agitators and that we would not still be here in 2007. We are still here. We are still agitated by the conditions that we live in. Now that the 2009 elections are coming Cornubia is back on the agenda.

The debate goes on but it excludes us. Who are the ‘stakeholders’ in the discussions about Cornubia? Just the landowner, the government and the technical people! Where do the poor fit? We find that if we talk about history we are seen to be launching an offensive. We are not supposed to talk about history but we have to reclaim what is our own, what has come out of our efforts. This announcement is the fruit of our struggle and the struggles of all the communities across South Africa that have been rejecting forced removals to rural human dumping grounds since 2005. Read the rest of this entry »