Notes on Harry Gwala High Court hearing 12 December 2008
Harry Gwala is an informal settlement of some 800 households occupying mainly municipal land adjacent to Wattville in Ekurhuleni. Currently it has no refuse removal, no lighting, only inadequate home-made pit latrines as toilets, and only 6 communal taps. Read the rest of this entry »
NO LAND! NO HOUSE! NO WATER! NO VOTE!
Coalition Again Water Privatisation (CAWP)The Johannesburg High Court ruling on 30th April 2008 declaring prepaid water meters to be illegal and unconstitutional was welcomed by many organisations including the Gauteng Province of the ANC, even though they are champions of the installation of those meters.
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To all Civic Organisations
12 November 2008We invite organisations to join the Residents of The Inner-City in a march on the 19th of November 2008. The march will be to Luthuli House (ANC Headquarters)where we intend to give a Memorandum to the Secretary General of the ANC. Residents will converge at the Joubert Park Art Gallery at 09:00am and leave at 10:30am.
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KLIPTOWN CONCERNED RESIDENTS
Press Statement
6th November 2008
OCCUPATION OF EMPTY HOUSES IN THE FACE OF CONTINUED HOUSING AND BASIC SERVICE MISERY
The residents of Kliptown (Soweto) under the banner of the Kliptown Concerned Residents are currently occupying the empty Pimville golf course townhouses. This decision was taken earlier in a mass meeting at the community center, where residents voiced their anger over poor service delivery and housing. The hundred year old informal settlement has been consistently ignored by the African National Congress government since it took power in 1994. Although Kliptown residents have undertaken many actions to highlight their plight, the government has chosen to play political games with the poor residents. Read the rest of this entry »
Landless People’s Movement Press Release
Join Gauteng landless communities (Freedom Park, Protea Glen Bond Houses, Protea South Informal Settlement, Precast-Lenasia Extension 11, Chiawelo, Tembalihle Crisis Committee, Eldorado Park, Harry Gwala Informal Settlement)in a peaceful March demanding free basic services, the removal of the useless ward councillors and a halt to mass evictions. On the 30th October 2008, the march will start at Peacemakers Ground in Protea South and then proceed to Old Potch road and Union Road to deliver a memorandum to the Premier of Gauteng Paul “Mathousand” Mashatile.
Even though the government of the African National Congress is happy about what it has achieved in the past 14 years of democracy in terms of service delivery, the challenges that are facing the poor are immense and the gap between the rich and poor is widening. It is common knowledge that South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in world where more than 50% of the population live below poverty line (less than R20.00 a day) and almost 40% of the people are unemployed. The ANC is proud to say that they have created more than three million members of a black middle class since 1994 but this is in contrast to more than 23 million who live in abject poverty. Read the rest of this entry »
Press Release: March for Free Basic and Clean Electricity
Anti-Privatisation Forum, Earthlife Africa Jhb
28th of October 2008
On Thursday the 30th of October 2008, Earthlife Africa Jhb and the Anti-Privatisation Forum will be marching on the Department of Minerals & Energy, Eskom, and the City of Johannesburg. Communities across Gauteng are protesting to demand a decent, meaningful Free Basic Allocation of electricity and for increased generation of electricity from renewable resources.
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September 16 2008 at 09:52AM
Orange Farm residents have taken their demands for proper sanitation, water and housing to the streets. Hundreds of residents barricaded the Golden Highway with burning tyres and rocks on Monday, making it difficult for motorists to pass through.
Community leader Bricks Makolo said the residents were supposed to have a meeting with the ward councillor, Meisie Msimango, on Sunday to discuss their grievances. He claimed the residents waited until 11am and she did not come. “The residents got angry and decided to take action. Read the rest of this entry »
AN IMPORTANT chapter in the lives of 450 residents of the Johannesburg inner city drew to a close recently, when they voluntarily moved out of “San Jose” in Berea and 197 Main Street in Johannesburg. In 2003 and 2004, the city had declared both buildings unfit for habitation and made a court application to evict the residents. Read the rest of this entry »
This morning an important case comes before the Constitutional Court, involving 20,000 Cape Town residents whose informal settlement is set to be bulldozed.
State-owned company Thubelisha Homes (now bankrupt), Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and Western Cape housing MEC were granted an eviction order on March 10 this year against occupants of the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa.
They argued that the residents must be moved to fibre-cement shacks in a “temporary relocation area” in Delft, about 20km away from the city. They said this was necessary so that they could continue building houses as part of the N2 Gateway housing programme. After the houses were built, they said, they would move the residents back.
The community quickly established though that most residents would be left in Delft, a place many describe as “God-forsaken”, which has no rail service, where crime is rife, schools are overcrowded and medical facilities dire. Delft is also not close to any suburb where people might find work.
Housing ministry spokesman Xolani Xundu agreed that “not everyone will come back” to Langa.
He told Sowetan that 1500 families will get free houses in Langa, and 45 bonded houses will be sold to the public. The bonded houses are unaffordable to 99 percent of the residents who are unemployed. And the community of 5000 families said they did not want 3500 families to be left behind in Delft’s temporary relocation area.
Joe Slovo task team leader Mzwanele Zulu said that all the families could be accommodated if the government built RDP houses or if they worked with the people to come up with a plan that suited everybody.
Xundu said: “People who did not relocate back to Langa would be housed in Delft. They would not be left in the lurch in the temporary relocation area.”
But these claims were contradicted by Ashraf Cassiem of the Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign.
He said that hundreds of people who voluntarily relocated to Delft from Khayelitsha were still languishing in the temporary relocation area seven years later.
Leon Goliath, a civil engineer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, found that the temporary relocation area was “unfit for human habitation”. Goliath said the roofs of the temporary dwellings did not connect with the walls and the gaps “led to leaks and drafts, which was not good for health … and could be a fire hazard”.
He said that windows and doors did not have frames and residents have been forced to secure them to the walls with concrete. “These chunks of concrete could fall off and injure someone. Without proper frames, how do you lock and secure your dwelling?” Goliath asked.
He also found traces of asbestos in the fibre-cement material. Read the rest of this entry »
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
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.
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