To MEC Whitey Jacobs: We will be heard!

12 03 2009

Hi, I live in Taiwan(zola square) in SITE _ C in Khayelitsha.

Ever since Site-C was there, there is no progress and our counsillors don’t care but we voted for them.  In Taiwan it is a Squatter camp area we were always been promised to be moved to another area. We were once told that we are not in a Khayelitsha map.

Can you Please ask the MEC for Housing Mr. Whitey Jacobs to Come and see the Conditions we live in.

My phone number is 0834967743.  Please help us.  I’m writing this on behalf of our residents.

With regards
Phumlani xosi





6 January, 2009 – Fire destroys one shack in Khayelitsha, kills an elderly couple

18 01 2009

6 January, 2009 – Fire destroys one shack in Khayelitsha, kills an elderly couple. The cause of shack fires is lack of electricity and the refusal of government upgrading of the settlements.

January 6, 2009. Fire destroys one shack in Khayelitsha, kills elderly couple. (2)





AbM-WC: Open Letter to the Mayor of City of Cape Helen Zille

9 12 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape
No 28 Ramaphosa Street
Site B Khayelitsha
7784
email address: abmwesterncape@abahlali.org
www.khayelitshastruggles.com

City of Cape Town

RE: Letter to the Mayor

Dear Madam Mayor

This letter follows the meeting that you have schedule for the 22nd November 2008 with ABM Western Cape ‘Khayelitsha’ which took place at Site B Community Hall, and the meeting followed the Memorandum which was submitted to you on the 23rd October 2008.

The meeting for the 22nd November 2008 was organized by Bonginkosi Madikizela who is a communication officer for City of Cape Town and he was acting on your mandate and he liaised with Mzonke Poni who is the Chairperson for Western Cape ABM, who acted on behalf of the Khayelitsha shack dwellers who signed the memorandum that was submitted on the 23rd of October 2008 to your office.

The reason why Abahlali baseMjondolo agreed to meet with you is because they were under the impression that you will give them a detailed report, responding from the Memorandum that was submitted to you at above mentioned date.

The ABM WC was not impressed with your visit at Khayelitsha at above mentioned date. We regret to tell you that your presence at the meeting was very useless and fruitless as you failed to respond at our demands.

Abahlali would like to clarify it’s stance for next years elections, the movement has declared that No Land! No House! No Vote! And the movement does not have alliance with any political party and does not have any working relationship wit any political party. The ABM Western Cape will not work with you as a leader of the DA as it also opposed to DA policies as well.

The movement would like also to urge you not use it’s members for your political campaigns and to conduct your political campaign as far as possible from the movements activities and when the movement engage with you it expect you to engage with it’s members as the Mayor of the City of Cape Town not as the leader of the Democratic Alliance and the movement was not happy at all with the meeting that you have called which you have chose to use it as a platform to campaign for Democratic Alliance for next years elections, and where you have also urged the members of the movement to work with you as a leader of Democratic Alliance to better their conditions.

We would like to make it clear that we do not have any interest of working with you as a Democratic Leader and we will not work with you as a party leader, where it is possible we will only work with you not as a DA leader but as a Mayor of City of Cape Town.
In Conclusion

The Movement is still waiting for the detailed response of the memorandum which was submitted to you as the Mayor of City of Cape Town on the above mentioned date and we would like to give you 21 days to prepare a detailed report.

When giving a response we would like you to give it to the movement and stop your dirty games of trying to divide and rule the movement using old apartheid style by co-opting leaders from different communities and invite them to your office as individuals and give them false hope with a view to detached them from the movement.

On behalf of the movement

Kwanele Mto
Secretary ABM Western Cape
073 368 0152





AbM-WC will meet with Helen Zille, Saturday

21 11 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape Press Release
Friday 21 November, 2008

Event: Mass Meeting to challenge Helen Zille and government master plan
Date: 22 November, 2008
Time: 16h00
Venue: Nonkqubela Hall, Site B, Khayelitsha

Helen Zille will be responding to the demands of Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape that were summited to the City by Khayelitsha Shackdwellers on the March that took place in Khayelitsha on the 23 October 2008.

For the Memorandum that was submitted to the City please click here.

For comment please call 073 2562 036





Media: Shack Dwellers Vow Not to Vote Again

14 11 2008
Cape Argus (Cape Town)
5 November 2008
Nomangesi Mbiza

Traffic on Lansdowne Road in Site C, Khayelitsha was still restricted to one lane on Wednesday morning after chaos erupted at an informal settlement on Tuesday after city law enforcement officials tore down illegal cables connected to a legal electricity supply.

“We are waiting for them to put up their container or tent for registration and we are going to destroy them because we are not going to register and we are not interested in voting either,” said Thozamile Boyi.

The angry residents of Island informal settlement blocked Lansdowne Road with stones and burning rubbish for about seven hours on Tuesday to protest against the removal.
Read the rest of this entry »





AbM-WC: More than 500 people left homeless on fire at RR section

10 11 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape Press Release
Monday 10 November, 2008

No Electricity! No Vote!

For pictures please go to Khayelitsha Struggles at www.khayelitshastruggles.com

More than 100 shacks burned down over the weekend at RR Section Site B and left more than 500 people homeless including women, children and disable people.

It was early in the morning past one on Saturday when the fire started at RR Section and it started at one shack which is owned by a 30 year old man, according to the neighbor’s he was drunk and left paraffin stove unattended and most people believed that he was the cause of the fire.

RR Section is a home to more than 6000 families and the area was established late 80′s, and the area does not have electricity , as a results of that people use illegal connections, other people get electricity from nearby neighborhood which is serviced with electricity, Toilet and plots and others use illegal connections direct from electrical poles. Read the rest of this entry »





AbM: Shack dwellers march on Khayelitsha local gvt offices

4 11 2008

About 300 residents from 10 informal settlements in Khayelitsha and Delft marched to the local municipality offices in Ilitha Park on 21 October to hand a memorandum to the City of Cape Town highlighting their complaints over a lack of service delivery. Carrying placards reading ‘We are not yet Uhuru, lets fight together’ and singing political songs such as “uMshini wam’” and “Sohlala sinyova” (we will always protest), residents said they were sick of the bucket system and demanded flush toilets before next year’s elections.

Brenda Nkuna/WCN

They also demanded the electrification of informal settlements and the provision of piped water and roads.

Chairperson of Abahlali baseMjondolo – the shack dwellers movement – Mzonke Poni said a memorandum was sent to the City earlier this month which noted their concern that people living in informal settlements were ignored and their rights were being undermined.

Poni said informal settlement residents should be recognized as legal and not illegal occupants, as their lack of security regarding tenure allowed the government to forcibly remove them to “dumping sites”. Read the rest of this entry »





Media: Residents march for services

23 10 2008

Khayelitsha and Delft settlement dwellers hand council list of demands

October 23, 2008 Edition 2
ZIYANDA SIDUMO
Source: Cape Argus

More than 300 residents from Khayelitsha and Delft informal settlements have marched on the local municipal offices in Ilitha Park to voice their frustration over lack of service delivery in the area.

Among their demands is that the bucket toilet systems be phased out, and that power flush toilets be upgraded to pure flush systems ahead of next year’s elections. Read the rest of this entry »





Khayelitsha’s shackdwellers march and speak for themselves!

20 10 2008
Event: AbM Western Cape March
Date: Wednesday 22 October, 2008
Time: 11h00-14h00
Assemble: In between Site-B Day Hospital and Train Station. March to Stocks & Stocks.

It beginsThe shackdwellers of Khayelitsha will no longer be spoken about.  We  will speak for ourselves.

Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shackdweller’s movement that has wrecked havoc on the oppressive town planning of the Kwa Zulu Natal government, is now a force to be reckoned in the Western Cape.

At least 10 informal settlements from Site-B and Site C will be joining Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape as they march from Site-B to Stocks and Stocks Local Municipality Offices.

We are fed up.  We demand our constitutional rights to sanitation, to electricity, to water, to safety from fires and to housing.  But we also demand a new kind of service delivery and housing process.  A truly peoples process that revolves around the communities themselves.

This is only the beginning.

Nothing for us, without us!

For more information, contact AbM Western Cape at 073 2562 036

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a community-based and community-controlled movement.  We are not a political party or an NGO. We do not believe in the so-called ‘stakeholder approach’  to development which seeks to make top-down government policies seem democratic. We are committed towards seeking alternatives with regard to these neoliberal-based policies which affect people living in informal settlements. We believe in the principles of participatory democracy where such alternatives  come from below and to the left.





Anti-Eviction Campaign Evening update: Mon 24 February

24 02 2003

by Anti-Eviction Campaign activist Monday, Feb. 24, 2003 at 1:17 PM

last report from Mandela Park on anti-eviction campaign activists arrested sunday evening.

As reported earlier today, the ‘crackdown’ which has been targetting the Khayelitsha Anti-Eviction Campaign since November 2002 continued with full force last night and today.

Last night saw the sinister abduction of Max Ntanyana of the Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign. After community pressure, it turned out he was in Bishop Lavis police station, being questioned by the ‘special unit’ set up under orders of ‘Community Safety’ MEC Leonard Ramatlakane. He was later moved to Site B police station in Khayelitsha, before appearing in court on contempt of court charges this morning. His case was postponed to Wednesday to give his lawyers time to prepare a defence.

Part of the community pressure applied last night involved capturing a woman who had pointed out Max to the intelligence operatives who abducted him last night. As part of the police response to that event, the doors of the Andile Nose community centre were kicked in. This community centre is used by the Anti-Eviction Campaign for meetings, and is also the site of a school – ‘People’s Power Secondary School’ – staffed by unemployed teachers, which provides education to students excluded from the education system due to poverty, and age.

Also as part of the police response, four comrades from Mandela Park were arrested early this morning. They are apparently to be charged with kidnapping and armed robbery (??!!) after last night’s events. They have been held overnight pending an identity parade, which will happen tomorrow.

When not in police cells, these comrades are held in the notorious Pollsmoor Prison, near Tokai in Cape Town. Pollsmoor is notorious for the control that prison gangs exert, with rapes, intimidation and murder being common occurences within its walls.

These actions of the South African government are just the latest steps in the campaign to criminalise and intimidate the Anti-Eviction Campaign, which has fought since its inception to reverse the tide of evictions of the poorest of the poor. For the South African government, crushing this campaign is vital in order to be able to ‘secure’ the low income housing market for private sector banks. Since 1994, the post-Apartheid government has been pursuing that objective, agains the strenous criticism and
resistance of the poor majority.

Once again, we are in a desperate situation. Any donations towards bail money, and operating funds for the highly stretched Khayelitsha Anti-Eviction Campaign would be greatly appreciated. Solidarity support is also necessary.

Aluta continua!








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