Malungelo Booi | 22 October 2009 | Eyewitness News
A community task team for Symphony Way pavement dwellers in Delft says they will start relocating to Blikkiesdorp next week.
The team met with City of Cape Town officials on Wednesday and they agreed to move. Read the rest of this entry »
A COMMUNITY living on the fringes of Cape Town is sick and tired of being used by politicians, and won’t vote in tomorrow’s elections.
The Symphony Way pavement dwellers, who set up house on the pavement of Delft Street and are refusing to budge until they get proper homes, have accused political parties of trying to bribe them with offers of help only during election time.
The residents, wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan “No Houses, No Land, No Vote”, said Cope went as far as to offer to provide an advocate to help them in their court battle against their eviction.
There are no election posters here.
Anti-Eviction Campaign secretary Kareemah Linneveldt said they told parties not to put up posters because they would have no interest in elections until they had proper housing.
“For 13 months we have lived on the pavement and not a single politician visited us. Now everyone is offering us help,” she said.
The Symphony Way residents were back yard dwellers who illegally occupied newly built houses in Delft before moving to the pavement.
Of the Cope offer, Linneveldt said: “We were told that if we won the case, we should say Cope won it for us, and that we should wear their T-shirts and support them.”
News of their planned stayaway – and a similar action by residents of nearby Blikkiesdorp, many of whom were moved from Symphony Way – comes as expatriates in London have shown astonishing enthusiasm. Read the rest of this entry »
Informal settlers living along Symphony Way in Delft have warned political parties not to try and campaign in the area for their votes.
Residents told Eyewitness News on Wednesday they had grown disillusioned with election promises and were not planning to vote in the April polls. Read the rest of this entry »
CAPE TOWN – Families who have been living on the sidewalk of Symphony Way on the Cape Flats on Monday filed formal notices of opposition to a bid to evict them to temporary housing.
About 120 families were last week served with eviction notices on behalf of the City of Cape Town, which wants to shift them to a nearby transit area nicknamed Blikkiesdorp. Read the rest of this entry »
Not more than a kilometre from the Lanseria Airport stands a big striped tent and some makeshift shacks, along the R512 road. For seven months now families have lived on the roadside, they were evicted from the adjacent farm last July. More than 34 families were victims; most have disappeared into the sprawling squatter camp of Diepsloot. Those who are still on the roadside refuse to disappear. Their presence is their dignified resistance; they have chosen to rather live on the roadside than be forgotten with the many nameless, history less in the squatter camp. Read the rest of this entry »
January 7, 2009. Residents of Symphony Way, Delft, go to Housing Department Office, Wale Street, Cape Town, to inquire about the status of their houses. They have lived on the pavement in Delft since February 2008, after being violently evicted from houses in the N2 Gateway Project. Click here for the AEC Press Release on the event.
September 19 2008 at 03:02PM
By Nomangesi Mbiza
Source: Cape Argus
Squatters who have erected shacks on the pavement of a Delft street have vowed not to move, despite threats of a court order by the City of Cape Town.
This follows reports that the city was seeking a court order to remove them from the pavement along Symphony Way. Read the rest of this entry »
10th of September, 2008
By Toussaint Losier
Source: Bay State Banner
Residents of the informal Joe Slovo settlement and their supporters protest outside of the South African Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, South Africa. Those who gathered called on the court’s nine judges to overturn a controversial eviction order that would see all residents of the settlement forcibly removed from a township where many have lived for more than 15 years. (Toussaint Losier photo)
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| Residents of Joe Slovo and Delft Symphony Way, two informal settlements located in Cape Town, South Africa, pause and call for support during their train ride back from Johannesburg, where they protested the eviction order. (Toussaint Losier photo) |
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Dancing the toyi-toyi, stomping their feet and singing protest songs, more than 100 residents of the informal Joe Slovo settlement in Cape Town and their supporters rallied outside of South Africa’s Constitutional Court last month in support of the community’s right to adequate housing.
Nearly all had traveled 28 hours by train to attend the hearing concerning the future of their community.
Inside the courtroom, their lawyers called upon the court’s nine judges to overturn a controversial eviction order that would have seen all residents of the settlement forcibly removed from the township of Langa, where many have been living for more than 15 years.
Greetings from the pavement of Delft-Symphony:
Over the past month, the Delft-Symphony Pavement Dwellers and their elected Anti-Eviction Campaign leadership have been working hand-in-hand to improve the lives of residents. While it may be an exaggeration to assume (as was reported recently in the Cape Argus) that we live here on the pavement in harmony all the time, there does exist a strong sense of camaraderie among residents and a common vision of the type of world we are fighting for.
What are we fighting for? We are fighting for housing; not only for ourselves but for everyone living in South Africa. We recognize that South Africa is a financially rich country that now has 3 billionaires according to the Forbes list and countless millionaires. This is a country that can easily afford to build decent housing for all and fulfil its constitutional mandate. We believe that the government is violating the constitution and our human rights by refusing to spend more than 2% of its budget on housing.
Still, we are not only fighting for houses, we are also fighting for ownership of the housing process. If it is true that ‘the people shall govern’, then how can we sit by and allow a few elitist government officials and their haughty friends in Thubelisha Homes define the process for us?
Yet the government believes that we are stupid; that we cannot think for ourselves; that we cannot design our own communities or construct our own houses. We denounce this arrogance and snobbery by Lindiwe Sisulu and her friends.
But, we are not just fighting for houses and for ownership of the housing process; even more significantly, we are fighting for a better world for ourselves, our children and for every single person living in South Africa. The privatisation and corporatisation of our country is building a new Apartheid that ghettoises the poor in new suburban townships where bread and electricity prices shoot through the roof and where a multi-billion Rand train project in Gauteng is creating a transportation system accessible only to tourists and the wealthy. And so, while fighting for our right to housing, we, the Pavement Dwellers of Delft-Symphony, begin (slowly and without government support) to create this new world that we are fighting for. And we begin, first and foremost, with our children.
We have recently set up a community crèche on the pavement. With the eventual arrival of a container, we expect the crèche to become a defining fixture of our community. But this is only one of the projects we have created for our children. For the past few weeks, we have been running a unique ‘pavement camp’ for kids on school holiday. This has included our soccer and netball clinics, collecting the kids for discussions on life and life-skills, and preparing for the upcoming Symphony Way Fashion Show. Everything has been run by the community and coordinated by the new Delft-Symphony Children’s Committee.
This is proof, once again, that we are not stupid; that we can think; that we can design our own communities, construct our own houses, and build a new world for our children. And we will do so without being commanded by the so-called experts in government who do not understand the human consequences of forced removals and the povertization of the population caused by persistent anti-poor economic policies.
From the pavement in the desert on the other side of Cape Town International Airport,
The Delft-Symphony Anti-Eviction Campaign
AEC Recent News Feed Abahlali baseMjondolo
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