Whitey Jacobs « Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

The AEC alerts Whitey Jacobs to corruption in Mandela Park

22 04 2009

Outrage as Mandela Park homes are given to ‘outsiders’

April 20, 2009 Edition 1
Quinton Mtyala

SOME of the people of Mandela Park in Khayelitsha have promised they will resist a plan to move in the legal beneficiaries of a controversial housing project in the area.

Yesterday, Housing and Local Government MEC Whitey Jacobs had to cut short his visit to the area to welcome the new beneficiaries, as local and backyard residents chanted slogans and vowed not to back down from their “struggle” for housing.

Residents claim that people from the area were supposed to make up 30 percent of the beneficiaries of the 1 823 housing units planned.

Those protesting the handover said they would not be accommodated in the units that had yet to be completed as these had been earmarked for people from other areas.

A large police contingent ensured that a crowd of almost 300 people, many of them backyard tenants, were kept away from Jacobs as he inspected some of the completed houses.

Jacobs said afterwards that when he took over the portfolio in August, he was alerted to problems in Mandela Park by beneficiaries and by the Anti-Eviction Campaign, whose members had illegally occupied the units. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: housing occupation, Mandela Park, occupy, Whitey Jacobs
Categories : Archives, Mainstream and Other News, Site B and Site C in Khayelitsha

Deliver or resign! Housing MEC at Gugs backyarders meeting

13 02 2009

Gugulethu AEC Press Release

Venue: Gugulethu Sports Complex

Date and time: 15th of February at 14h00

In our last public meeting with MEC for Housing on the 2nd of November 2008, Mr Whitey Jacobs told our community and reporters that, for the past 15 years, there has been “no provincial housing plan for backyard dwellers in Cape Town”. As media from the Argus, Times, the Sun, the Daily Voice and the Sowetan witnessed, he further promised that if he did not come up with a plan that satisfied residents within 2 months, he would resign from office.

At our weekly meeting on Sunday 15th of February 2009 at 2pm, the MEC will be presenting his ‘comprehensive plan’ for the backyarders of Gugulethu, Langa and Nyanga that, he says, includes dishing out over 200 houses for AEC backyarders. He will also get back to us about his promise to build public housing for backyard dwellers in wealthy areas such as Muizenberg, Constantia and Mowbray.

We look forward to the MEC being the first minister to not break his promise to the poor. But in the likely event that he does break his promise to provide us with houses, we will hold him to accountable to his promise – to resign if he does not deliver.

Contact Mncedisi at 078 5808 646 and Pule at 073 6448 919