HELEN ZILLE MUST STOP TRYING TO SCORE CHEAP POLITICAL POINTS WITH THE LIVES OF THE POOR

10 03 2009

COALITION AGAINST WATER PRIVATISATION
PRESS STATEMENT
Tuesday 10th March 2009

CITY OF CAPE TOWN ‘WATER MANAGEMENT DEVICES’ ARE NOTHING MORE THAN PRE-PAID METERS IN DRAG Read the rest of this entry »





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





Solidarity: City eviction letter for Blue Waters Refugee Camp

6 11 2008

AEC in solidarity with all poor and vulnerable people everywhere!

Below, you will find the City of Cape Town’s official letter to refugees of Blue Waters Camp.  Residents are resisting the eviction because they fear for their lives by moving back into the townships.  The City is doing nothing to ensure that foreign nationals are safe enough to return (see this article by the Mail & Guardian).  The City is also doing nothing to get at the root causes of the xenophobic pogroms.

City of Cape Town eviction letter to refugees of Blue Waters Camp.pdf





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 »





Guguletu AEC marched today on Helen Zille’s office

9 09 2008

September 9, 2008
Gugulethu AEC Press Statement

CAPE TOWN – The Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign marched on Helen Zille’s office at noon today.

We are angered that backyard dwellers in Gugulethu continue to live in overcrowded, inhumane conditions. Despite the fact that we have carried out an exhaustive audit of Gugulethu backyard residents who have been on the waiting list for housing for more than 20 years, we have yet to be offered housing.

We live in backyards, with up to 8 families in one backyard. We always get flooded out every time it rains but the city and province do not provide us with any relief because they seem to see us as private tenants.

We are demanding the same food parcels, blankets and building materials that are supplied to residents in informal settlements.

We also want back the building materials that the metro police stole from us on the weekend. This was when we identified an empty piece of land and tried to move on to it. We have every right to do this because the government has failed for 20 years to provide us with houses.

for more information contact Mncedisi Twalo on 0785808646





No home sweet home for Soetwater Somalis

29 05 2008
by Kate Stegeman
Business Day – 29/5/2008


DISPLACED Somalis have been at the forefront of the mounting tension, political mudslinging and sour relations dogging the Soetwater disaster management area in Cape Town.

Now there are calls to close down the camps. Read the rest of this entry »





Refugee camps are a mistake – UN

28 05 2008
Note: Lawyers have called the camps unconstitutional, Africans placed there have likened them to concentration camps, and the City of Cape Town is intent on using the Afrophobic attacks as a pretext to forced removal.
By Karen Breytenbach and Anel Powell
May 28 2008 at 08:50AM
Source: IOL

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is willing and able to assist the government in dealing with the mass displacement of refugees, but it has not yet been approached for help.

The organisation also does not agree with Cape Town’s establishment of camps for displaced people.

Arvin Gupta, a senior UNHCR protection officer, said the UNHCR did not agree with the City of Cape Town that those displaced by the violence should be held at camps across the city, but also realised the immediate return to the communities they had to flee from was far from ideal.

Lawyers have said the camps are unconstitutional.

Read the rest of this entry »





Press Alert: Pavement Dwellers to tackle Mayor Zille

13 05 2008
Delft-Symphony Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement
May 12, 2008

Tomorrow (the 13th of May, 2008), all 300 families of the Delft-Symphony Anti-Eviction Campaign will be going tomorrow to the Cape Town Civic Centre. The pavement dwellers will be coming to Town with the purpose of personally delivering handwritten letters indicating our wishes to Mayor Helen Zille.

We are upset because our opinions and needs are being ignored by the city. The letters will, amongst other things, demand a change in the way the city treats its poor. We demand to be treated as citizens of this country and to be respected as equal human beings by city officials.

We invite the press to join us at the Civic Centre tomorrow morning to find out the details of our grievances and support us in holding the city accountable to the South African Constitution.

For comment, please call Auntie Jane at 078-403-1302 and Jerome at 083-541-6622.





Press Release: AEC to invade MEC Richard Dyantyi’s office today

24 04 2008

Thursday 24th April 2008 at 8am

CAPE TOWN – At 1pm today, hundreds of members of the Gugulethu and surrounding areas Anti-Eviction Campaign will occupy the offices of the MEC for Housing and Local Government, Richard Dyantyi.

Dyantyi and Premier Ebrahim Rasool have been playing hide and seek with the community, despite our frequent written requests to them for a meeting. There is a high rate of evictions of pensioners in Gugulethu and we also want to talk to them about other issues.

First, Dyantyi’s office said they had received our letters and would get back to us. Now they say they never received any letter from us, despite us having the fax receipts as proof.

We are sick and tired of government officials who do not want to meet with the people. Mayor of Cape Town Helen Zille did come to meet us although she also told us a lot of nonsense about how we should not put evicted pensioners back in their houses, because by so doing, we were deterring “investors” from investing in Gugulethu.

We demand that all those responsible for housing have proper meetings with us where they commit to solving the problems they have created for us.

For comment please call Mnce on 078 5808646








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