Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

AEC Note: The letter from Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), see below, concerns the proposed forced removal of Siyanda residents to Temporary Relocation Areas (TRAs).  Forced evictions to TRAs, aka Transit Camps, is a huge issue for communities all over South Africa.  Some of the communities opposing eviction to TRAs or who are protesting conditions within TRAs include:

• Joe Slovo (Cape Town)
  
• Symphony Way (Delft, Cape Town)
  
• Other N2 Gateway communities (Cape Town)
  
• Many shack settlements in Khayelitsha (Cape Town)
• Hout Bay (Cape Town)
• Happy Valley (Cape Town)
• Siyanda (Durban)
• Foreman Rd (Durban)
• Jadhu Place (Durban)
• Woodstock (Cape Town)
• (Delft, Cape Town)
• Symphony Way TRA (Delft, Cape Town), aka Blikkiesdorp

The AEC sees TRA’s as an apartheid era policy of controlling space.  Only this time residents are forcibly removed because they are poor and not necessarily because they are black.  All the political parties (especially the DA and ANC) support the creation and forced relocation of residents into TRAs.

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Johannesburg, 23 January 2009

FORCED REMOVAL OF SIYANDA RESIDENTS TO TRANSIT CAMPS

CALS condemns the current government policy of using transit camps as alternative accommodation for forcibly removed shackdwellers

The Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) is disturbed at a growing trend in South African cities in terms of which the state forcibly removes shackdwellers from large shacks on well-located land to ‘temporal housing’ in transit camps (also known as ‘temporary relocation areas’ or TRAs) on the urban periphery. Relocation to transit camps is most often done to make way for infrastructure and development projects which will not benefit those being removed. Read the rest of this entry »