The APF supports the Joe Slovo Residents Constitutional Court appeal

PRESS STATEMENT
Thursday 21st August 2008

EQUAL RIGHTS & HOUSING FOR ALL!

Today, members of the Anti Privatisation Forum (APF) joined hundreds of Joe Slovo and Inner-City Resource Centre residents at the Constitutional Court, where their appeal against High Court Judge Hlophe’s eviction order was heard. The imminent threat of mass eviction (and forcible removal to Delft) is a direct result of the top-down, anti-democratic manner in which the Ministry of Housing (and their principal agents, Thubelisha Homes) have pursued the provision/development of housing for poor communities in Cape Town, with specific reference to the N2 Gateway Housing Project. The continued failure – both in Cape Town and across the country – of government and their designated ‘development’ agents to fulfil their long-repeated promises of affordable, quality formal housing for those living in ‘informal settlements’ is at the root of the Joe Slovo crisis, as it is for millions of others.

AbM: Why are Shack Dwellers Excluded from the Discussions About the Cornubia Development?

Sunday, 24 August 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo eThekwini Press Release

Nothing for Us, Without Us!

There has been much discussion about the Cornubia housing development in the press. The City and the political parties have had their say. Tongaat-Hulett, the company that owns the land, have had their say. The technical experts have had their say. Shack dwellers’ organisations have not had their say. We who live with the rats in the mud and the fires have not had our say. We who were publicly promised houses in this development in November 2005 have not had our say. We who have been beaten and arrested while defending our right to speak for ourselves, defending our communities from eviction, and defending our right to decent housing in the city have not had our say.

When ever we have asked the eThekwini Municipality to fulfil the promise to house the poor they have told us that they want to build houses but that land, not money, is the problem. They have always told us that there is nothing that they can do because there is no land left in the city. But everyone can see that there is lots of land. The real problem is not that there is no land. The real problem is that the land is privately owned and that most of the land is owned by one big company – Tongaat-Hulett.

The Freedom Charter said that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. The Freedom Charter said that the land should be shared. These were clear goals of the peoples’ struggles against apartheid. We are still committed to these goals.

It is clear that building democratic cities where everyone has a proper space and real hope for a better life will require the end of the private ownership over huge lands. Some of our members believe that God made the land as a gift for everyone and that is a sin for one company to own so much land. We all agree that there can be no justice in this city, no safety and no hope for a better life for the poor while one company owns so much land. Everybody in the city needs to be matured and to face this reality.

The Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC) first demanded the expropriation of Tongaat-Hulett land to house the poor on 13 May 2005 when the KRDC organised a mass march to bury Councillor Yakoob Baig. After Abahlali baseMjondolo was formed on 6 October 2005 this demand was placed at the centre of our struggle. We made this demand because Tongaat-Hulett is the largest land owner in Durban. We also made this demand because it was never right for Tongaat-Hulett to own that land and because many generations suffered on their plantations. We also made this demand because Tongaat-Hulett has continued to separate the rich from the poor after apartheid by building a separate gated world for the rich on the old sugar cane fields. In 1994 that land should have gone for housing for the poor. That would have been real democracy.

The Cornubia development was first announced in November 2005. That was just before the 2006 local government elections and just after the world’s media reported that the eThekwini Municipality had illegally banned our march on Obed Mlaba from the Foreman Road settlement and then sent in the police to shoot at us when we marched in defiance of the ban. The Mayor clearly stated that the announcement was due to pressure from Abahlali baseMjondolo. He said in the New York Times that we were being used by agitators and that we would not still be here in 2007. We are still here. We are still agitated by the conditions that we live in. Now that the 2009 elections are coming Cornubia is back on the agenda.

The debate goes on but it excludes us. Who are the ‘stakeholders’ in the discussions about Cornubia? Just the landowner, the government and the technical people! Where do the poor fit? We find that if we talk about history we are seen to be launching an offensive. We are not supposed to talk about history but we have to reclaim what is our own, what has come out of our efforts. This announcement is the fruit of our struggle and the struggles of all the communities across South Africa that have been rejecting forced removals to rural human dumping grounds since 2005.

List of Mainstream News on Joe Slovo Constitution Court Ruling

Below is a list of recent articles about the Joe Slovo Constitutional Court case.

Concourt’s initiatial comments about the case:

• ‘It’s our duty not to be silent’ – Mail & Guardian
• Joe Slovo residents vow to fight removal – Cape Argus
• Concourt lashes Hlophe’s squatter ruling – Star
• Government to talk to Slovo lawyers – SAPA
• Hlophe squatters ruling concerns ConCourt judge – Legal Brief
• Judgment reserved in Joe Slovo residents’ appeal – SABC

News on journey and protest at the Constitutional Court in Joburg:

• ‘There is no way I’ll go to starve and die in Delft’ – Sowetan
• Joe Slovo residents picket outside Concourt – Star
• ‘We’ll sleep on court steps’ – Sowetan
• Joe Slovo residents contest move to Delft – SABC News
• Competing rights to housing, land argued in court – Business Day
• Shack dwellers protest at Concourt – The Times
  

Media: Concourt lashes Hlophe’s squatter ruling

22 August 2008, 10:33

Source: Star

The Constitutional Court’s battle with Cape Judge President John Hlophe did nothing to dampen the justices’ criticism of his landmark eviction order against 20 000 Western Cape squatters.

Justice Kate O’Regan on Thursday expressed disquiet over Judge Hlophe’s controversial order that the residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement be moved to make way for government’s pilot N2 Gateway Housing Project, pointing out that it made no mention of where they would be moved to.

“It’s one of the things that really bothers me … I couldn’t imagine an order for eviction that didn’t set out where and how the respondents would be accommodated,” she said.

She added that Judge Hlophe’s order gave no sense of the process the state would follow in relocating the informal settlement dwellers, many of whom took trains from Cape Town to attend Thursday’s hearing.

The comments came just one day after the hearing of Judge Hlophe’s acrimonious legal wrangle with South Africa’s highest court, in which he sought to have their public accusations that he attempted to lobby two of them for pro-Jacob Zuma rulings declared unconstitutional.

O’Regan and her fellow justices on Thursday repeatedly urged lawyers for the government, its housing agency and the squatters to work together to compile a draft order, replacing that given by Judge Hlophe and detailing how government would move the squatters “fairly and openly”, within the next week.

Counsel for Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, Michael Donen SC, responded positively to the court’s proposal of a negotiated settlement order.

Justice Zac Yacoob said such a settlement order should place obligations on the state to say where exactly the squatters would be moved to and what conditions they would stay under.

Media: ‘There is no way I’ll go to starve and die in Delft’

21 August 2008
Anna Majavu

Source: Sowetan

This morning an important case comes before the Constitutional Court, involving 20,000 Cape Town residents whose informal settlement is set to be bulldozed.

State-owned company Thubelisha Homes (now bankrupt), Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu and Western Cape housing MEC were granted an eviction order on March 10 this year against occupants of the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa.

They argued that the residents must be moved to fibre-cement shacks in a “temporary relocation area” in Delft, about 20km away from the city. They said this was necessary so that they could continue building houses as part of the N2 Gateway housing programme. After the houses were built, they said, they would move the residents back.

The community quickly established though that most residents would be left in Delft, a place many describe as “God-forsaken”, which has no rail service, where crime is rife, schools are overcrowded and medical facilities dire. Delft is also not close to any suburb where people might find work.

Housing ministry spokesman Xolani Xundu agreed that “not everyone will come back” to Langa.

He told Sowetan that 1500 families will get free houses in Langa, and 45 bonded houses will be sold to the public. The bonded houses are unaffordable to 99 percent of the residents who are unemployed. And the community of 5000 families said they did not want 3500 families to be left behind in Delft’s temporary relocation area.

Joe Slovo task team leader Mzwanele Zulu said that all the families could be accommodated if the government built RDP houses or if they worked with the people to come up with a plan that suited everybody.

Xundu said: “People who did not relocate back to Langa would be housed in Delft. They would not be left in the lurch in the temporary relocation area.”

But these claims were contradicted by Ashraf Cassiem of the Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign.

He said that hundreds of people who voluntarily relocated to Delft from Khayelitsha were still languishing in the temporary relocation area seven years later.

Leon Goliath, a civil engineer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, found that the temporary relocation area was “unfit for human habitation”.  Goliath said the roofs of the temporary dwellings did not connect with the walls and the gaps “led to leaks and drafts, which was not good for health … and could be a fire hazard”.

He said that windows and doors did not have frames and residents have been forced to secure them to the walls with concrete.  “These chunks of concrete could fall off and injure someone. Without proper frames, how do you lock and secure your dwelling?” Goliath asked.

He also found traces of asbestos in the fibre-cement material.

AbM: Armed De-Electrification in the Motala Heights Settlement

Update: 20 August 16:46 Word has just been received that another home, this one occupied by 3 families, is burning in Motala Heights….

19 August 2008
Press Release from the Motala Heights Abahlali baseMjondolo Branch

This morning an eThekwini Municipal official invaded the Motala Heights settlement with a group of security guards. They drew their guns, said that they were there to disconnect what they call ‘illegal electricity connections’ and what every one else calls ‘lifesaving community connections’ and threatened to shoot anyone that resisted.

SACSIS: Joe Slovo Residents Protest

Source: South African Civil Society Information Service

Threatened with mass eviction, the residents of the Joe Slovo settlement in Langa, Cape Town gathered outside of the South African Constitutional Court in Johannesburg on 21 August 2008 to appeal the judgement of High Court Judge Hlophe that would forcibly remove them to Delft, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town, to makeway for the completion of the N2 Gateway Housing Project.

The featured clip below (part one), is of an earlier protest at the Cape High Court where residents air their grievances with government’s plans for them. See Part 1 and Part 2 below:

Media: ‘We’ll sleep on court steps’

19 August 2008
Anna Majavu
Source: Sowetan

More than 100 residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa will travel from Cape Town to Johannesburg today to attend the Constitutional Court appeal against the forced removal of 20 000 of their community.

The residents said they were prepared to sleep “on the steps of the Constitutional Court” ahead of the case on Thursday.

The Joe Slovo community has lived next to Cape Town’s N2 highway for about 18 years.

More than 1 000 shacks burn in Joburg

as usual the poor must be blamed rather than the system that denies people decent housing and fails to, even as a minimal measure, electrify the shack settlements…..

17 August 2008, 09:19

Source: The Star

More than 1000 shacks burnt down at the Denver hostel squatter camp in southern Johannesburg late on Saturday night, according to Johannesburg Emergency Management services.

10 burglaries in 2 days after CT housing company fits flats with plastic window latches

Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement

Thursday 21 August 2008 at 1:30pm

NEWFIELDS VILLAGE, CAPE TOWN – The community has suffered 10 burglaries in the last two days, and two spaza shop owners who work from home have lost everything.

This after the Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC) fitted plastic window latches to new windows and frames they are currently installing in the residents’ homes.

These plastic window latches, which are so pointless that they should not even exist, can be snapped off in a second, noiselessly.

The community is now fearing for their lives.

“People are afraid for their children and are too scared to go to work in case they come home and find all their belongings stolen” said Newfields Village Anti-Eviction Campaign co-ordinator Gary Hartzenberg.

Hartzenberg condemned the company, which is being paid millions to upgrade the houses in the area, yet seems not to be spending the money on the repairs themselves.

The residents told the CTCHC last week that they want proper metal window latches like everyone else in the country has.

But the company ignored them. This after the company removed the old window frames and left the community strewn with broken glass.

CTCHC told residents it was “not their problem” if children cut their feet open.

The CTCHC first made problems for the community several years ago when it advertised its “low income” flats for rentals as low as R250 per month. But after residents moved in, they hiked the rent to R1500 per month.

The substandard houses then started falling apart. After a long struggle and a rent boycott, the CTCHC was forced to fork out millions to repair the houses.

But now they are once again replacing substandard work with more substandard work.

The community appeals to the media to rush to the area and see the plastic latches for themselves.

For more info call Gary on 072 3925859