We are all Andries Tatane

19 April 2012 – People against police brutality

What?           Interfaith Andries Tatane memorial ceremony, testimonial against police brutality, and march to Harare Police Station
When?          Sunday 22nd April 2012 at 12h30
Where?         Way of Life Church / Multi-purpose centre, Mandela Park, Khayelitsha
Directions?   Visit http://g.co/maps/ucmky or contact Moza @ 0791176943 / 0213672122

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We are all Andries Tatane!

There is a little bit of Andries Tatane in each and every one of us.

As he fought for service delivery for his community in Ficksburg, we fight for toilets, electricity, houses and land here in Cape Town.

As he lived in the hellish township of Meqheleng, many of us are stuck in hell-like conditions in Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Delft and Manenberg.

As he was attacked, shot, beaten and ultimately killed by police for standing up for what he believed in, many of us are at times also attacked, shot, beaten and a few of us have even been killed at their hands.

Problems and challenges facing the new LPM Protea South structure

Press Statement: Landless People’s Movement – Protea South, November 2011
Land now! Organise and Unite! Background

The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) Charter of Demands was adopted by more than 3000 landless delegates from communities across South Africa, and their landless allies from around the world, at the Landless People’s Assembly held in Durban on 30th August 2001 at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR). Further amendments were made following the meetings of Landless Rural Women in Kimberley in October 2001.

The LPM was introduced into Protea South by Maureen Mnisi in 2002. That same year Mnisi was elected Gauteng Provincial Chairperson, and chairperson of the Protea South branch of the LPM. Between 2002 and 2011 no further elections were
held to democratically determine the LPM leadership, and Mnisi held that position for almost ten years.

Activists left out to dry by Housing Dept and Development Action Group

WC-AEC Press Release
15 November 2011

The National Department of Human Settlements and Development Action Group, a housing NGO, had invited civil society to a housing indaba yesterday. Members of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign attended the meeting in which they promised that the participants would be given transport home.

However, after the meeting, poor participants were left stranded without transport home.

The Anti-Eviction Campaign was forced to use its own petty-cash to ensure that other poor participants were able to return to their families last night. The AEC is a movement with almost no money to its name and yet we feel obligated to make sure our comrades are taken care of when left out to dry by government and NGOs

Phantsi National Department of Human Settlements! Phantsi!
Phantsi DAG! Phantsi!

For more details please contact:

Gary @ 0723925859
Mncedisi @ 0785808646
Philidene @ 0746892922
Willy @ 0834193996

Our book helps bury our own

Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers Statement
9 November 2011

Funds raised through our community’s efforts to sell our book, No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way, is making it possible for Doreen Lewis to bury her son who died tragically days ago.

Last week, one of our own youth, 24 year old Leroy Van Wyk, passed away. He was taken to the local Delft Clinic with a severe ‘headache’. His symptoms were scoffed at and he was sent away with some pain tablets. (As poor people, Delft Clinic often refuses to take our health seriously and usually sends us away with Panado or Paracetamol even though we have much more serious illnesses).

Pavement Dwellers to speak at first ever Anarchist Book Fair

Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign
Event Notice

The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers would like to invite all its supporters and the media to the first ever Cape Town Anarchist Book Fair to be held at Cafe Ganesh in Observatory from 10am to 6pm on the 5^th of November.

This is your opportunity to meet some of the authors of No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way and hear about our struggles from the horse’s mouth. Copies of our book along with copies of a sister anthology, My Dream Is To Be Bold: Our Work To End Patriarchy, will be available for purchase.

At 16h00 in the upstairs section of Ganesh, authors will do a presentation about their occupation of Symphony Way and their struggle for dignity, land and housing.

Please join us, we would love to meet you.

Contact Sarita @ 0764699843 and Jerome @ 0731438886

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For more information, see the book fair’s press release below…

Cape Town Anarchist Book Fair

*** Saturday 5 November 2011 *** Café Ganesh, Observatory (corner Trill Road & Lower Main Road). *** From 10am to 6pm *** Free entry

 

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, as this is the date when South Africa will play host to its first ever Anarchist Book Fair, taking place in Observatory, Cape Town, at Café Ganesh (corner Trill Road and Lower Main Road).

Comrades, armchair anarchists, committed revolutionaries and book lovers are invited to come and learn about this exciting philosophy and its proud history of resistance. You can swing by any time between 10am and 6pm to check out a wide range of radical literature, music, movies, talks and more. You’ll also have the chance to meet like-minded people, engage in discussions and workshops, and help to foment dissent (the ideal antidote to South Africa’s one party state).

Come and tune into an exciting moment in history. Not only have long-term dictatorships been overthrown by grassroots movements in North Africa (many of which organised along anarchist lines) but we’re also seeing a new decentralised occupation movement that started in Wall Street, New York and is now spreading across the world. People are taking to the streets and, if not directly calling for anarchism, are organising with anarchist principles such as horizontalism, decentralisation, and consensus-based decision-making.

Says one of the organisers Neil Goodwin, ‘Whenever societies descend into destruction and violence, commentators like to reach for the ‘anarchy’ label, in much the same way that colonialists once used ‘black’ to describe anything negative. This ideological hatchet job’s being going on for so long that people just accept it now. A flick through any one of hundreds of books at this bookfair will show you a completely different picture of Anarchy, a rich and vibrant set of values and social history built on co-operation, equality and ingenuity.’

There will be over 12 stalls and collectives taking part including –

The Missing Shelf, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front, CrimethInc South Africa, Intsangu Clothes, Amandla! Magazine, Soundz of the South, Feminist Alternatives and Botsotso. The Sympony Way Pavement Dwellers, who will also be there showcasing their extraordinary book “No Land! No House! No Vote!”

Other talks will touch on such themes as “Anarchism, wtf? An introduction to anarchist ideas and history”…“Murdering the Queer dream: an incomplete personal critique on the liberal gay agenda in politics, in relationships, in death”…“Art & (revolutionary) Activism”

The programme will also include a feast of thought provoking films, including the South African premiere of ‘Reclaim the Streets – The Movie’, the staggering ‘Fourth World War’, a sneak preview of ‘Dear Mandela’, and that anarchist classic “Living Utopia”.
For further details, Contact Aragorn Eloef Tel: +27 (0) 82 557 3912

Email: us@anarchistbookfair.co.za or visit our website at www.anarchistbookfair.co.za and our events page on Facebook – ‘The Cape Town Anarchist Bookfair.

Two illegal evictions succesfully defended

Press Statement by the Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign and AbM-WC

Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape and Gugulethu Anti-eviction successfully defended two unlawful evictions today at Gugulethu.

First evcition was carried by private property developer who claimed to have bought the house at Ngawe road Nyanga East.
The second evection was carried by ENGR INVESTMENTS, intersting both evictions were carried by the same sheriff of the court and the un identified security company was used to guard the houses, and it was the same security guys in both houses and they identified themselves as securities and during the conversation they identify themselves as police officers who do security work during their off days.

The second evection took place at NY 82 no 16 where invalid court order was used to evect the family and the order its self was not addressed to the current ocupiers of the house but it was addressed to the previous owner of the house which bought the house on auction and he (the previous owner) never occupied the house at all.

Urgent illegal Eviction in Gugulethu

AEC/AbM Press Alert

Currently Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape with the Support of Gugulethu Anti-eviction Campaign is resisting an illegal eviction
that takes place at Gugulethu NY 82 no 16. The current owner of the house passed away last week due to stress that he suffered from this eviction threat and he (the owner of the house) was a pensioner.

He is not even buried but the the new owner of the house continues with the eviction.

for more information call Mncedisi Twalo who is currently on the scene at 078 580 8646 and Mzonke Poni at 073 2562 036 and Zimasa Lerumo at 083 4465 081

Occupy Grahamstown! Recapitalise the Poor!

13 October 2011

Unemployed People’s Movement Press Statement

Occupy Grahamstown!

Recapitalise the Poor!

As a movement of the poor we have taken great inspiration from the rebellion that has spread from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Syntagma Square in Athens, the Puerta del Sol in Madrid and now Liberty Plaza in New York. Our comrades in Students for Social Justice have been just as inspired by the growing spirit of rebellion that is jumping, like a fire, from country to country.

On Saturday we will occupy Grahamstown. The students will march into town from the Botanical Gardens. We will march into town from the township and the squatter camps. We will meet on the square at the Cathedral. We will turn that square into a people’s university, a people’s kitchen and a space of people’s power. Our aim is to bring the rebellion of the poor, the rebellion that has put thousands and thousands on the streets of South Africa in recent years, into dialogue with this global rebellion. The alliance between organised students and the organised unemployed is strong in Grahamstown. Together we can build strong foundations for the struggles to come.

AbM: South Africa’s Great Change

S’bu Zikode’s talk at the 30th anniversary of the 1981 protests against the Springbok tour of New Zealand

I wish to thank Global Peace and Justice, in Auckland, for inviting me to New Zealand to speak on the progress of post-apartheid South Africa and the birth of Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA. I also wish to thank Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA, the movement that I am part of, for trusting me with the responsibility of representing it.

I also wish to extend our deepest gratitude to the anti-apartheid movement here in New Zealand who stood firm with the people of South Africa in the fight against apartheid. Many of our older comrades remember watching, on TV, the protests that you organised against the Springbok tour in 1981. There were thousands of you, many thousands of you. You were attacked by the police. Many of you were beaten and arrested. Your protests were a deep shock to the racists in South Africa. It made them realise that although Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher accepted their racism ordinary people in New Zealand did not. Your protests also gave courage to the people struggling against apartheid in South Africa. You were workers, priests, teachers, housewives and students. You were men and women. You were old and young. You were people in New Zealand who made people in South Africa know that they were not alone in this world. The comrades who were of that generation remember how your brave protests made their hearts sing with joy and hope back in 1981.

Pavement dwellers to present their book at two events / Only 17 hours left to bring our book tour to Europe and North America

To all supporters of the Symphony Way and Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign,

The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers will be presenting their book at two events in Cape Town today and tomorrow:

• SA Cities Studies Conference – Along with other authors, we will be presenting our book, No Land! No House! No Vote! at 5pm tonight (7th Sep) at the Kimberley Hotel on Roeland Street in Central Cape Town. For more information, click here.
• Making a home in temporary spaces: film and photography by Sydelle Willow Smith – Symphony Way will be speaking and displaying their book at 6pm tomorrow (8th Sep) at Rococo on Buitenkant Streent in Central Cape Town. See facebook invite here.

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Last chance fundraising for Europe/North America book tour:

 

We only have 17 hours left to raise the money we need for a our book tour. If we get at least $4,000usd, then we’ll be able to bring 2 authors on tour.

Please contribute here now so that our voices can be heard outside South Africa.