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.

Invitation to All Those Seeking Political Office to Come Down to the People

Website: khayelitshastruggles.com or http://www.abahlali.org
Email: abmwesterncape@abahlali.org office admin: 073 2562 036/ 083 446 5081

On the 21 March 2011 Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape will have a mass rally at the VE shack settlement in Khayelitsha from 10:00 till 13:00. Representatives of 15 communities will attend this rally. The aim of the rally is to launch our campaign for the 2011 local government elections, which is: No Land! No House! No Water! No Electricity! No Jobs! No Freedom! No Vote!

As a movement we see no point in voting for political parties which are just competing for the right to oppress the poor. We do not see any political party taking the side of the poor. No political party stands with us when we are fighting shack fires, running crèches, occupying land or resisting evictions. Therefore we refuse to vote and instead focus on building our own power in our own communities so that the people can discipline who ever tries to use them as ladders to climb into office.

The ANC and the DA repress popular protest. The ANC can not escape the truth of Kennedy Road or eTwatwa. The DA can not escape the truth of Hangberg or Macassar Village. The ANC and the DA are not just anti-poor. They are both also anti any autonomous politics of the poor. Due to their history of repression neither the ANC nor the DA can be said to be democratic organisations.

Some civil society formations are playing the same game as the political parties and trying to divide the poor by criminalising popular organisations that organise independently of the ANC. Here in Cape Town TAC and their subsidiary organisations, which are aligned to the ANC, have even tried to blame the actions of the ANC Youth League on our movement! This allows them to let the ANC off the hook for the thuggish actions of its youth league while making us look like bad. Although we acknowledge the important work that these organisations have done in winning treatment for people living with HIV, supporting migrants after the xenophobic attacks in 2008, raising the issue of unequal education and so on we have to acknowledge the reality that many civil society organisations remain an extension of the ANC. With the exception of the South African Municipal Workers’ union, which has decided that it cannot in good conscience ask its members to vote for the ANC once again, COSATU is, while clearly the only progressive formation in the tripartite alliance, also an extension of the ANC.

The real opposition to the ANC and the DA is not COSATU or those civil society formations which criticise the ANC on some important points but still expect the poor to vote for their oppressors. The real opposition to the ANC is in the rebellion of the poor and the organisations and movements that have emerged from that rebellion.

We are clear that the ANC and the DA are our oppressors and that COSATU and some civil society formations are failing to take this reality seriously. However we are democrats. We always allow the parties to campaign freely in our areas. We are therefore extending an invitation to all those people who have ambitions to be elected by the votes of the poor to attend our rally on Human Rights Day. We are inviting Patricia de Lille, Tony Ehenrich, the ANC Youth League members that engaged in thuggery in TR section and that now want us to elect their leader as a councillor, the civil society organisations that continue to support the ANC and all other individuals and groups that want our vote to attend our meeting.

They will all be given a platform and the right to speak freely. They will be listened to respectfully. However they will all be asked the following ten questions:

1. Will they actively oppose all water and electricity disconnections?

2. Will they actively oppose all evictions?

3. Will they actively support the occupation of unused land to house the poor?

4. Will they actively support the right of all people to organise freely, including outside of and against political parties?

5. Will they actively provide non-party political support to community initiatives like crèches, food gardens and so on?

6. Will they actively support the demand for fair and effective policing to ensure the safety of everyone in poor communities?

7. Will they actively support the right of all communities to plan their own future by democratising development via mechanisms like participatory budgeting and popular urban planning?

8. Will they only take a basic living wage for themselves and put the rest of their politician’s salaries into community controlled projects in poor communities?

9. Will they take instruction from above, by party bosses, or from below, from their electorates?

10. Will they give the people that elected them the right to recall them if they do not allow the people to lead them from below?

For comment contact: Mzonke Poni ABM WC chairperson @ 073 2562 036

Direction to VE informal settlement: Take the Mew Way turn off to Khayelitsha from N2, on stop sign you turn right over the bridge (only if you are coming from Cape Town Direction, and you will turn left if you are coming from Somerset West direction) and go through the traffic light (Mew Way road) and over the bridge there is 4 way stop and you turn left. VE informal settlement is allocated along the road on your right hand side, is about 1 kilometer away from the 4 way stop.

Letter from Mfusi Zonke on retrenched security guards in Cape Town

Revolutionaries do not retrench…

As the unemployed to be, we would like to thank the premier and her cohorts for refusing us to work in our country. We thank her for refusing us to be responsible fathers and mothers, who are dignified because they put bread on the table in their families. We thank her for ripping us off the dignity of becoming parents to our respective families. We thank Helen Zille and her crew to deprive us the right to feed, educate and support our families. All what we are saying is simple: we refuse to be hooligans in the streets of Cape Town. This emanated from the fact that if government debars us from working, she is adding criminals to the society and we regard her as enemy to us.

Media: They are cashing in on misery

10 December 2009
Anna Majavu – Sowetan Political Notebook

Political parties dilly-dally while Zimbabweans suffer

XENOPHOBIC violence is on the rise again and political parties are proving themselves useless at even coming close to rooting out the causes or preventing future attacks.

Media: Symphony Way families move to Blikkiesdorp

November 03, 2009 Edition 2
Aziz Hartley – Cape Times

THE 136 families living on the pavement of Symphony Way in Delft for almost two years have been moved, most to the nearby Blikkiesdorp temporary relocation area.

Solidarity: the community of KTC will march in town to bypass their Ward Councillor

The community of KTC, Nyanga (opposite the airport) will march from Kaisergracht, District Six to the Mayor’s office today at 11am in Cape Town.

About 400 people will march today [FRIDAY July 31].
Contacts: Nolubelo Masimini on 083 8009202; Mzwanele 076 3852369

“Our grievances are that the councillor of Ward 39, Gladstone Ntamo of the ANC, applied for the housing subsidy on our behalf without our knowledge and now he is building tiny houses that we cannot live in. We went to talk to various officials in the DA city but they all tell us that the problem lies with our councillor and he does not want to talk to us, he uses vulgar words against us”.

“The rain is heavy and the people are panicking. We called disaster management last time but the councillor turned them away and told them there are no floods here. We don’t know what to do and that is why we are marching. DA housing minister Bonginkosi Madikizela also did not help us, even though he promised to get back to us after a meeting, he never did” says community leader Nolubelo Masimini.

Land Occupation and the Limits of Party Politics

Date posted: 25 May 2009
View this article online here: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/290.1

In the recent election the DA, together with COPE, made much of their intention to defend the rule of the law. But while the dust thrown up in that election is still settling, the City of Cape Town is already engaged in violent and unlawful behaviour towards its most vulnerable citizens.

Bankruptcy of responses to Macassar land occupation underlines Western Cape housing crisis

By Martin Legassick

21/5/2009

For more pictures including the ongoing camping by residents, click here.

land occupations in Macassar

On Tuesday 19th backyarders in Macassar, desperate for homes, built shacks on municipal land on a field adjoining the N2 – and were illegally evicted by Cape Town’s DA Helen-Zille-inspired Anti-Land Invasion unit, together with SAPS and Metro Police. Their building materials were confiscated and taken off in a truck. In the process four people (including a 2-year old child) were unnecessarily wounded by police rubber bullets, four people (including myself) were unnecessarily taken into custody and three of these wrongfully charged with public violence.

Gympie Street Shame – Zille to blame?

by davidrobertlewis

I have just come from Gympie Street where Willie Heyn and his family and their belongings are on the street, forceably evicted by an apartheid-era injustice which continues to play itself out today. With no opportunity given to purchase their home, in which they lived for generations, the Heyn family are now in a scene straight out of Les Misrables as the DA-Lead City continues to protect the landed gentry.

Media: “Why do we deserve the worst?” ask protesting Cape residents

Brenda Nkuna

Source: West Cape News

Working under a hot sun, single mother Nolukhanyo Mgovuka, 35, plunges her spade into the hard gravel of a community-dug trench that scythes across Lansdowne Road in Cape Town. “We are willing to take rubber bullets from the police, if the City of Cape Town pretends we don’t exist. This is nothing, the N2 we are coming,” said Mgovuka, referring to the nearby national road that runs into central Cape Town.

Angry residents of BT Section informal settlement in Khayelitsha took to the streets last Monday in a protest they say is about a lack of electricity in their area.