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

Heartbreak, eviction, broken promises

Melanie Gosling – September 7 2011 at 12:36pm – Cape Times

FOR around 50 years Ellen Leputing has been trying to secure a home in Cape Town, but has been evicted, burnt out, betrayed and beaten by the system. Her family are facing eviction again.

On the surface, it is a straightforward case of the authorities trying to remove people from a condemned building. On a deeper level, it lays bare the battle of the poor and the powerless to keep a roof over their heads, a battle which, for some families, carries on over decades and across generations.

Leputing, 62, is a state pensioner living in Sandile Park, Gugulethu. She used to live in the adjacent Masonwabe Park, two blocks of 40 flats in Gugulethu’s Dr Moerat Road. Two of her adult children and several grandchildren still live there, as do four of her sister’s children.

The yearly rains return and re-flood informal settlements and backyards

2 June 2011 – Gugulethu AEC Press Statement

While disaster relief is nowhere to be seen in communities like Thambo Square which has been flooded for days now, the real culprit is that service delivery is non-existent in our communities. Interviews with residents show that this is a chronic problem caused by the City’s top-down approach to development.

There are hundreds of thousands of shackdwellers and backyarders in Cape Town and nearly all of them suffer from the extreme weather on the Cape Flats. Many people, especially children and the elderly, become sick from the cold, the wind and the rain. Their homes are flooded every single winter destroying all their furniture and displacing families for weeks on end.

In the Western Cape, most informal dwellers do not get any assistance from NGOs or the government. This past week, the rains, which barely have an impact in wealthy areas like Camps Bay and Bishops Court, have wrecked havoc on shackdwellers and backyarders alike. And despite requests from victims, the City of Cape Town and the provincial government has refused to provide emergency and medical assistance. In Tambo Square, no alternative accomodation has been provided and so residents remain in their flooded homes. No blankets or hot soup or electricity generators where provided as the elections are well over and politicians think that the poor will forget that government did nothing for them once the next elections come around.

Re-launch of the Western Cape AEC focuses on a renewed coordinated fight against evictions, water cutoffs, electricity cutoffs and for decent housing for all!

Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement
6 December 2010

Last week, on Sunday the 28^th of December 2010, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign held its first official Annual General Meeting (AGM) in about 8 years at Nobantu Lower Primary School in Gugulethu.

The previous WC-AEC executive committee had failed in its mandate and and had refused to conduct AGMs each and every year. The result was that the leadership undermined the AEC membership and the democratic process to which the movement had committed. Many communities stopped attending WC-AEC meetings and the movement lost a lot of its members.

This year’s AGM was to fix this, re-launch and re-invigorate the movement.

Police shoot residents in peaceful AEC protest against Gugs Mall

Gugulethu AEC Press Alert
29 October 2009 at 15h30

Contacts: Malibongwe at 074 639 9551 and Mncedisi at 078 580 8646

The Gugulethu police interrupted a peaceful protest by the Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign this afternoon.  Without warning residents at all, they shot at us with rubber bullets injuring dozens and arresting many others.

The much of the crowd was made up of old women and there were a lot of children also present.  A 17 year old lady was shot in the face by the police and is now seriously injured and at the hospital.

Afrophobia: Traders threatened

29 May 2009 Anna Majavu majavua@sowetan.co.za
UP IN ARMS: A year ago, violence flared up in Cape Town and other parts of South Africa as foreigners were targeted by locals . Left: Western Cape Cope leader Mbulelo Ncedane. FEARS of repeats of last year’s xenophobic attacks are rising among foreign nationals in the Western Cape. This started after Gugulethu traders allegedly held a series of secret meetings discussing how to remove foreign traders from the area. A Gugulethu businessman said yesterday that local business people have held several meetings over the past three weeks, planning “what to do against foreigners”. The next meeting will take place on Sunday. “They are complaining that their business is declining and they are furious. They are talking about foreign businesses being the major problem,” the source said. The story was confirmed by another independent source in the community. Now foreign nationals fear a repeat of the xenophobic violence that swept the country last May, leaving more than 150000 displaced, and hundreds more raped or murdered. Last Sunday in Samora Machel near Nyanga, a group of 25 men identifying themselves as local business people instructed Somali shopkeepers to close shop by today.

Media: Rights group to launch election boycott campaign

January 05, 2009 Edition 1

Aziz Hartley

Source: The Mercury

CAPE TOWN: The Anti Eviction Campaign, an organisation that fights for the rights of the homeless, is to launch a national campaign to boycott the coming general elections because it says the government has failed the poor and politicians cannot be trusted.

Mncedisi Twalo, a campaign leader in Gugulethu, Cape Town, said yesterday the body was using “no land, no house, no jobs – no votes” as its slogan.

“We have been talking to our alliance partners, Abhahali base Mjondolo (shack dwellers’ movement) in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Homeless People’s Movement in Gauteng.

“The campaign is going to all nine provinces. We are going out there to convince poor communities that elections are all about power-mongering and promoting politicians,” said Twalo.

“We feel, as the poor, we have been left on our own and will not participate in what is now a neo-colonialist state. We will not vote, but we will keep pressuring whoever takes up public office.”

Media: ‘Councillor kicked us out’

September 29 2008 at 02:51PM

By Nomangesi Mbiza

Source: Cape Argus

Squatter camp dwellers in Gugulethu have accused their ward councillor of evicting them from a community centre where they were sheltered after heavy rains flooded their shacks.

Most residents of Thambo Square squatter camp, who were sheltered in the Ikwezi community centre after their shacks were flooded in heavy rains two weeks ago, have returned home after claiming they were forcibly evicted from the centre.

The residents alleged that ward councillor Belinda Landingwe had forced them to go back to unhealthy conditions in their shacks.

Media: NGO steps in to help shack dwellers

By Nomangesi Mbiza
September 25 2008 at 12:37PMThambo Square informal settlement residents in Gugulethu, whose shacks were flooded in recent rains, received blankets and food parcels from the International Islamic Relief organisation on Wednesday.

The plight of the residents came to light after they occupied the social services building in Gugulethu on Tuesday, seeking building materials and plastics for their shacks, as well as blankets and temporary accommodation.

Floods Rock The City

Joint AbM and AEC Press Statement

24 September 2008

Gugulethu — About 50 residents from Thambo Square informal settlement have been displaced from their homes to a local community hall as a result of flooding in their shacks (Cape Town’s heavy rain this winter has left a lot of people homeless in the City.

The devastated group early this morning marched to the office of their local Department of Social Development seeking immediate relief or intervention such as building material for their shacks, plastic to put over their roof, blankets and a temporary sleeping place. However all they were able to get from Social Development was an unpleasing response. People were told that the ANC government had nothing to do with their situation and they must go to DA. When trying to question the unpleasing response by government, instead of receiving a proper report, the police were called to intimidate and threaten the residents. Residents then went back to their flooded homes in Thambo Square informal settlement.

‘We don’t want their soup and bread we are not hungry maybe the reason why they ill treat us they think that we are here to demand food, we only need alternatives such as relocation to better suitable land or BNG houses, not desperate for food as they think’ said frustrated Libo Meyi (072 488 3025).