Court just wants city to care for the poor a bit better

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=139916
KATE TISSINGTON and JACKIE DUGARD

THE government provides some subsidised housing for the poor and should be commended for this.

THE government provides some subsidised housing for the poor and should be commended for this. However, the housing subsidy scheme and roll-out of subsidised “RDP” houses is not a solution for everyone. Some — single men without dependants; people without identity documents, child-headed households, noncitizens and permanent residents — do not qualify.

For those who qualify, the supply is inadequate and the process is lengthy and dogged with corruption. Even then, all the “lucky” recipients get is a house on the urban periphery, far from where they need to be to make a living. In the interim, they seek shelter in informal settlements, backyard shacks or dilapidated buildings. This in itself is the consequence of unstoppable migration from impoverished areas to cities such as Johannesburg.

Opinion: South Africa’s Reality Bites

By: Lisa Crooms | Posted: September 10, 2009 at 6:42 AM – The Root

Sci-fi blockbuster District 9 is all about aliens and spaceships. But its fiction is rooted in the facts about South Africa’s troubled history of housing and immigration.

This summer, I spent six weeks in Cape Town teaching human rights to a multiracial group of South Africans and Americans—many of whom wanted to party on Long Street more than they wanted to study human rights. Still, I managed to get their attention long enough for us to focus on two recurring issues—housing and immigration. Shortly after I got back, I found myself sitting in a movie theater in Silver Spring, Md., confronting these same issues masquerading as entertainment in the major summer sci-fi blockbuster, District 9.

Police Brutally Assault Peaceful Service Delivery Protestors in Alexandra: Call for Solidarity and Advice

Press Statement from the Alexandra Vukuzenzele Crisis Committee

We, the Alexandra Vukuzenzele Crisis Committee (AVCC), have been fighting for our right to move from our shacks to houses since 2002. We have engaged the Alexandra Renewal Project (ARP) and local ANC councilors, but they have failed to respond to our grievances. To push forward the struggle of the poor for our right to housing, we have been non-violently occupying empty RDP houses in extension 7. The government and the police have responded by brutally assaulting us in order to stop us from applying this method of non-violent direct action – the only method we have to force the government to heed to our demands for housing.

Media: More protests flare over lack of services

Click here for video footage.

More protests flare over lack of services
Charles Molele Published:Jul 12, 2009 – The Times

‘They want to dump us in another slum without clean water, electricity or sanitation’
Huge shack settlement latest to ignite over government’s poor delivery record

Jozi: Protesters refuse to vote

April 22 2009 at 07:55AM

By Anna Cox

Source: IOL

A group of about 300 protesters gathered at River Park in Alexandra before dawn this morning. They are all residents of a nearby squatter camp, and embarked on a protest against a lack of housing.  The toyi-toying crowd stood on an embankment on London Road, chanting “No house, no vote”.

Community leader Thabo Modisan said people were not happy about the election and refused to vote until they got houses.

“We have been waiting since 1994 and we are still living in shacks. We were promised basic services and have not received them, and that is why we are boycotting the election,” he said.

Police, while stationed a distance away, were observing and ensuring that the peaceful protest did not get out of hand.

The Johannesburg College of Education’s Alexandra campus, one of the polling stations, has not opened on time.

Solidarity: Evicted People live on the Roadside for 7 months

Not more than a kilometre from the Lanseria Airport stands a big striped tent and some makeshift shacks, along the R512 road. For seven months now families have lived on the roadside, they were evicted from the adjacent farm last July. More than 34 families were victims; most have disappeared into the sprawling squatter camp of Diepsloot. Those who are still on the roadside refuse to disappear. Their presence is their dignified resistance; they have chosen to rather live on the roadside than be forgotten with the many nameless, history less in the squatter camp.

CAX launches Campaign Against Police Xenophobia and Harassment of Immigrants

CAX Press Release

Coalition Against Xenophobia to picket outside the Hillbrow Magistrates Court this Wednesday 25th February at 09h00 in support of our comrade Pastor Mulumba, being tried on bogus charges laid against him by xenophobic police.

Solidarity: Water Struggle Reaches Supreme Court of Appeal

PRESS RELEASE
Tuesday 17th February 2009

APPEAL HEARING TO TAKE PLACE IN BLOEMFONTEIN FROM 23rd – 25th FEBRUARY

Solidarity: Landless People’s Movement v The City of Johannesburg

Thursday, 12 February 2009
Landless People’s Movement Press Statement
Jo’burg High Court, 10:00 Friday 13 February 2009

Over the years we, the Protea South branch of the Landless People’s Movement, have marched many times and we have been arrested, beaten and tortured. Tomorrow will meet the City of Johannesburg in the High Court.
Our demands to the court are the same demands that we have taken to the streets:

1. The government shacks (i.e. the transit camp) must be immediately removed from our area. They are a deep insult to our human dignity.

2. There must be an immediate halt to all threats of forced removal to the human dumping ground of Doornkop. We are all, documented and undocumented, citizens of Johannesburg and we will defend our right to this city.

3. All basic services must be provided to our settlement. It is unacceptable for the government to declare our settlements to be ‘temporary’ and to then use that declaration as an excuse to withhold life saving basic services. We occupied this land and founded this settlement in 1985 – our community is not temporary. By refusing to provide basic services to shack settlements they are trying to turn our communities into slums so that they can then eradicate us from the cities.

The struggle of the residents of Protea South against forced removal and against government shacks and for the participatory upgrading of our community where we have been living since 1985 is strongly supported by the Poor People’s Alliance which is an unfunded network of democratic poor people’s movements made up of the following organisations:

Abahlali baseMjondolo (KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape)
Anti-Eviction Campaign (Western Cape)
Landless People’s Movement (Gauteng)
Rural Network (KwaZulu-Natal)

From Joe Slovo in Cape Town, to Kennedy Road in Durban, Ash Road in Pietermaritzburg and Protea South in Johannesburg we have one message:

Our settlements are communities to be supported, not slums to be eradicated.

Down with forced removals to rural human dumping grounds.
Down with government shacks.
Down with the Slums Act.
Down with the return to apartheid city planning.
Down with Mike Mabuyakulu.
Down with Lindiwe Sisulu.

For further information and comment on this case please contact:

Maureen Mnisi, Landless People’s Movement, Protea South: 082 337 4514
Thomas Maemganyi, Landless People’s Movement, Protea South: 072 613 2738
Moray Hawthorn, pro bono lawyer at Webber Wentzel: 083 266 1081

For general comment on the return to apartheid city planning (forced removals, transit camps, the Slums Act, peripheral ghettoes, police attacks on shack dweller’s protests etc) contact:

S’bu Zikode, Abahlali baseMjondolo: 083 547 0474
Maureen Mnisi, Landless People’s Movement: 082 337 4514
Rev. Mavuso, Rural Network: 072 279 2634
Ashraf Casiem, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign: 076 186 1408

Bloody underwear protest in Johannesburg – to demand free water

Louise McAuliffe
12 February 2009
Source: Sowetan

Women without water and sanitation are as good as dead and have no dignity
Related Content

An estimated 65 protesters demanding “free water for all” marched through downtown Johannesburg today – some wearing unwashed, blood-soiled underwear over their clothes in an attempt to demonstrate that access to water is a basic need.

“Women without water and sanitation are as good as dead and have no dignity,” said Petunia Nkhasi, co-ordinator of the ‘Coalition Against Water Privatisation’ campaign.