2009 political party checklist on the issues – Why we won’t vote

Official release of AEC election document

Activists from the Western Campaign Anti-Eviction Campaign have created the following checklist to clear things up a bit for people who are considering whether or not to vote in this year’s elections.

AEC’s political party checklist on the issues.pdf

The issues profiled in the document:

• Privatisation
• Land reform and land occupations
• Participation through direct democracy
• Ending unemployment
• Housing

Party politics is notorious for obscuring the important issues in favour of fear-mongering, coming up with vague slogans such as ‘hope’ and ‘change’, and focusing on the personal lives of other party’s leaders.  The goal in creating this document is to take on the issues that matter most to poor communities and to show exactly where the political parties stand.

While only being released to the media on election day, it has already been used for a number of weeks as part of our No Land! No House! No Vote! Campaign and has already had an impact on activists throughout our communities.  The refusal of Delft residents to vote is a clear sign that AEC communities are looking past party politics and directly at issues such as participation, privatisation and how to get rid of the housing backlog.

The Anti-Eviction Campaign maintains that the key statistic to look at pending the outcome of today’s election is not what percentage of the national vote the ANC gets.  Rather, when all is said and done, the question to ask is what percentage of the voting age population actually supports the ANC.  While the ANC won almost 70% of the vote in the 2004 elections (giving it a super-majority in parliament), only 58% of those who could vote actually did so and just 38% of the entire voting population voted for the ANC.

Choosing not to vote is not apathy.  It is us, as the poor, flexing our muscle and saying: what have your parties ever done for us? We will change South Africa in spite of you!

For comment please call Ashraf at 076 186 1408

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

Media: Hopeful ‘pavement people’ meet officials

Note: The full quote of Ashraf Cassiem was “They [the housing department] told us that they cannot help us. That we must set up a meeting with Thubelisha, the private company managing the N2 Gateway, because only they have control over housing allocation since there is no longer a waiting list.  This is what happens when the government privatises housing”

January 22, 2009 Edition 2

Natasha Prince

Source: Cape Argus

A group of people who have been living on a pavement in Delft for almost a year have met housing officials to try to convince them that they need houses urgently.

Many of the pavement dwellers of Symphony Way belong to the Anti-Eviction Campaign.

Lee-Ann Erasmus sat in front of the housing department in Wale street nursing her four-month-old baby for two hours yesterday while fellow members of the campaign met representatives from the housing department.

Her daughter Hope was “almost born on the pavement”, she said.

AbM: Arnett Drive Resident Shot With Live Ammunition, by Securicor Guard

Tuesday, 02 December 2008

On Tuesday last week (25/11) Thokozani Mkhotli, from the Arnett Drive settlement in Reservoir Hills, was shot by a Securicor Guard with live ammunition. The bullet entered his left buttock and emerged lower down in the front of his left thigh. The trajectory of the bullet shows clearly that he was shot from behind and from above. Thokozani is 33. He is from Bizana and works as a builder’s labourer fixing ceilings.

Securicor Guards usually come to the settlements with the Municipality when they come to disconnect us from electricity.

Media: Blacklist warning for bad builders

By Francis Hweshe

Source: Cape Argus

November 13 2008 at 04:06PM

Unscrupulous construction companies involved in public housing projects could be blacklisted for shoddy workmanship by the provincial government.

Housing MEC Whitey Jacobs and Premier Lynne Brown are set for a showdown tomorrow with the companies in a bid to force them to comply or face blacklisting and de-registration.

Media: ‘Election will change very little’

AEC Note: While this is a fine article, Mr. Williams should make the effort to actually visit AEC communities and talk to people directly.  If he did so, he’d realise that while housing issues are our starting point, the campaign is far from a ‘single issue’ movement.

By Mike Williams

November 05 2008 at 08:23AM

Source: Cape Times

In his 1983 classic entitled The Emperor, Ryszard Kapuscinski boldly stated that “usually it is said that periodic droughts cause bad crops and therefore starvation. But it is the elites of starving countries that propagate this idea. It is a false idea. The unjust or mistaken allocation of funds and national property is the most frequent source of hunger”.

Gugulethu will not be ruled by big-business!

Gugulethu AEC Press Statement

October 16, 2008

Residents assert that Gugs will not be ruled by individuals – whether rich or poor.  Rich people like Mzoli call Gugulethu residents ‘criminals’ when they defy his vision for a corporate Gugs.  But we are not criminals and we are not corrupt.  If we were corrupt and stole money and land from the community, then we would be as rich as Mzoli.

But we will resist. We demand community development not big-business development!

Because Mzoli and Old Mutual have not responded to our demands, Gugulethu residents have decided to stop the development of the new Eyona Shopping Centre in Gugulethu.

We will intensify the struggle and make sure that we are in charge of the community.  If we get no response today, we will come back on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

For more information, please contact Mncedisi at 078-5808-646 and Speelman at 073-9825-725.

Western Cape Housing MEC to inspect poorly built Newfields village houses tomorrow

Thursday September 11, 2008

Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement

The media are invited to join the Anti-Eviction Campaign tomorrow (Friday 12 September 2008) at 11am in Newfields Village, next to Hanover Park, Cape Town, as we host new Housing MEC Whitey Jacobs.

Jacobs has responded to our request to him that he come and inspect our houses.

We have been once again thrust into crisis by the government who, after agreeing to repair our poorly built flats, then decided to install plastic window latches.

Criminals are now having a field day in Newfields Village breaking off these latches and stealing our few prized possessions.

Below please find background information on our housing situation.

We note that the city of Cape Town announced two weeks ago that it is selling all its shares in the Cape Town Community Housing Company.

Gary Hartzenberg, Newfields Village Anti-Eviction Campaign Co-ordinator says: “The city is hellbent on running away from its responsibility to the people by privatising this housing company and this will be remembered at election time next year”.

For more info call Gary Hartzenberg on 072 3925859

BACKGROUND:

2 400 low cost houses were built by the Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC) between 1994 and 2000.

Almost immediately after residents moved in, the rent they had been told they would pay (R300 per month) was hiked to about R1500 per month.

Simultaneously, the houses began literally falling apart – damp walls, inadequate foundations and poor plumbing and cracks in the walls started appearing.

The city, which owns the CTCHC, refused to do anything until the community embarked on a rent boycott.

The CTCHC houses are situated in Newfields Village, Manenberg, Philippi, Mitchells Plain and Gugulethu.

Finally after a five year struggle by the community, the National Home Builders’ Registration Council appointed an independent consultant to audit the houses.

The audit found houses with severe cracks, poor brick-laying, loose roof tiles, soil erosion, gaps between walls and door frames and rusting window frames.

The city has launched legal action against the contractors, who they say took short cuts, to determine why the 10 low-cost housing projects were so shoddily built.

The bill for the repairs so far has run to R90 million.

Despite this, new contractors doing the repairs are again taking shortcuts to maximise their profits and are installing pointless things like plastic window latches, instead of normal metal window frames and window latches.

The repairs have cost R38 000 per house so far.

What is tragic is that most members of the community spent their tiny life savings on trying to repair their homes once the defects started to appear.

The city is now decided to dump its responsibilities by privatising the CTCHC.

City to fully privatise embattled Cape Town Community Housing Company

Press Note: The AEC wishes to alert everyone of the continued privatisation of housing delivery here in Cape Town.  Cape Town Community Housing Company is responsible for the creating a complete mess of all its housing developments including endangering the lives of residents in Newfields Village.  The further privatisation of this company means that it will be even less accountable to the residents of the city.  Because the company will now be allowed to pursue profit without any moral reservations, it will mean increased corruption, higher rents for poor tenants, increased evictions, and the building of even more defective houses.  We also wish to make clear that the national housing crisis is not a technical issue of capacity or service delivery; it is a political choice not to build enough houses for the poor.

For more information, see the below Press Release by the City of Cape Town

For comment on on this issue, contact Gary at 072-392-5859.

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City sells Cape Town Community Housing Company shares

Press Release by the City of Cape Town

THE City of Cape Town is to sell its shareholding in the Cape Town Community Housing Company for R5 million. The share price was determined in an open tender process. The National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC) enjoys first right of refusal to the shares; if it does not take up the offer, the shares will be sold to Daku Calana Investment Holdings which won the tender.

Media enquiries:

Cllr Dan Plato, Tel: 021 400 1304 or Cell: 076 832 5505
Louise Muller, Shareholding Management, Tel: 021 487 3940

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.