Pastor’s plea to Zille and Zuma

Apr 20, 2011 | Sabelo Mpana | Sowetan

CAPE Town’s townships “are a living hell”. This is the view of Pastor Xola Skosana, who met Western Cape Premier Helen Zille yesterday.

Skosana earlier wrote to President Jacob Zuma and Zille inviting them to join him this Saturday on a 13km march from Gugulethu to Khayelitsha.

“Considering the immense political influence you both have, if you have any empathy in you, you can change the material condition of 300 families at QQ section, informal settlement in Khayelitsha, who do not have toilets as we speak,” wrote Skosana.

Media: Calls for Cape Town officials to spend a night in Blikkiesdorp

Malungelo Booi | 1 November 2009 | EyewitnessNews

Homeless Cape Town residents who’ve been relocated from the pavements of Symphony Way to Blikkiesdorp, near Delft in the Western Cape, are challenging Premier Helen Zille to spend a night in their community.

The residents are complaining about service delivery, saying they don’t have running water or functioning toilets.

Symphony Way is not dead. We are still Symphony Way. We will always be Symphony Way.

Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign

30 October 2009

We, the pavement dwellers of Symphony Way, have just completed our forced removed from the road into the relocation camp of Blikkiesdorp. However, during the past week, a lot of misinformation has been thrown around about our community by the City and in the media.

Firstly, we would like to make absolutely clear that there was not a single family from Symphony Way who actually wanted to move to Blikkiesdorp. It was reported in the Argus a few days ago that people were excited about their new places and the move was festive. This is of course not true. There is a reason that over 100 families actively refused to move to Blikkies for over 20 months. It was also reported that there were divisions in the community about the move. This is also untrue. We were merely having an extended conversation of our options: (a) pay exhorbitant fees at backyards, (b) go to crime infested Blikkies, (c) occupy unused land, occupy empty bond houses, etc.

Media: Gateway residents ask Province to intervene

CAPE TOWN June 30 Sapa

Hundreds of residents of the flagship N2 Gateway housing project marched through central Cape Town on Tuesday to plead for Western Cape provincial government intervention in the project.

Chairman of the residents committee Luthando Ndabamba said they were unhappy at the way state housing developer Thubelisha homes was running the project. Though there were 704 units, Thubelisha had no office on the premises.

“If we have any complaints we have to go to the city centre,” he said.  “We won’t get help [there], they will refer us to places like Johannesburg. That’s not nice.”

He said there were structural defects and plumbing problems, and the 704 units in the complex were becoming havens for drug dealers. “Everything is just wrong in that complex,” he said.

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.

This is not a game!

Gympie St Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Release

Friday 22 May, 2009

Event: Gympie residents to meet with Shehaam Sims (Mayco Housing) at 09h00 today

This is not a game! People’s lives are at stake.

Yesterday, Gympie Street resident Lydia Portland passed away. She had a stroke even though she was only in her 50s. While she was not among the two families who were evicted earlier in the week, she was the head of one of the families slated to be illegally evicted next week.

As close friends of Lydia, we are very sad and many of us are wondering if stress from looming eviction might have lead to Lydia’s death.  While we will never know for sure, we assert once again: This is not a game!

Media: ‘This is an ANC plot’

Note: If Zille actually bothered to find out anything about the communities involved, she would realise that the protesters are organising outside of political parties and challenging both the ANC and DA which both refuse to provide them with basic services.  BT Section and other communities in Site C don’t care who won the Western Cape, they care about whether or not they will get electricity. Contact the residents to find out the truth.

Zille says Khayelitsha demos are political

May 05, 2009 Edition 1

ELLA SMOOK, BRONWYNNE JOOSTE, NATASHA PRINCE and NOMANGESI MBIZA

Source: Cape Argus

DA LEADER Helen Zille has accused the ANC of “making a formal decision to render the Western Cape ungovernable”, suggesting it is behind the sustained violent protests in Khayelitsha.

The ANC has hit back, branding Zille’s claims “a complete fabrication”.

The ANC lost control of the province to the DA in last month’s elections.

Zille said she had been told “categorically” that the ANC was planning to make the province ungovernable.

Gympie Street residents overcome eviction, again

Woodstock Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Release

Gympie Street residents are relieved to finally be free from the stress and trauma of the past few years in which Pastor Robertson has been threatening to evict them. This final case was decided on April 30, 2009 in favour of the defendants.

Gympie Street residents were originally evicted in 2006 but had moved back into different dwellings in the same building. The government along with Pastor Robertson then charged residents with a contempt of court case which residents easily won on the 20^th of November 2008.

This week, in her final judgment, Judge Fredericks argued that the Gympie Street residents’ case was actually already at the high court in 2006. Since the residents had moved into different dwelling in the building, Pastor Robertson and the City of Cape Town could not use an old and invalid eviction order.

Anti-Eviction Campaign to pressure the city and province after death of 1year old who was turned away from three CT clinics last week

Sunday 22 March 2009
11am

The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign decided at its provincial meeting yesterday to take up the case of the deceased one year old, Unabantu Mali, who died on her grandmothers back last week after being turned away from three clinics in Nyanga, Gugulethu and KTC. Unabantu’s grandmother walked from Nyanga East to Gugulethu to KTC, barefoot, seeking help for Unabantu and being rejected at each clinic. She had no money to get to Red Cross hospital.

The family have welcomed our support and we will be with them every step of the way until criminal prosecutions are carried out.

1. We condemn the department of Home Affairs. They have refused for the past three years to rectify the ID document of Unabantu Mali’s grandmother, Ntombizodwa Mali. She is 62 years old and looks her age, yet her ID book says she was born in 1970. This has created endless problems for her and her family.

2. We condemn the DA city and the ANC provincial government. Nobody has stepped forward to offer to pay for baby Unabantu’s funeral which takes place in Nyanga East this Tuesday. Yet after she died, you had MEC’s and Mayors all taking advantage of the situation to appear on TV seeming sympathetic to the family. The family is utterly destitute – there is no breadwinner and there are no windows or burglar guards on their house – people keep breaking in and stealing what little they have. Why has the MEC Marius Fransman not mobilised some kind of support for the family?

3. We condemn Helen Zille and city manager Achmat Ebrahim for saying that they conducted an “investigation” into Nyanga Clinic and found that baby Unabantu was never there, according to their records. This is utter nonsense. They questioned a couple of nurses who tried to cover up for their murderous behaviour – what nurse will make a note in her records to say a sick and dying baby appeared and was turned away? The fact that the city took a mere three days to do this pathetic investigation shows their disdain for the Black citizens of Cape Town (which is nothing new).

4. The Anti-Eviction Campaign will set up a desk to monitor the situation in clinics in Gugulethu and Nyanga. A community meeting offered great support for this initiative. We want to assure the public and the government that we will be on their case like they have never imagined possible.

5. We also blame the Red Cross childrens hospital for releasing baby Unabantu while she was clearly still sick.

6. Tomorrow, we will go with the family to open criminal cases against the city and the provincial governments.

The funeral will be at the family home in Nyanga East on Tuesday – please call AEC number below for directions.

Every step of the way, the Anti-Eviction Campaign in the province has decided to be with that family.

For comment call Mncedisi Twalo on 078 5808646

SECOND EVICTION APPLICATION FOR THE DELFT SYMPHONY RESIDENTS

Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Release

19 March, 2009

We, the Delft Symphony Residents received an application of eviction from the City of Cape Town. We must appear in the High Court on the 20th of March of 2009 at 10h00. On the 9th of March of 2009 we went to advocates in town, Cliffe, Dekke, Hofmeyr, Number 11, Buitengracht Street, Cape Town, and to the Cape High Court to hand in our notice of intention to defend. We are disgusted that we are about to be evicted for the second time and political parties are trying to use us for their own good. The state and parastatals are playing games with our children’s future and our dignity as South African citizens.

Down with the government and the party system. To hell with Helen Zille and her stooges. Because of this mayor we are being evicted for the second time. We will fight to the end and we will stick to our only hope, which is “No Land, No House, No Vote.” We will fight to the end. We are indigenous South African people. Our children and we have a right to a home.

We will meet tomorrow morning, March 20, 2009, at 8h30 at the Gardens in downtown Cape Town and then proceed from there to the Cape Town High Court.

We will show that we are people tomorrow morning. We are bringing our children and we are fighting for their future.

Contact: Ashraf Cassiem 0761861408