Grootboom win a house of cards

Irene Grootboom died in her shack. She was penniless and houseless, in spite of her name being associated with a Constitutional Court judgment delivered eight years earlier that is still lauded around the world as a jurisprudential landmark. 

In 2000, the Constitutional Court declared that the state's housing policy was unreasonable and invalid because it did not cater for the homeless -- those in most urgent need of housing. 

The court also found that while Grootboom, who lived and died in the Wallacedene informal settlement in Kraaifontein, Cape Town, could not demand a house from the state, she could ask government to act reasonably in devising and implementing "a comprehensive and co-ordinated programme to realise the right to access to adequate housing".

The government was also compelled to provide alternative emergency accommodation for people when evictions occurred.

Precedent for the right to access treatment

The Grootboom judgment has since been cited in other applications to the Constitutional Court, including the Treatment Action Campaign's successful attempt in 2002 to ensure the right to access to HIV/Aids treatment.

But Grootboom remained on a housing waiting list and in her shack until her death.

This was something that Dumisa Ntsebeza, an advocate and member of the Judicial Service Commission, said one needed to be mindful of when considering Justice Minister Jeff Radebe's plan to evaluate the transformative impact of Constitutional Court judgments creating a "non-racial, non-sexist, equal and prosperous democratic society, founded on human rights".

Said Ntsebeza: "The Grootboom judgment asserted her right to adequate housing, but Irene Grootboom was never provided with a house by the government. So it cannot be the court that failed Grootboom, unless you are saying that the courts are delivering impractical judgments. In evaluating Constitutional Court judgments, we also have to evaluate the transformative role of government when it comes to implementing these judgments."

Judgments need to be implemented by government

The chairperson of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, Mncedisi Twalo, reiterated that court judgments were still at the mercy of government implementation. "Grootboom was great in that the government had to provide emergency accommodation for people, but we now have a situation in which people are moved to temporary relocation areas with government-built shacks and in many cases, they are condemned to stay there for years with no information from the government about when they will be moved to proper housing."

Twalo used Blikkiesdorp, a temporary relocation area built by the Democratic Alliance-run Cape Town municipality in 2007, as an example of the "dumping ground" created for people evicted from informal settlements around the city. For the optimistic in Blikkiesdorp, many of whom have lived there for the past five years, moving to proper housing may happen only in 2016.

Stuart Wilson, litigation director at the Socio-Economic Rights Institute, which has brought several applications to the Constitutional Court, said that while local governments' use of temporary relocation areas appeared "the modish thing to do in Durban and Cape Town" and that "people can sit there for years" it does also "invite another development of jurisprudence".

"In instances where the state may have chosen to water down and narrow the scope of its Grootboom obligations, one has to litigate again. It allows for a progressive strategy to develop the nuances and inflections of our jurisprudence that would not have been possible without Grootboom," said Wilson. 

Government must engage with residents over evictions

The Constitutional Court also handed down other socio-economic rights judgments linked to housing. In the 2008 Olivia Road judgment, the court found that government had a duty to "meaningfully engage" with residents over possible steps to alleviate their homelessness before evictions could occur.

In 2009, it also struck down the notorious KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act that would have allowed both the government and private landowners untrammelled powers to evict unlawful occupiers of land and place them in temporary relocation areas.

Sbu Zikode, the president of shackdweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, which brought the Slums Act application to the Constitutional Court, said that without the court's decision "there is no doubt that informal settlements in Durban would have been bulldozed and shackdwellers in KZN would be living in government concentration camps". Zikode said that in spite of the Grootboom and Olivia Road judgments, there remained a "realisation gap between the level of the judgment and the reality on the ground" and that there remained a "need for second-level access to the courts following judgments".

Zikode said that in spite of Olivia Road calling for engagement between communities and government, this was often problematic.

"Engagement is usually a window-dressing exercise to show that government is listening to us but with no real results for the poor at the end of the day. Or it is a politicised process through ward councillors where if you are not an ANC member, your opinion will not be heard and you do not have access to jobs or services," said Zikode. He said that local municipalities still attempted to evict communities without proper consultation on their future.

Wilson said that judgments like Olivia Road were a "decent shield" to stave off or postpone evictions of communities. He pointed out that halting evictions also gave communities the opportunity to organise themselves politically: "The poor do not just face one eviction, sometimes there is a cycle of three or four evictions in a year. By taking away that insecurity, judgments have helped communities focus on their own mobilisation."

In 2009, the Constitutional Court delivered a structural order (and five different judgments) in the Joe Slovo settlement case -- which also allowed for the eviction of the 4 000 families -- setting out time frames for engagement between the community and provincial government for the provision of housing.

Subsequent engagement resolved that many of the families need not be relocated to Blikkiesdorp and according to Mzawanele Zulu of the Joe Slovo liberative residents movement, the community's input was recognised in the process in spite of "hiccups and challenges".

In evaluating the cases that come before the Constitutional Court and the judgments it subsequently delivers, Wilson said there was a need for public-interest law and grassroots organisations to "think more strategically and creatively about how the law can be used as a vehicle for change". He also said that public-interest law organisations needed to follow-up on judgments and provide aftercare to ensure implementation.

This was something that Irene Grootboom's legal representative, Ismail Jamie, conceded when talking to the M&G following her death: "I am sorry that we did not do enough follow-up after the judgment was given in her favour. I feel a deep regret today," he said at the time.

- M&G

WikiLeaks Cablegate South Africa: Is the ANC As Democratic As It Claims?

The text of a cable from the U.S. Embassy to Washington on January 8, 2010, according to WikiLeaks:

1. (SBU) SUMMARY. What began as a Durban road blockade in 2005 has become a shack-dwellers movement in South Africa.

Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM, which means 'those who live in the shacks' in Zulu) now includes thousands of shack-dwellers from more than 30 informal settlements throughout the country. AbM has garnered international support and has won legal battles against the African National Congress's (ANC) attempts at forced removal. While the ANC claims to be making efforts to clean up slums and provide the poor with adequate housing, AbM leadership claims intimidation and anti-democratic tactics are used against its members by the ruling party. AbM represents a true test of democratic governance for the ANC. END SUMMARY.

History

2. (SBU) Kennedy Road (KR) is a shack settlement located next to Durban's largest dumpsite, southwest of central Durban.

Homeless individuals began living in KR in the late 1970s. As the number of residents grew, local government attempted to force people out of KR but was unsuccessful. By the late 1980s, the City of Durban ended its eviction efforts. However, in 1995, a year after the end of apartheid, the local ANC government began its own eviction campaign. KR now has approximately 10, 000 residents, who live in squalor. A lack of electricity, potable water, and toilets has resulted in daily fires, open sewers, and rat infestations, according to local media.

Birth of a Movement

3. (SBU) In 1999, residents of KR formed the Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC) as a way to petition local authorities for basic utilities in their settlement while they awaited permanent housing. S'busiso Zikode was elected chairperson, and under his leadership, KR was able to secure interim services from the city of Durban, said Zikode to Pol/Econ officer during a two-hour December 3, 2009 meeting.

Encouraged by municipal promises of permanent housing and better living conditions and hoping to increase his credibility and influence with city lawmakers, Zikode joined the ANC in 2000.

By 2004, however, KR residents had not yet seen any movement on their promised housing. Zikode also claims he began to feel pressure from the Durban municipality to avoid discussing housing and service delivery issues during KRDC meetings.

Zikode withdrew from the ANC, and he along with other KR residents declared that 2005 would be a 'year of action.'

4. (SBU) On March 19, 2005, KR residents protested the demolition and sale of a tract of land that had been promised to the residents of KR by the Durban municipality as a new housing site, said Zikode. The protest drew over 800 participants, including residents from other informal settlements, who blockaded a major Durban road for several hours. The protesters were ultimately dispersed by police dogs, and 14 people were arrested, according to local media.

Subsequent to the protest, residents from KR and 13 other informal settlements formed Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM). In September 2008, AbM joined the Landless People's Movement, the Rural Network, and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign to form The Poor People's Alliance, the largest shack-dwellers organization in South Africa.

AbM Philosophy and Demands

5. (SBU) Zikode emphasizes that AbM is a 'radical poor people's movement that is democratic. Our movement is a homemade politics that everyone can understand and find a home in.' The politics of AbM are conducted 'by the poor, for the poor, and where the poor people live,' said Zikode. AbM shuns top-down 'self-enriching,' 'professional' politics and refuses representational roles, personal power, and financial reward.

'Such a top-down system has terrorized our society. In fact, it

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is an insult to assume that poor people cannot think for themselves, that someone else must talk for them without their concern. Our demands are simple: land and homes in the cities where we live,' said Zikode. And while AbM members wait for the local government to act, they demand water, electricity, and basic sanitation facilities.

Shack Dwellers Movement Flexes its Muscle

6. (SBU) In 2007, the KZN Legislature passed the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination & Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act. The act was controversial because it gave the provincial MEC (Member of Executive Committee, like a 'provincial minister) for Housing authority to forcibly remove residents from informal settlements. AbM contested the act in the KZN High Court, arguing that it was repressive, anti-poor, and unconstitutional.

AbM also argued that rather than evict slum residents, KZN was mandated to deal with the lack of inadequate housing in the province. AbM lost in the KZN High Court but on October 14, 2009, the South African Constitutional Court ruled that the act was unconstitutional. This was a great blow to the ANC and municipalities in other provinces that had hoped to pass similar acts, Imraan Buccus - who teaches politics at the University of KZN - told Pol/Econ Officer on November 22, 2009.

Intimidation and Oppression

7. (SBU) AbM members have endured harassment from the state in the form of unwarranted arrests, and repeated and severe police violence in people's homes, in the streets and in detention, according to Zikode. On a number of occasions the police have used live ammunition, armored vehicles and helicopters in their attacks on unarmed shack dwellers, according to local media.

AbM has filed numerous police brutality and wrongful arrest charges against the police, to no avail. To date, not one of the AbM members who was arrested has ever been convicted of an offence, according to Zikode.

The Kennedy Road Attack

8. (SBU) On September 26, 2009, 40 local tavern owners disrupted a AbM youth camp, demanding that the youth join them in a protest against AbM, said Secretary of AbM Youth League Zodwa Nsibande to Pol/Econ officer on December 3. The tavern owners gathered outside AbM's office and called for Zikode and Nsibande to come out, accusing them of being Xhosa-speaking meddlers intent on ruling the lives of Zulus living in KR, said Zikode. Nsibande and Zikode hid from the tavern owners, but the mob ransacked and demolished AbM's office, Zikode's home and those of several other AbM members in the presence of the police, said Nsibande and Zikode. The attacks continued through September 28, and five people were killed, reported local media.

Thirteen AbM members were subsequently held without bail or charges until early December when eight were released. In the aftermath, ANC Ward Councilor Yakoob Baig reported to local media that 'harmony has been restored now that the Abahlali criminals are gone.'

9. (SBU) Nsibande and Zikode claim that the September 26 KR attack was 'planned by the ANC at the very highest political level.' According to Zikode, the ANC retaliated against AbM because the party was incensed that 'a group of dirty shack dwellers would dare to expose the ANC's corruption' and challenge them in the highest courts of the land. 'Although we have won some important battles against the ANC, we are now paying for those victories with our lives. Thousands of us no longer have homes, and many of us live in fear in our own country. I am a refugee in my own country, in my own city,' declared Zikode to Pol/Econ Officer.

10. (SBU) KZN MEC for Transport, Community Safety and Liaison

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Willies Mchunu denied in an October 20 op-ed piece that the ANC was behind the September 26 KR attack. Mchunu argued that the attack on AbM members was the result of an illegal curfew imposed on KR residents by an illegal safety and security forum formed by AbM. Zikode acknowledges the formation of the forum, but insists that the curfew was a 12a.m. sales curfew imposed on illegal taverns selling liquor 24 hours a day. Also, Zikode points out that the forum was formed with the consent of the local police commissioner and therefore was empowered to impose such a curfew. Mchunu has since placed under investigation the police commissioner who authorized the forum. He declared the forum a 'vigilante group that must be dissolved.' Mchunu also placed KR under a 24-hour police watch and promised improved lighting and that a new housing project for 600 households would begin in January 2010.

Democracy under Attack

11. (SBU) AbM leaders argue that their movement is a threat to the ANC's authority and to the elites who have enriched themselves at the expense of the poor. 'Democracy itself is under threat in South Africa. A coup happened on September 26. The ANC violently replaced a democratically elected community organization. Who are they to do this!' exclaimed Zikode.

After the politicians and the police departed from KR on September 26 in KR, the settlement was left in the hands of armed young ANC men who patrolled the area and made it clear, via death threats, that AbM was now banned from Kennedy Road, alleged Zikode. 'We always allowed free political activity in Kennedy and all settlements in which AbM candidates have been elected to leadership. Now we are banned.'

12. (SBU) ANC leaders, including MEC for Economic Development and Tourism Mike Mabuyakhulu, Durban City Mayor Obed Mlaba, and Durban City Manager Mike Sutcliffe, have often accused AbM of being 'manipulated by a third force or a foreign intelligence agency intent on destabilizing the country,' according to Zikode. No evidence has ever been presented to substantiate these claims 'because they are patently ludicrous and paranoid but they have created a climate that justifies violent repression.' In support of AbM's claim, Anglican Bishop Rubin Phillip said, 'It is essential that the attack on democracy in KR is widely publicized so that we can all confront what has happened and ensure that it never happens again.'

Support from Other Political Parties

13. (SBU) 'The AbM situation reveals the ANC's inability to address the serious housing shortage problem in the Durban area,' contended Democratic Alliance (DA) Representative Dean McPherson to Pol/Econ Officer during a November 20, 2009 meeting. The DA also supports AbM's efforts to expose the ANC's 'corrupt and unfair system of housing allocation, McPherson added.

14. (SBU) 'COPE is concerned about what is going on in Kennedy Rd. We are worried about reports of police biasness and alleged ANC involvement. Our [parliamentary representative] Lucky Gabela will ask KZN MEC Willies Mchunu to give the legislature a report on Kennedy Road as soon the legislature resumes. We believe there is a need for an independent inquiry into the Kennedy Road situation,' KZN Congress of the People (COPE) Provincial Secretary Phillip Mhlongo told Pol/Econ Assistant on January 5.

15. (SBU) 'The IFP is monitoring developments in Kennedy Road and is very concerned about the plight of Abahlali leaders who have been exiled from their homes. Kennedy Road is part of a bigger housing problem in eThekwini and needs urgent attention of the municipality. The ANC is treating Kennedy Road badly because it is not their stronghold area and they don't enjoy support there. We will call for an independent inquiry to determine the cause of violence in the area,' reported Inkatha

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Freedom Party (IFP) eThekwini Spokesperson Joshua Mazibuko to Pol/Econ Assistant on January 5.

Church Support, International Calls for Action

16. (SBU) The plight of AbM has garnered the attention of churches and international civil rights organizations. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Miloon Kothari on February 29, 2008 expressed great concern about the well being of KR residents living under 'far short of safe and sustainable living conditions.' He added, 'This situation is compounded by tenure insecurity and the threat of forced eviction.'

In a speech at the AbM Unfreedom Day event on April 27, 2008 Anglican Bishop Rubin Phillip said: 'You have faced fires, sickness, evictions, arrest, beatings, slander, and still you stand bravely for what is true. Your principle that everyone matters, that every life is precious, is very simple but it is also utterly profound. Many of us who hold dear the most noble traditions of our country take hope from your courage and your dignity.' (Note. In Germany on October 30, 2009, Bishop Phillip received the 2009 International Bremen Peace Award in recognition of his work for justice, peace and integrity. End Note.)

17. (SBU) The September 26 KR attacks led to a petition in support of an independent investigation signed by over 1200 academics, NGOs and church leaders. Executive Director of Children of South Africa (CHOSA) Jared Sacks lambasted the ANC in a September 30 op-ed piece for its treatment of KR residents and also called for support of the investigation demanded by AbM.

18. (SBU) In response to the arrest and detainment without charge or bail of the 13 AbM members after the September 26 KR attack, the Diakonia Council of Churches on November 18 made an 'urgent call to defend our democracy and to support the voiceless.' On December 16, 2009 Bishop Phillip presented Zikode with the Order of the Holy Nativity, saying: 'We believe what [AbM] are doing is right. They stand for democracy and human rights.' On the same day, Amnesty International also threw its weight behind a call for an investigation. 'Amnesty International deplores the continuing failure of the South African authorities to investigate impartially and fully human rights abuses which occurred during and after armed violence at the Kennedy Road Informal Settlement in Durban last September.'

19. (SBU) On December 24, the KZN Church Leaders' Group released a joint Advent message regarding the 'battles of the poor.' Regarding AbM, the message stated: '[AbM] has called for land and housing to be made available within the city. By doing so it has exposed corruption and mismanagement in the allocation of houses. Since September 2009, when the KR settlement was attacked by armed and organized vigilantes, the political elites have brought a horrifying wave of violence upon the movement, including forced evictions, targeted destruction of homes and death threats against its leaders. In all of these instances, an unholy but by now characteristic, alliance of profit-seeking economic elites and elements in the governing party are implicated in a broader project of elite enrichment and accumulation.'

Comment

20. (SBU) The parallels between AbM's struggles against the ANC and the latter's fight against the apartheid regime cannot be ignored. The accounts of forced removals, violence, intimidation, and leaders in hiding seem like echoes of a time supposedly gone forever. Even talk by ANC leaders of a 'third force' at work are eerily reminiscent of a paranoid apartheid era. Post has found local ANC officials reluctant to discuss the matter and repeated attempts by Pol/Econ Assistant to secure a meeting with municipal housing authorities came to naught.

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21. (SBU) The AbM movement is a test of democratic governance for the ANC, as it decides what to do when its own people do not support its vision of development (Reftel). The ANC's tolerance for dissent will be further tested during next year's FIFA World cup; AbM members plan mass demonstrations for the entire world to see - even if they do not get a permit to do so.

22. (SBU) Providing free housing for the nearly 800,000 residents living in 500 informal settlements in the Durban area is a great challenge for the ANC. Apart from the funds required to build sufficient housing, there simply isn't enough space in Durban proper for such expansion. City housing may be a central demand of AbM, but its members must face the reality that accepting free housing in the rural periphery may be the only viable option for most.

- allAfrica

R2K and AEC Western Cape Statement

The residents of Newfields Village are still waiting for Minister of Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale to respond to their demand for access to an audit of the low-cost housing provided by the controversial Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC).

The Auditor-General conducted a preliminary investigation of houses provided by the CTCHC in November 2010, following years of residents’ complaints of the shoddy quality of houses and mismanagement of funds.

On 24 May 2011, residents of Newfields Village approached the National Department of Human Settlements to make a formal demand for access to the audit in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). When the Minister failed to respond within the 30-day period stipulated in the Act, our attorney submitted a Notice of Internal to Minister Sexwale for a response within an additional 30 days.

The legal deadline for Minister Sexwale is Monday 15 August 2011.

(Read the background to R2K's demand for information from the Department of Human Settlements here and here. This report in the Sowetan details the auditor-general's inspection of CTCHC houses.)

The residents of Newfields Village have struggled for over ten years to fulfill their right to adequate housing – a struggle that has been hampered at every corner by lack of transparency and lack of access to information from officials at every level of government.

At the same time that the community of Newfields Village is mobilising against the Protection of Information Bill in Parliament, the community’s struggle for adequate housing is equally mired by the existing climate of secrecy in South Africa.

As communities of the Right2Know campaign, we call on Minister Sexwale to release this report now!

For comment please contact:
Gary Hartzenberg (Newfields Village CRC Chairperson): 072 392 5859
Nkwame Cedile (R2K Western Cape coordinator): 078 227 6008

On the other side of the mountain

Southeasters are in Cape Town's contradictory DNA. On Long Street and surrounds the wind is usually flirting with the hemlines of short-skirted blonde Euro-travellers or messing up the hair of messed-up hipsters. Another yawned accompaniment to the beautiful setting draped with beautiful ones.

Along Symphony Way, a stretch of road in Delft, to the north of the city, behind the airport and far removed from the shadow of Table Mountain, the wind is more palpable -- everything is already exposed here.

On a slow day the wind makes the ubiquitous white dust move in mini-dervish whirls on the tar. On harsher ones, it connives with the sand and the sun to ensure that the experiences of those dumped here -- the poor, those to be forgotten -- are inextricable from the lines on their faces.

Situated along this unforgiving stretch with a few bushes apparently yielding litter rather than any fruit is the Symphony Way "temporary relocation area", built by the city's Democratic Alliance-run municipality in 2007 at a cost of more than R30-million. It is also known as "Blikkiesdorp" (Tin-Can Town), Silver Town or just plain Blikkies.

It is a dumping ground for humans. Somalis and other foreigners who survived the 2008 xenophobic attacks and then outlived the expiration date on their original refugee camps are here, as are some street kids cleansed from Cape Town before the World Cup -- ironically, others have since been evicted.

Illegal occupation


There are Delft backyard dwellers who, at the instigation of then DA councillor Frank Martin (he was expelled from the party over the incident), occupied unfinished N2 Gateway project houses across the road, were evicted and then proceeded to occupy, for almost two years, the pavements in protest. They were, in November last year, ordered by the courts to move, pretty much, across the stretch to Blikkies. They're all in there. And then some.

There are more than 1 600 18m2 units -- much smaller than a shipping container -- some with as many as nine or 10 people living in them.

Thirty-two-year-old Shahieda Isaacs's four children are mopping up the remains of their mutton curry and roti when I join her and two other community members for supper in her rectangular box of a home.

The food, cooked in a tiny kitchen semi-partitioned from a larger sleeping area, is delicious. Isaacs sends her 12-year-old off to buy a litre of cool drink from the local spaza.

Spazas line Blikkiesdorp and it is apparent that here, as in informal settlements around the country, a hyper-localised economy exists. Money circulates among the poor, rather than being siphoned off by large supermarket chains -- largely because expensive and unsafe public transport and a lack of penetrative will by these chains makes them inaccessible to the poor.

It is a perversely positive result of ghettoisation in a time of economic recession.

Blikkiesdorp's children


Isaacs says it's difficult trying to raise her children -- two boys and two girls -- in such a claustrophobic space. Her ­daughters share one bunk bed, her sons the other, while she shares the main bed -- piled high with washed and neatly ironed clothes -- with her husband, Ridwaan.

There is no privacy here and Isaacs is concerned that by the time the government eventually moves the family into a house (in 2016, they say, but she isn't holding her breath) her children will be hitting puberty.

"If you think about it, it's heartbreaking, but you don't give up hope," says Isaacs.

Ridwaan is unemployed and Isaacs earns R850 a week cooking lunch for a company in Epping, of which R70 a week goes on her transport costs, which she says she tries to offset by baking koeksisters to sell every Sunday.

Isaacs says her biggest expense is clothes for her children but how has she been coping with the rising costs of pretty much everything?

"We get by like we always do. I'm lucky because my children never go to bed with an empty stomach, like other children. You just get by, but the main thing is that all my children's school fees are paid. That is the most important thing," says Isaacs.

There is a matter-of-fact determination in Blikkiesdorp -- and some ingenuity too.

At some point I stumbled across an inflatable pool near the hok (shack) of Lamees Solomons (29).

Nothing to do


Solomons and her husband, Shamiel, say the pool is for the "children in the camp. Most of these kids really battle, man, so we try to do what we can." The children in Blikkiesdorp have perennially runny noses from the dust and there is a sense of perpetual boredom about them: aside from the gravel, litter and mangy dogs, there is nothing here. And nothing to do.

Solomons says she has two informal fruit and vegetable stalls and also sells perfume. Her business is doing well, so the couple buys and prepares food for the children here twice a week.

"We're community, mos, we're family, so we must do what we can to help one another. Sometimes there are hundreds of children here for the food," says Solomons.

Earlier in the week Ashraf Cassiem, erstwhile chairperson of the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC), stood over a shallow hole in the pavement along Symphony Way: "Man, this is where we used to make a fire, this was where my tent was! I still lay in bed at night picturing those times," says Cassiem, beaming.

The memories of the AEC-organised occupation and barricade of Symphony Way from February 2008 until November last year by the 139 families who protested their evictions from the N2 Gateway and the lack of decent housing options sends an obvious rush through Cassiem.

He mainlines anti-establishment activism and is a hyperactive mixture of Che Guevara's revolutionary tendencies and Bugs Bunny's mischievousness; an ever-present cigarette replacing the cigar and carrot.

Cassiem's is a large grin, toothless on one side of his mouth: a restructuring courtesy, he says, of the police sticking in the boot on October 18 2000, when Cassiem, with community members of Tafelsig in Mitchell's Plain, united to stop a neighbour, Charles Lategaan, from being evicted from the house he rented from the government.

The formation of the AEC


They were met with police brutality. Six people were arrested that day and -- at a time when government's 1996 economic policy shift towards Gear (growth, employment and redistribution) was increasingly causing the poor to fall behind in their electricity, water and rental payments -- 17 families in the area were evicted.

But it was an act of community resistance that would lead to the formation, a month later, of the AEC, a radical, anarchic, self-confessedly "crazy" umbrella body for 10 community organisations in areas such as Gugulethu, Hanover Park and Mitchell's Plain.

The AEC fights against evictions, water cut-offs, poor health services and for better housing and free electricity for the poor. As Cassiem describes it, the AEC is about contradictions and "living politics" where the interests of affected communities -- rather than those of academics, NGOs and funders, as is sometimes the case with leftie social movements -- are paramount.

"The AEC is an idea. Ever changing. It is an organisation that is not an organisation. Something that listens to nobody, but listens to everybody," says Cassiem.

So, is the AEC the face of a brave new world being determined by the poor? Cassiem laughs. There is nothing new or brave about being poor or struggling for something better, he says: "It is what people do and have been doing for hundreds of years just to stay alive.

"Middle-class people may feel insecure now because of what is happening [economically around the world] but we have always been living with insecurity," he says.

According to Cassiem, the strategies and tactics the AEC uses are not especially of this time, but honed over a longer trajectory that goes back to community activism against apartheid.

With coffin-bearing marches on government officials, land occupations and events such as the Poor People's World Cup that was held in protest during Fifa's tournament, there are also actions more vital to the everyday.

Stealing basic rights


The AEC reconnects water and electricity for those who have been cut off because of arrears. It holds workshops to teach families how to spread the methods to access what is considered a basic right. It is, admittedly, becoming harder with the introduction of pre-paid electricity meters, but Cassiem says there is a way around those too -- it's more dangerous and includes having to scale electricity poles, but there is always a way around these things.

There is also very physical resistance. I am sitting in the four-roomed government home in Mitchell's Plain of Siyaam Cassiem, Ashraf's mother, with whom the 43-year-old activist lives, with his sister, Faranaaz, and her adult son.

Cassiem is shooting the breeze with Izaan Fredericks, a bra (brother) from the community who would prefer I didn't use his real name. Fredericks is trying to kill time and keep his mind off the craving to smoke tik (methamphetamine) -- from which, he says, he's been clean for almost two weeks.

In walks Boeta Whitey, a retired caretaker, coming from a local primary school -- where he used to work -- bitching because he was unable to get a grandchild's report card because the school fees had not been paid. From Boeta Whitey's vivid Afrikaans description of his conversation with the school secretary, it sounds as though Franz Kafka might be sweating in his grave.

The conversation shifts to Boeta Whitey and his unpaid bills. Fredericks remembers warding off the municipal workers who had come to cut off Boeta Whitey's water supply: "Sometimes you choose a knife and your most evil look, get a couple of the bigger guys around and just stand in front of the door and don't let them in," he says. Boeta Whitey laughs.

More seriously, Cassiem talks passionately about how community activism has facilitated social ­cohesion, roping in gangsters as sentinels to keep a lookout for the police when illegal connections were happening and keeping bored unemployed youths active, away from drugs and giving them some purpose -- and hope.

"There were times when we would just all get together and sleep in and in front of the house to stop them from being evicted," he says.

I join Cassiem on an errand while Fredericks mumbles something about visiting a nearby neighbour and wanders off with a promise to meet later. Later never arrives, Fredericks having never arrived at the neighbour's house.

A state of turmoil
There is a listlessness to both Cassiem and how the movement is defining and articulating itself on the ground during the time I spent with him in Cape Town.

The movement appears to be in a state of turmoil: a press release had just gone out announcing a new executive leadership and accusing Cassiem of corruption.

Cassiem denies the accusations, saying this is part of an attempt by various academics and funders to "hijack the movement".

"People want to control the AEC, but they don't understand that it is uncontrollable … This hijacking feels kak, because I know these people and have struggled with them. It feels like a knife in the back, but you're not dying," says Cassiem.

While this sideshow unfolds, Cassiem says it's "distracting from fighting the struggle; instead we're fighting among ourselves".

The AEC has also been using the law to fight against evictions, and for housing. But Cassiem believes that the "law still exists to protect evictions -- it happens eventually".

He is dismissive of Constitutional Court judgments such as in the Irene Grootboom and Joe Slovo cases -- the latter involving the AEC -- saying the "judgments coming out of the Con Court aim to show that the judges are listening to us, but that's it".

But the AEC does have a guerrilla approach to the law and how it can be manipulated. Its members rock up at local magistrates' courts, check out the court roll for eviction cases and then -- often to the surprise of those facing evictions -- present themselves as legal counsel.

Cassiem says the aim is to "frustrate and prolong evictions and to prevent default judgments because people aren't aware of their rights, not even in courts, or, worse still, [are] bullied by their lawyers into accepting an eviction".

Passing a smoke
Cassiem is reflecting on the role of the law in his mother's sitting room in Mitchell's Plain. He exhales the smoke from his cigarette, leans over and offers her an entjie (a puff).

It is a moment that I have seen shared between mother and son on several occasions, and shared between people in Blikkies, in Mitchell's Plain, in Bel Har and in Hout Bay hundreds of times. Loose cigarettes are cheaper when passed around.

That night the crescent moon hovers over Hout Bay's Hangberg informal settlement. The shacks, perched high on the hill, shudder to some big-beat dub music.

A mere two months previously, in September, the community had been in violent conflict with the municipality after the City of Cape Town tore down shacks built along a fire break and attempted to evict residents. Petrol bombs and rubber bullets were exchanged with abandon. Arrests and injuries mounted and, before calm returned, it appeared as though Gaza had been brought to Hout Bay, say residents.

Yet, on a December Thursday night, through a side door that misleadingly appeared to be the entrance to a shack, more than 300 people were crammed into a large dancehall called the Red Lion.

Rastas were flaying the air with their dreadlocks, marijuana was being cleaned in vast quantities on tabloid newspapers and bottleneck pipes were being stuffed and blazed on the dance floor.

Almost every informal settlement in Cape Town has its own "Dub Session", apparently, but Hangberg's is especially cherished because of the expansive views from the informal settlement's club over Hout Bay harbour. And the hard-as-nails beats.

Was this the brave new world?

I am reminded that there is nothing heroic, or new, about people getting on with their lives by what appears a Sonic the Hedgehog-lookalike rasta in that I-and-I Afrikaans patois laced with English so favoured in Cape Town: "I-man, just do what I-man just do," he says.

Source: Mail & Guardian Online

Property owners warned against squatters

Property owners whose land is illegally occupied, have to take legal action within six months or face lengthy and expensive legal battles - and perhaps have to provide alternative accommodation for the illegal occupiers.

The land invasion issues have been raised following reports that an elderly Pretoria couple had to abandon their Sweet Homes property near Mitchells Plain last week. About 900 illegal squatters occupied the land and refused to move despite the couple’s attempts to evict them over 20 years.

According to the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land (Pie) Act, if an unlawful occupier lived on the land for less than six months at the time legal proceedings began, a court may grant an eviction order. If it is later than six months the land owner may have to provide the invaders with alternative accommodation - and if the illegal occupants refuse to move, the owner could face a costly court battle.

Unlike the Trespass Act which allowed for eviction within 48 hours, Pie’s eviction procedures were longer. The City of Cape Town used the Trespass Act as soon as a land invasion was reported while groups such as the Anti Eviction Campaign used the Pie Act to resist evictions.

Steve Hayward, head of City’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit (Aliu) said all landowners were responsible for the protection of their own properties against invasions and unlawful occupation. “By failing to take immediate action in removing squatters, the landowner faces huge legal costs in an eviction process that could take years. Besides losing the land completely, the owner could also be held liable for the municipal legal expenses if action has to be taken,” he said.

Forest Ndathane, who said he represented Sweet Homes residents, said: “There have been no previous talks or negotiations with the owners. I, as a community leader, haven’t even spoken to them before so how can they expect us to negotiate if there’s no communication. They can’t just expect us to go.”

Residents claimed their rights have been violated because the city did not provide them with services. They complained of high TB rates, HIV infection, unemployment and crime. There are land invasion cases across the peninsula where private landowners struggle to evict illegal occupants. In Haji Ebrahim Crescent in Athlone, a land owner who had been living in Canada failed to take action against 40 families who took illegal occupation of his land in 1990.

In Olieboom Road, Philippi the landowner has been struggling to evict 600 families who have illegally occupied his property since 1988.

In Goliath Estate, Kraaifontein the owner of a residential property failed to evict a dozen shack dwellers over an 11-year period. He is now unable to sell the property to a developer.

- Cape Times

South Africa Hides Poor From World Cup Fans, Rights Groups Say

South Africa’s authorities have removed beggars, homeless people and street hawkers from areas where they may come into contact with visitors to the soccer World Cup, civil rights groups said.

Hundreds of poor families have been moved from downtown Cape Town and surrounding suburbs to Blikkiesdorp, a shanty town 16 kilometers (10 miles) away, over the past six months, Ashraf Cassiem, coordinator of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, said June 8. In Johannesburg, dozens of blind beggars have been arrested and told to leave the streets since May, said Selvan Chetty, deputy director of the Solidarity Peace Trust.

“As we’ve got closer to the World Cup, we’ve had increasing reports that people are being removed,” Chetty said yesterday in a phone interview from Durban. “In order to impress our foreign visitors, we tend to try and hide the poor people on our streets, even if it is a fact of life.”

The first soccer World Cup to be hosted in Africa opens in Johannesburg tomorrow. Over the past six years, South Africa’s government spent 43 billion rand ($5.5 billion) building stadiums and infrastructure to attract investors and tourists and try to shed an image of a country plagued by violent crime and racial tension.

Authorities in Cape Town and Johannesburg, which hosts both the opening and final matches, denied they had policies to remove people from the streets.

‘Clean-Up Campaign’

“Nobody is being moved against their will,” Kylie Hatton, a spokeswoman for the city of Cape Town, said in a June 8 interview. “There is no policy to remove people from the city streets as a clean-up campaign for the World Cup.”

“It can never happen in Johannesburg,” city spokesman Gabu Tugwana said in a phone interview yesterday. “People who do that are going against policy and need to be investigated.”

John Zimbande, a blind Zimbabwean who has been begging in Johannesburg for a year, said he and his younger brother Walter, who guides him, had been arrested six times since early May. The two earn 50 rand on a good day, he said.

Police “forced us into a car and took us away for the whole day,” Zimbande said in an interview yesterday. “They said: ‘Our visitors don’t want to see you.’ I’ll still try go out because I won’t survive otherwise.”

As many as 3 million Zimbabweans live in South Africa illegally, most of them economic refugees from a decade-long recession in their home country.

Johannesburg and Cape Town by-laws forbid hindering traffic on roads. The rules, which previously were loosely observed, have been used to drive beggars away, said Chetty, whose organization assists Zimbabweans in South Africa.

“People have been picked up by police in the past, but it has risen quite drastically now,” he said.

More than half the 1,700 families who live in Blikkiesdorp, which means ‘tin can town’ in the Afrikaans language, “are here because of the World Cup,” said Jane Roberts, a resident of the settlement and an Anti-Eviction Campaign coordinator.

- Bloomberg Businessweek

Homeless plan to build shacks at stadium

A shack dwellers' organisation says it will try to build shacks outside Cape Town Stadium on Friday to highlight its demand for proper homes.

Mthobeli Qono, spokesman for Abahlali baseMjondolo in the Western Cape, said on Thursday about 100 members of the organisation would gather in the city on Friday morning.

They would march to the offices of Western Cape housing minister Bonginkosi Madikizela, then head for Green Point.

"At Green Point we'll try to build our shelters before the stadium if it's possible," he said.

"We'll take material with us if we have transport to do so."

If it was not possible to build the shelters, they would move on to the office of city mayor Dan Plato.

Qono said Abahlali was demanding that residents of Khayelitsha's QQ and other sections be relocated to formal housing, something he said the city had promised but not fulfilled.

"We want the whole world to see that the government is really arrogant about the people of South Africa. They don't care about the poor people," he said.

Earlier, Abahlali said in a statement that the planned protest was "viewed as illegal" in terms of the law.

"It suggests that we need to notify the police 14 days before such action but according to us our action is genuine and legitimate," the statement said.

"We see no reason for us to notify them while we are going to occupy their offices because we refused to be controlled in any way in our actions."

Authorities have said there would be tight security around the stadium on Friday.

It is the venue on Friday evening for the second match of the soccer World Cup - France versus Uruguay.

- Sapa

South Africans fight eviction for World Cup car park

For six families living in derelict changing rooms next to one of South Africa's official training venues in Cape Town, the prospect of the football World Cup has turned from a dream to a nightmare.

The families who comprise 24 people, half of them children, are facing eviction to make space for the parking area next to the Athlone Stadium which has been upgraded to the tune of 406m rand ($53m, £36m) to bring it up to Fifa standards.

We don't want the World Cup because these people come with their own rules and in the end it's the locals that suffer

Eviction fighter Lewellyn Wilters World Cup venues

The upgrade includes a brand new pitch, three new grandstands, VIP suites and improved player facilities.

The tenacity of the families, who have mounted a legal challenge with the help of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, has bought them time as Cape Town's City Council has been ordered by a local magistrate's court to find suitable alternative accommodation before the changing room can be demolished.

Some of the families have been living in the changing rooms for as long as 11 years, as the city's acute housing shortage, which is said to number 410,000 units, has driven desperate people to live rough in the poorer parts of Cape Town.
Football blackout

Following the closure of an AstroTurf hockey complex and the subsequent departure of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who used the changing rooms, the current occupants divided the facility into six tiny cement-floored rooms, one for each family.
Continue reading the main story

The ablution facilities, the water and electricity provision is not suitable for occupancy

Cape Town Council's Blamo Brooks

They all share two toilets and two taps. They have had no electricity since the council cut off the power two years ago.

One of the changing room residents Lewellyn Wilters said he "cried with joy" when he first heard six years ago that South Africa would host the World Cup.

"I was overjoyed when I heard that Athlone would be upgraded. I thought it would bring good things for all of us in this area, which is desperately in need of development," he said.

"Now I'm crying again. I'm going to lose my home because of the World Cup, and what makes it worse is that we are being told that we must move for a parking lot."

The car park is now being built around them.

"We don't want the World Cup because these people [Fifa] come with their own rules and in the end it's the locals that suffer," Mr Wilters said.

"We don't even have electricity in here, so we won't be able to watch the games on television.

"What's the use of supporting Bafana [the South African team] when we can't watch them."
Aerial view of the Cape Town Stadium, which will host matches during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa Official matches will be played at the new stadium by the city's waterfront

As a football-lover Mr Wilters is, however, still hoping that Brazil will train in Cape Town during the course of the month-long tournament, and is prepared to pay to watch them practise.

"Then I would say 'thank you' the World Cup did something for us. But at the back of my mind the eviction is still in my mind because I could be out on the street when it's all over."

It was very hard for me, the house has so many memories - all 10 of my children were born and grew up there

Evictee Yaseen Watson

But Blamo Brooks, the council's area manager for sport and recreation, is unrepentant about the planned eviction, saying the facility is not fit for human habitation.

"This venue was built as a changing] room to serve hockey and soccer players," he said.

"The living space is not properly partitioned to allow for household occupancy. The ablution facilities, the water and electricity provision is not suitable for occupancy.

"It certainly is not suitable to house six families - it's an undesirable situation for people to live under such conditions."

Next to the changing room, a semi-detached cottage which was built in the 1930s to house army officers, has already been demolished.
Architectural heritage

Yaseen Watson, 70, who lived in one of the cottages, was more fortunate than the six families since he was offered alternative accommodation across the road.

However, he regrets that the home in which he lived since 1966 was demolished to make way for the parking area.

"It was very sad, from the day the council came to me and said they wanted to move me to make way for a parking area.

"After all, 43 years is a long time. It was very hard for me, the house has so many memories - all 10 of my children were born and grew up there."

Ashraf Cassiem, co-ordinator for the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in Cape Town, believes the council should have restored the house given its age because it was part of the area's heritage, rather than knocking it down.

Mr Brooks disagrees, saying: "The community has not been impoverished by the demolition of the two cottages and neither have the occupants been disadvantaged. On the contrary, they are better off as they are now living in two separate cottages which are bigger than the ones they lived in before."

Meanwhile, the council has unveiled an extensive plan to get homeless people off the street leading up to the World Cup and Cape Town's notoriously harsh winter season.

Working closely with NGOs, the city plans to accommodate and employ hundreds of homeless men, women and children, as well as reunite them with their families.

Armed with more than 1,000 disposable razors, 6,000 bars of soap, 6,000 toothbrushes, 4,000 tubes of toothpaste and 1,000 blankets, the city is also hoping to ensure the people are clean and well-groomed for the duration of the programme.

It will also create 600 temporary jobs to assist vulnerable people with the reintegration process, paying them 40 rand ($5.20, £3.60) a shift.

- BBC

Shack dwellers threat to Cup

ABAHLALI baseMjondolo (ABM) will set up shacks outside Cape Town’s stadium on the eve of the World Cup to show the world how they live.

ABM deputy chairperson Mthobeli Zona told Sowetan: “We know the government will send the police to beat us in front of the media … and the whole world will know about our struggles.

“We live in dirty and smelling places. We have no jobs. We live shameful lives. There are no toilets here. There is no electricity. We have to pay R20 a month or 50c a day to use other people’s toilets,” he said.

Zona said the government should have used the money they spent on the Gautrain and Bus Rapid Transit system to “relocate shack dwellers to dry areas. What we don’t want is to be moved to Temporary Relocation Areas (TRAs).

“The government should put their cats and dogs in TRAs. They make us sick,” he said.

Another resident in Khayelitsha’s QQ Section, Nobantu Goniwe, said she would join the demonstration.

Having lived in QQ Section for the past 10 years, Goniwe complained that many people got tuberculosis because of the “hard living conditions.”

She complained that when Premier Helen Zille visited the area in winter when it was flooded, she wore gumboots.

“We live here and we don’t have gumboots. I just wish we could swap places with her,” Goniwe said.

She said the World Cup was not going to bring changes to their community where unemployment and crime were rife.

Teenagers Azola Zadunge, Thembinkosi Mdumela, and Mananga Mzubongile said they were excited about the World Cup and would watch the games at the Khayelitsha fan park. They said the World Cup had not benefited any youth in their community.

City of Cape Town spokesperson Pieter Cronjé said they would not let anyone put up a shack.

“The area around the stadium is already under security. It will be regrettable if people use the World Cup to air their grievances” he said.

- Sowetan

Gritty Cape Flats attracts fans - Go Rosalie!!!!

World Cup tourists are turning their noses up at posh city hotels to stay in the shacks of Blikkiesdorp.

The impoverished shack land has already welcomed a number of foreign visitors and now soccer-crazy fans have indicated they also want the gritty Cape Flats experience.

Jane Roberts, 53, has opened her shack for free to anyone who wishes to get a feel of the area dubbed Cape Town's dumping ground - her only rule is that visitors must bring their own food.

Netherlands student Rosalie de Bruijn is her current guest and the 22-year-old says she read about Blikkiesdorp on the Internet last year.

"I saw the articles about the Temporary Relocation Area and wanted to come stay for a while," she explains.

"Then two weeks ago, I got an opportunity to visit Cape Town and met Auntie Jane who said I could come and stay in her shack."

Rosalie says the pictures she saw in her comfortable home in Holland don't do justice to the horrible reality of Blikkiesdorp.

"It's inhumane how people are brought to such a place but I see some are comfortable living here because they didn't have any form of roof over their heads before relocating here," she says.
Struggle

The Urban Studies student says she has had to adjust from the comfortable life she has back in the Netherlands to the pace of Blikkiesdorp where everything from fetching water and going to the toilet is a struggle.

Rosalie tells the Daily Voice washing in a plastic bucket is the most difficult challenge.

"I have to boil the water then put the basin on the floor, then I use a cup to pour water on my hair," she says.

"It's difficult but it's an experience that I got to enjoy as I got used to it.

"But sharing a toilet with three other families is not right. I have to think twice before I go... I don't go at night."

The Dutch woman says she has also had a taste of Flats food.
"I've eaten a gatsby, curry, hot chips and also braai," she says.

"I am also learning to cook the food."

Rosalie has spent the past week visiting a Blikkiesdorp creche and helped look after the toddlers.

"I even prepared lunch for them," she says.

Jane, who lives alone, enjoys having Rosalie in her tiny tin shack home.

"We talk all night and we do things together," says Jane.

"She watches while I prepare food for us and Rosalie also goes with me when I go help the community with problems."

Jane says she is impressed with Rosalie's down to earth attitude.

"She doesn't act like a Dutch Queen, she even helps with house chores," she says.

Jane says as the World Cup fast approaches, she has been inundated with requests from tourists who want to spend time in her shack.

"Since 2010 kicked in, people email through the Anti-Eviction Campaign and ask if I will let them come and see where we have been dumped," she says.

"It's been a blissful experience to have visitors come to my home.

"I've already had two ladies from England and others from France and Italy."

The busy Delft woman is now expecting 20 foreigners next month.

"I won't have enough space, my friends will have to accommodate them," she says.

Jane is one of the original people evicted from the N2 Gateway houses in 2008.

She then moved to the pavement in Symphony Way for over a year before finally moving to Blikkiesdorp.

"The foreigners love being here with poor people," she says.
Rosalie says the men seem keen to date her.

"I have been asked out by many men," she says.

"A weird request was when a man asked to smell my hair."

- Daily Voice

Cape Town Community Housing Finally meets its match!

Five families in Newfields Village face their verdict for their evictions on the 10/06/2010 (on the day the opening ceremony of the World Cup 2010 will be held).

Background

In 1994 President Nelson Mandela promised to build one million houses and accordingly the City of Cape Town and the National Housing Finance Company (NHFC) tried to make this dream a reality for the poorest of the poor by forming a Section 21 Company called Cape Town Community Housing Company. Eight years ago CTCHC started to build the worst houses in the history of our country with both latent and patent defects. Accordingly, the residents of the nine villages (Newfields Village, Hanover Park Phase 1, 2 and 3, Luyoloville, East Ridge, Woodridge, Manenberg (Tornado Victims) and Phillipi) went on a rental boycott, had marches to the Company, they occupied their administration office, they handed over numerous memorandums of demands and even occupied the administration building in Tijger Valley. The company changed directorship, because of bad management of fances and the pressure from the different communities. All that the community wants is to honour the original understanding and agreements made that they will get a subsidized houses and pay-off the balance over four years with affordable rental.

Because of the struggle for their own homes, unjust administrative action as well as legal action in the form of eviction applications by the Cape Town Community Housing Company.

The Company, because of the bad Installment Purchase Agreement (IPA) have attempted to reformulate the original contract by calling the new contract The Affordability Programme. As a result, all the families have attempted to unknowingly sign this proposed contract with the goal of saving the bad houses, paid by their own subsidies, that they made their homes.

Many families evictions’ are being sort by the Company, but the families have managed to secure the assistance of an attorney as well as an advocate and have through them presented their case in the Wynberg Magistrers Court. We are going back to Wynberg Court together will all the affected communities on the 10th of June 2010.

We will attach our heads of argument to this press release so that everybody in South Africa and the World can see what the struggles have been about for the past eight years.

For more information, please contact:

Gary: 0723925859

Ashraf: 0761861408

Attorney: Mr. S. Parker

Read more here - Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

Right to the City campaign to help underprivileged get housing

The City of Cape Town said on Saturday it listened to the views of a group of residents who want to boycott the World Cup.

Abahlali baseMjondolo launched its Right to the City campaign on Saturday in a bid to get housing for the underprivileged in the Western Cape.

It plans to erect shacks outside Cape Town Stadium a few days before the first match unless adequate housing is allocated to the poor.

However, the city’s Kyllie Hatton said their hands are tied.

“The City of Cape Town recognises and is empathetic to the significant housing challenges that we have in Cape Town. We have a number of interventions in place to deal with this challenge that includes the delivery of housing and upgrading of existing informal settlements,” she said.

- Eyewitness News

Once Again the Name of Our Movement is Being Abused by the NGOs

On Tuesday this week we were shocked to read an article in The Sowetan by Patrick Magebhula in which Magebhula claimed that Abahlali baseMjondolo is part of the Informal Settlement Network (ISN) which falls under the control of the global NGO Shack Dwellers International (SDI). Benjamin Bradlow from SDI later sent the article to the press.

Last year, after our movement was attacked, we were invited to a meeting, in Durban, of all shack dwellers’ organisations. We discussed the invitation and decided to elect two representatives from our movement to attend that meeting. At that meeting solidarity was expressed with us and a promise was made, by Mzwanele Zulu of the Joe Slovo Task Team (which has now joined SDI), to organise marches in support of us in Johannesburg and Cape Town. We accepted this offer of solidarity. In a time when a shack dwellers organisation is suffering violent state backed attacks it makes good sense for different organisations, with different politics, to unite around a shared opposition to these attacks and a shared commitment to the right of shack dwellers to organise themselves as they chose to. However at that meeting we never agreed to join the ISN. After the meeting we heard nothing further about the promises of solidarity that were made to us.

Our movement is organised on a completely different basis to the Federation of the Urban Poor (FedUp), which falls under SDI, and we have developed a completely different politics to SDI. Our movement falls under no one other than its members. We do not believe that progress will come by friendship and loyalty to an oppressive government. It is clear to us that the government gives so many millions to SDI because they believe that SDI will help them to control the poor. We believe that we have a duty to resist oppression. We believe that it is essential for the poor to organise and to build our own power against the rich, against the politicians and against that part of civil society that think that it has a natural right to represent the poor.


However we are a democratic organisation and we respect the right of everyone to choose their own politics. We work with shack dwellers’ organisations that have chosen to affiliate themselves to SDI when they have good intentions and when we have areas of common concern. For example we are always happy to work with “General” Alfred Moyo in Makause in Johannesburg. The people in Makause have had to confront evictions and violence from the state as well as xenophobia. They understand very well the challenges that any shack dweller’s organisation must face in South Africa.

But the fact is that we did not join the ISN, we have never joined the ISN and we are not even aware of their programmes and projects. It is simply untrue for Patrick Magebhula to claim that we, along with the Federation of the Urban Poor (FedUP) and the South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO) fall under the ISN. And it is simply untrue for Benjamin Bradlow to imply that, because we are claimed to fall under the ISN, we therefore fall under SDI.

We have seen no living solidarity from SDI or their ISN while we have been under attack. SDI did issue one statement after the attack but after that all we have seen is statements from SDI praising the government – the same government that evicts us, disconnects us, arrests us, beats us and supports a violent attack against us. All we see is that the notorious Lindiwe Sisulu who abandoned Breaking New Ground and the Constitution to try and ‘eradicate’ us from the cities is chair of the board of SDI. In our view it is a disgrace that an organisation that claims to be working in the interests of shack dwellers can have someone like Sisulu as the chair of its board.

We have paid a very high price to keep our autonomy from NGOs. We will never give up that autonomy. We will always be directed by no one other than our members and the discussions that we organise in our meetings. We are willing to work on areas of common concern with organisations that respect our autonomy but the fact is that there are very, very few NGOs that are willing to respect the autonomy of a poor people’s movement. We, along with other movements, have had long experience of NGOs claiming that they represent us when they do not, claiming to be working with us when they are not, offering money and expesnive presents to individuals to try and buy our support and so on. The NGOs on the left and on the right often behave in exactly the same way. We have also had long and bitter experience with NGOs that respond to us in exactly the same way as the state when we reject their money and their authority. Some NGOs have the same ‘rule it or ruin it’ strategy as the state.

Our advice to Patrick Magebhula is to be honest with himself, with his organisations, with the media and with us. You cannot claim to represent an organisation just because you once attended a meeting together. You cannot claim to represent people that you never consult with. We would like to caution him to always remember that what ever nice things that SDI says about the government and what ever nice things that the government says about SDI people are still living and dying in the shacks. People are still being burnt and evicted and beaten and arrested. We continue to recommend that a politics that is of the poor, by the poor and for the poor must start from this reality and not from the nice things that the government and a government funded NGO are saying about each other.

We are not part of the ISN and we have never been part of the ISN. But we are part of an alliance and that alliance is the Poor People’s Alliance (PPA). The PPA consists of Abahlali baseMjondolo (in Durban and in Cape Town), the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (in Cape Town), the Rural Network (in KwaZulu-Natal) and the Landless People’s Movement (in Johannesburg). We started that alliance when we rejected the authority of the left NGOs and, without once cent of donor money, started an alliance by the poor, for the poor and under the complete control of the organisations of the poor. Our alliance was carefully discussed and endorsed in all our movements. It unites poor people in shacks, flats, township houses and on farms. It is based on a refusal of party politics and a commitment to people’s politics. In this alliance we always aim to build a living solidarity between our organisations as we resist oppression and work to build the power of the poor. No one makes any decisions for the alliance except a meeting of representatives from all the organisations that make up our alliance. Sometimes this makes it hard for us to make decisions or to issue statements quickly. But when we say something it carries the real weight of all of our movements. This is our politics.

We do hope that both Patrick Magebhula and Benjamin Bradlow will issue a formal apology for misrepresenting our movement in this way. We have sent a letter to The Sowetan and asked them to publish a correction.

For more information or comment please contact the Abahlali baseMjondolo Office on 031 304 6420..


Uyishayile!

To view the short video by Umhlanga Rocks on the September 2009 attack on
Abahlali baseMjondolo in the Kennedy Road settlement click here

To see a collection of films on AbM click this:

Abahlali baseMjondolo, together with with Landless People's Movement (Gauteng), the Rural Network (KwaZulu-Natal) and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, is part of the Poor People's Alliance - a national network of democratic membership based poor people's movements.

- Abahlali baseMjondolo

Eradicating the slums; 16 yrs after the Millennium development goals post

MINISTER of Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale demonstrated a promising tone of seriousness and innovation regarding the challenge of human settlements in his budget speech to Parliament last month.

He warmed the hearts of the poor when he said the challenge of slums must receive at least the same political attention as that currently being given to the World Cup.

The energy the minister hopes to unleash towards a “human settlements 2030” is on his doorstep. The poor communities are best placed to work with government to develop and implement such policy.

The press has a fascination with what are often referred to as “service delivery protests”. The fires and looting make good copy for editors desperate for any kind of violence or scandal.

But there is a much bigger story developing across our biggest cities. The poor are organising, informal settlement by informal settlement, to work with all levels of government and other stakeholders to address their most pressing needs.

We can recall the street and issue-based people’s development committees so effective in the civics movement that organised communities to improve their own lives and bring down apartheid. The Informal Settlement Network (ISN) is the first major attempt in the post-apartheid era to bring South Africa’s settlement-level and national-level organisations of the urban poor under one umbrella, this time to work with government in finding solutions to slum poverty.

In just one and a half years, groups in over 600 informal settlements have come together in the ISN in the country’s five biggest metropolitan municipalities: Jo burg, eThekwini (Durban), Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, and Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth), as well as in the smaller Sol Plaatje municipality (Kimberly).

The ISN includes settlements linked to the largest poor people’s organisations in the country: Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Federation of the Urban Poor , and Sanco.

Groups in informal settlements in these cities are working together to fully understand and address the problems facing residents of each informal settlement. We call these activities city-wide “informal settlement profiling”.

Armed with this knowledge the poor now have the capacity to inform and work with the government.

For example, poor people from Slovo Park in Johannesburg are visiting Joe Slovo on the Cape Flats to learn how they can conceive and implement projects in partnership with local authorities around basic services such as water, sanitation, waste removal, and energy. They are bringing these lessons home with them.

I am so pleased that the minister has called for a shift in policy towards incremental upgrading strategies. This has always been our strategy.

We know, as the minister said last month, that the poor cannot just wait years for a house, without doing anything themselves to improve their living conditions.

We also know that the greatest obstacle to incremental strategies for upgrading informal settlements is the lack of security of tenure.

Let us seize on the minister’s call for innovation by thinking creatively about land tenure issues as they relate to informal settlements.

President Jacob Zuma’s promise to provide land to poor urban dwellers can be coupled with the minister’s strategy to develop new ideas on tenure arrangements.

Sexwale lived much of his life in a shack. Informal settlement life is no mystery to him.

Organised communities of the poor are ready to work with him to make a better life for all.

# The writer is national chairperson of the ISN and president of the Federation of the Urban Poor

- Sowetan

War on Want partners celebrate UnFreedom Day

27 April is Freedom Day in South Africa, commemorating the country's first non-racial elections in 1994, when South Africans came out in droves to exercise their constitutional right to vote for the first time. Yet, sixteen years on, what has changed?

For the majority – nothing. They are still poor, living in the same shacks. This is the view of War on Want's partners – Abahlali baseMjondolo KwaZulu-Natal, Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape and the Anti-Eviction Campaign. South Africans may have the freedom to vote, but their concerns are still not recognised or addressed. Given these issues our partners renamed 27 April UnFreedom Day.

Events in the past week support this renaming. Shacks are being demolished in Cape Town. Mobs of thugs branded the Red Ants have flattened hundreds of shacks in the Johannesburg region. In Kennedy Road, Durban, the intimidation following the brutal attacks of last September has continued, with shacks being damaged or demolished, whilst an unexplained fire on UnFreedom Day left 400 people homeless.

Our partners believe that the reason underlying this destruction is the World Cup, and a campaign to 'beautify' South Africa by clearing its informal shack settlements. Many believe that the freedom of organisation, association and expression are being quashed. The long term goal behind this is a destabilisation of opposition and these social movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Anti-Eviction Campaign.

However, War on Want's partners refuse to be cowed. Despite the attacks on their Kennedy Road headquarters, Abahlali baseMjondolo continues to fight for the rights of the poor, a testimony of their determination and strength. War on Want stands in solidarity with them in their struggle for freedom.

- War on Want

SDI Bulletin: Beyond a legal framework for “meaningful engagement” in South Africa

pictured above: FEDUP’s Alfred Gabuza (far right) speaks at a meeting of the Informal Settlement Network in Roodeplaat, South Africa, on 20 February 2010.

By Benjamin Bradlow, SDI secretariat

Adapted from remarks given at a roundtable discussion on “meaningful engagement” hosted by the University of Western Cape Community Law Centre and the Socio-Economic Rights Institute, on 4 March 2010.

“Meaningful engagement” is a term that has gained currency in South Africa over the last few years primarily through a series of Constitutional Court (the highest court in the country) cases regarding evictions of poor, informal dwellers. These decisions have compelled state actors to “meaningfully engage” in various ways with those they want to evict before pursuing the actual forced removal.

I want to make three related arguments about the limits of a legal framework for engagements between the state and poor citizens. The first is that “meaningful engagement” is a political process, and it is often a messy one at that. What is needed, then, is for governments to prepare to respond appropriately to the capacities of organized communities to engage. My second argument is that because it is such a political process, the inherently technocratic orientation of the law means that it has only a limited role to play in structuring these kind of engagements. Finally, I want to add to a discussion about how poor communities are preparing themselves for sustained, “meaningful engagements” with government.

Real “meaningful engagement” must be sustained engagement, not one-off encounters of the sort mandated by courts or those that constantly require the intervention of lawyers. S’bu Zikode of slum dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo was part of the workshop on “meaningful engagement” hosted by the Wits Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) on 27 July 2009. There, he argued that “meaningful engagement” is part of a greater struggle by ordinary poor people to reclaim their humanity in their relations with the state. According to the report from this workshop put out by CALS, Mr. Zikode suggested that sustained dialogue, negotiation and learning with government officials were key to developing the kinds of relationships necessary for people-centered development.

“Meaningful engagement” is not something that should happen only when the law commits the state to pursue to specific interventions along these lines in order to implement its own policies. From the side of civil society, a “rights-based” approach is only a small part of a much larger effort to empower communities of the urban poor to organize around their own resources and capacities, accumulate local knowledge, set priorities, and engage other stakeholders — often the state — in order to broker deals. These are the basic propositions of Slum Dwellers International affiliate federations in over thirty different countries. In South Africa, our allies are the Federation of the Urban Poor, known by its acronym as FEDUP, and the Informal Settlement Network, a nation-wide network of settlement-level and national-level slum dweller organizations, including Abahlali and FEDUP.

In large part, we tend to only talk about “meaningful engagement” between poor communities and state institutions when conflicts between citizens and the state are reaching their breaking point. Evictions are sometimes a useful starting point to begin such engagements, but for such an engagement to be “meaningful” it cannot end with the resolution of the eviction case in and of itself. Though there have been important victories against evictions, state institutions and private actors continue to seek many more evictions than the number being won in the courts. More widely speaking, more people live without access to water, sanitation, or energy. This country is bound by a constitution widely lauded for its guarantee of rights to basic services. But too many people persist without these services. A legal framework alone is inadequate to address structural inequality and poverty.

Abahlali was responsible for a Constitutional Court victory against the proposed KwaZulu-Natal slums act, which, had it not been struck down, would have paved an even easier path for the state to pursue evictions of informal dwellers than it currently has. This was an important, but, in a sense, limited win. Simply put, evictions are still occurring.

The law can sometimes tell the state not to evict. It can even force the state to consult with the poor. But it just can’t construct a process that is, by nature, an organic, political one. In some eviction court cases, like Olivia Road v. City of Johannesburg, the city is ordered to “meaningfully engage.” In the Olivia Road case, part of the application of the term meant that the city was to conduct a survey of residents of the Olivia Road building, a responsibility it ultimately tendered to an outside professional consultancy. This was anything but “meaningful engagement” with the unique and pre-existing knowledge resources of poor communities.

Organized communities of the urban poor have implements of their own that effect positive outcomes in ways that build “meaningful,” sustainable engagement with the state and other actors who bring eviction orders. When communities organize around their own resources and capacities, chief among these is information. It is on this point that the intention of court-ordered engagement between the state and ordinary poor citizens can get lost.

In other cases of action in the face of eviction threats, communities have organized around their own knowledge capacity to first face down the threat, and then to create the space for dialogue with government that ultimately leads to development in situ or a truly negotiated relocation. The case of the Joe Slovo community here in Cape Town is a great example. Though the legal battle last year eventually staved off imminent eviction, the possibility for sustained, “meaningful” engagement with the state has only come about through these kinds of organizing measures. Just last month, the community finished up a process of issuing itself informal household ID cards. This was the latest step in an enumeration process, in which the community surveyed every household on a wide range of social indicators. This process of information gathering has assisted significantly in organizing the community to be strong advocates for its own priorities as it negotiates with the Cape Town metropolitan municipal government on how to upgrade the settlement in situ. Even despite many of the obstacles that remain, victories in court appear almost pyrrhic when compared to the developmental achievements of an organized community armed with its own information and priorities prepared to engage with the state. This is an experience we have seen throughout our SDI network.

“Meaningful engagement,” if we take it to be a term that can help describe a greater sense of civic purpose in the ways in which citizens interact with the state, points to a bottom-up approach that is not limited to the Constitution or any other legal framework. Secondly, while a court can enforce specific obligations and rights, a democracy is the sum of much more than just these compulsions. Finally, the state can meaningfully engage by pursuing policies and interactions that facilitate the kinds of community organization that reinforce and grow the capacities of ordinary poor citizens. Organized communities of the urban poor can use their tools of association to work with the state towards their own development. It is this kind of bottom-up governance that most effectively empowers citizens to engage with the state to help fulfill the social rights agenda that South Africa’s legal framework demands. The law can, on occasion, protect the most vulnerable to defend their rights. But the law alone cannot ensure the growth of the necessary capacities to allow the most vulnerable to take hold of their destinies as proper democratic citizens. “Meaningful engagement” that comes about through the hard work of the organized poor themselves — work and organization facilitated by a truly developmental state — will begin to deliver the kinds of social outcomes and restructuring of social relations that documents like the Constitution can only imply.

- SDI

Sexwale to visit Cape informal settlements

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale will be visiting informal settlements in Cape Town this morning. Accompanied by his ministerial team, Sexwale will interact with residents in Joe Slovo and Delft settlements. They are on a fact-finding mission to experience first hand the harsh living conditions of the country's informal settlements.

Sexwale wants to upgrade informal settlements as part of government's commitment to improve living conditions in poor areas. His first point of call today is expected to be at Joe Slovo - an area often hit by devastating shack fires and mired in controversy over the N2 Gateway Project. He'll then be off to Delft - another flash point over housing which has often led to violent protests. It is in this area where backyard dwellers illegally occupied unfinished N2 Gateway homes and were subsequently evicted.

Sexwale’s visits will touch all seven major metropolitan areas and are aimed at allowing the Minister to hear first-hand from residents about their living conditions. The Minister regards the upgrading of informal settlements as a priority and his visits are part of a process of confirming the facts rather than relying on hearsay. Earlier this week, he spent time in Diepsloot outside Johannesburg and spent the night in one of the local shacks. He said that because of the cold he got less than three hours sleep despite having brought blankets. – Additional reporting by Sapa

AEC march on Gugulethu Social Services

(a) Thousands of Gugulethu AEC residents to march on social services Wednesday morning

(b) Gugulethu AEC go to town in numbers for meeting with Housing MEC

(c) 'Public violence' charges against Delft AEC member and two others get thrown out of court

(d) Rasta's in Delft, with the support of COREMO and Delft AEC march against police brutality

(e) Solidarity: The Slums Act Judgment in the Durban Hight Court Today

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(a) Tomorrow at 7am, thousands of Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign supporters will converge on the local Social Services office to confront officials about the so-called "Social Relief of Distress Grant" which is being politicised and made available only to certain ANC members via the local ward councillor.

The Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign will be handing over a list of thousands of poor residents whom we have spend hours registered. We are demanding that we too are included in the grant because (as poor people from Nyanga, Gugulethu and Manenberg) we qualify and deserve equal treatment as ANC supporters.

We expect Zola Skweyiya, Minister of Social Development, to respond to our demands for equal access to government grants regardless of political affiliation. This action will lead towards the launch of our No Land! No House! No Jobs! No Vote! Campaign which seeks to remove party politics from the delivery of services and convince residents to hold all politicians accountable to their communities.

For comment, please call Mncedisi at 078 580 8646 and Speelman at 073 9825 725

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(c) At noon earlier today, the Gugulethu AEC traveled in numbers to the offices of the Provincial Housing Department in town to meet with the MEC for Housing.

In our last public meeting with MEC for Housing, Mr Whitey Jacobs told our community that, for the past 15 years, there has been "no provincial housing plan for backyard dwellers in Cape Town". After consulting with the communities of Gugulethu, Langa and Nyanga, Jacobs promised to meet our demands and come up with a strategic plan for backyarders in our communities that took our own views into account. As media from the Argus, Times, the Sun, the Daily Voice and the Sowetan witnessed, he further promised that if he did not come up with a plan that satisfied residents within 2 months, he would resign from office.

At the report-back meeting today, the Jacobs promised to come to the Gugulethu Sports Complex on Sunday the 15^th of February at 14h00 for the AEC's weekly mass meeting.

· He also claimed that his department was taking management of the N2 Gateway Project and allocation of houses over from Thubelisha Homes because of mismanagement. This contradicts what his office told Delft-Symphony AEC last week.

· He promised that Gugulethu backyard dwellers will be accommodated in the N2 Gateway as well as in projects in Khayelitsha.

· The MEC futher stated that the land backyarders have attempted to occupy in Gugulethu (ELF# RR448 on Lansdowne Road) is owned by the City and is slated to be developed into housing for the backyard dwellers.

· Finally, he had previously promised to come up with a plan to house backyard dwellers in Mowbray, Muizenberg and Constantia and promised to provide more details of the plan on 15 of February.

We look forward to participating in ironing out these plans with the MEC at our mass meeting. As backyard dwellers, we hope that this is not just another promise that politicians make just before elections. If he is unable to fulfill these promises, we expect him to honorably resign from his position.

For more information, contact Mncedisi at 078 580 8646 and Speelman at 073 9825 725

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(c) Today, Delft AEC member, Riedwaan Davids, and two other individuals accused of public violence during the violent mass evictions on the 19^th of February, 2008, had their case thrown out of court.

For the past 11 months, Riedwaan Davids has had to worry about the pending case in which police accused him of throwing rocks at the Sheriff of the Court. Riedwaan was arrested immediately after police, without warning, opened fire on residents. They arrested him when they found him hiding inside an N2 Gateway house with other residents and members of the media. Despite the charges, everyone present in Section 2 that day knows (and can testify) that not a single stone was thrown before the police shot over 20 residents and three children.

As part of their defense, Riedwaan had planned testimony from an children's NGO worker who took this video footage. The footage (video 1), shows Riedwaan (in a white t-shirt and blue hat) attempting to calm down angry residents about 10 seconds before the police opened fire.

While relieved that the case was thrown out, Riedwaan was upset that the case was postponed four times without any reason. Anti-Eviction Campaign members were also disappointed that they did not get a chance to show the clear aggression of police in this matter (video 2).

The Anti-Eviction Campaign sees the constant arrest of its members (with the matter either never making it to court or getting thrown out of court) as a violation of people's rights. It is an intimidation tactic that police officers use punish activists all over South Africa and make residents scared to protest in the future.

The AEC welcomes Riedwaan Davids back and hopes he will continue to fight with others in the community for land and housing!.

For comment, contact Aunty Jane at 0784031302

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(d) In a related issue, Delft's many Rastafarians took to the streets earlier today and rallied at Delft Police Station.

The issue at hand is the many instances of police brutality and abuse Rastas suffer because of their way of life. The most common abuse is when police single them out and searching them so that they can find them in possession of Dagga (Marijuana) and extract a bribe from them.

The Delft Police are known for widespread brutality especially of poor residents and those they feel do not belong. The incident that sparked the protest was the arrest and brutal beating of 9 Delft Rastas on the 13^th of January. According to residents, Captain Basson and a number of other police officers approached a group of Rastafarians who were buying food on the street. Basson immediately searched them and could not find anything on them. Basson then proceeded to yell racial slurs at them claiming the Rastas wanted to control Delft and that he would get rid of all of them. After some arguments back and forth, the police erupted, beat the group and arrested them. They were hurt so bad that many of them went to the hospital the next day when they were released.

When the 9 Rastas went to lay a charge against Basson, Delft Police refused to entertain their complaint. As a result, The Rasta Working Council, with the help of COREMO, organised todays march which took place from 13h30 until 14h30.

Members of the Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign were there in support of the rally as they have also had a number of distasteful experiences with local police officers.

For more information please contact Makhwenkwe 0835943945 or Ben at 0729271924 (COREMO)

-WC Anti-Eviction Campaign