Army moves in amid xenophobia rumours

The army was deployed to back up police in Du Noon on Tuesday in a joint anti-crime operation residents said had to do with persistent rumours of an outbreak of xenophobic violence after the World Cup.

"At the moment, we cannot tell the public what the operation is about, but we can confirm that the army has been deployed," national police spokeswoman Sally de Beer said.

Du Noon was the epicentre of xenophobic violence in the Western Cape in 2008.

In a show of force, the army and police went into Du Noon with Casspirs and searched house-to-house.

Residents said they had been told the show of force was to demonstrate that the authorities would not stand for any xenophobic violence in the area or anywhere else in the country.

A Casspir was stationed at Du Noon overnight to monitor the area.

This came as the Nelson Mandela Foundation said on Tuesday that it was concerned by the rumours of xenophobic violence.

"We cannot blame other people for our troubles. We are not victims of the influx of foreign people into South Africa.

"We must remember that it was mainly due to the aggressive and hostile policies of the apartheid regime that the economic development of our neighbours was undermined," Achmat Dangor, the chief executive officer of the foundation, said.

Earlier police said two South African shop owners at Bloekombos were arrested on suspicion of instigating attacks on rival Somali shopkeepers in the informal settlement near Kraaifontein, which also bore the brunt of the 2008 xenophobic violence.

Police spokesman Andre Traut confirmed that the two men and three other suspects were arrested last week on three charges of attempted murder, two charges of arson and one charge of conspiracy to commit crimes.

On Tuesday the Daily Voice reported that there was xenophobic violence in Bloekombos after four men were arrested. The suspects claimed they had been paid by local shop owners to attack the Somalis.

Gavin Silber, of the Social Justice Coalition, said: "We are discouraging xenophobia through education. The state has to take this seriously. Society has a short memory; this is how it started two years ago. The city and province must step in and be ready."

Police Ministry spokeswoman Joy Motubatsi confirmed that the interministerial committee for xenophobic violence set up by the cabinet and headed by Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa was still to meet.

Mayoral committee member for Safety and Security councillor JP Smith said the provincial government was the lead agency against xenophobic violence and would take care of pre-emptive work in the Western Cape.

"The city is ready to react. Attacking other people incurs costs and the city paid R147 million to house, feed and protect dispossessed people in 2008. We had to use rates money to cover those costs," Smith said.

The city and province had heard about the rumours four months ago and had decided to act.

Hildegard Fast, from disaster management in the provincial government, was heading the anti-xenophobia campaign.

Fast said the provincial disaster management plan for 2010 took into account possible xenophobic violence.

"The main strategy is to investigate, verify and confirm the rumours of xenophobic violence. We can only act on verified reports and we are in constant contact with SAPS," she said.

Police would take preventtive action where necessary.

Xenophobia was not only a government issue but involved the whole of society.

"We need regular engagement with civil society and (the community). Government needs help and people should not panic," she said.

- Cape Times

Open toilet Samaritan in hot water over loan

The "good Samaritan" who offered to solve the Khayelitsha open toilets controversy by donating 100 enclosures, has been summonsed in connection with R155 000 owed to a Kuils River businesswoman.

Jeff Fansciscus, the owner of Darrow Pre-Cast, was hailed by the SA National Civics Organisation (Sanco) at the weekend when it disclosed his proposal to establish a factory in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, to train unemployed residents how to manufacture pre-cast concrete products, and to donate the first 100 pre-cast toilets made during the training.

On Tuesday it emerged that businesswoman Theresa Cupido paid Fansciscus to secure a R3.1 million loan for her business.

Cupido's lawyer, Dirk Kotze, said: "He (Fansciscus) gave my client certain information that he is connected to the ANC. This information moved her to enter into an agreement with him, but he never came up with the amount."

In a letter attached to the summons, Fansciscus said the R155 000 was "only to confirm compliance with lending regulations" and would be refunded if the loan was cancelled.

Cupido later e-mailed him, saying: "I have been taken for a ride as nothing is transparent."

Fansciscus confirmed he has received the summons.

"It is nothing but a business transaction that has gone wrong and we are prepared to defend it. This matter is sub judice and we'd prefer not to comment until we've finalised our response," he said, adding that he had considered suing Cupido for defamation.

Meanwhile, he repeated his earlier assertion that his offer to help solve the toilets debacle was nothing but a business decision. Although he supports the ANC, there was nothing political about his offer.

In correspondence with Sanco, Fansciscus said he had been out of the country for 25 years due to his involvement in the struggle.

His company was established in Namibia and had worked in underdeveloped areas in northern Namibia and southern Angola.

Fansciscus contacted Sanco via community facilitator Stef Snel whom he was referred to by Mitchells Plain policing cluster head Jeremy Vearey.

He also spoke to ANC MP Marius Fransman who advised that proper channels be followed to secure land for the project.

Fansciscus wrote: "Fransman also suggested we quickly forge ahead with a solution and leave politics to politicians. I am aware the Sanco president is an ANC MP and I'm concerned that to ask Sanco to assist would come across as an ANC solution.

"I do not understand the political dynamics of this unfortunate situation and we can ill afford to sit back and wait for the politicians to conclude this 'seemingly childish cat fight' at the expense of these unfortunate people."

Fansciscus, who said he grew up in Athlone, repeated this week: "For me it is purely a business decision."

Makhaza residents, the ANC Youth League and community leaders have welcomed his move to help while Cape Town mayor Dan Plato confirmed that the council was approached.

"He (Fansciscus) sent me a fax and asked for a meeting. I do not have details and will have to meet him first and so I'm not in a position to comment. They ask for a couple of things. They are asking for land. The necessary processes need to be followed."

Snel said: "I was approached by a third party and I helped Jeff get connected to the community. He said he did not want to get involved in any political dispute."

# On Monday it was incorrectly stated that about 50 Makhaza residents had used open toilets for two years. The families used them from November last year until the toilets were removed last month.

- Cape Times

Joyous Delft residents handed title deeds

For 500 families, a long wait and uncertainty came to a joyous end last night - for some after 22 years - when they were handed title deeds to their state-provided homes.

Thousands of families in the Western Cape are believed to be in a similar situation. Human Settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela said his department did not have exact figures on how many title deeds were outstanding.

Ward 19 councillor Frank Martin (DA) previously said that more than 10 000 people in the Delft area were awaiting their title deeds.

In May, New Crossroads residents staged a sit-in at the Department of Human Settlements over delays in the transfer of their properties.

Many of the protesters were paying rent to the City of Cape Town when other residents had long since taken transfer of their homes.

In Delft last night, Leonie and Brenville Louw said they were excited to own their home and were making plans to extend the house.

An excited Leonie said: "We've been living here for 19 years. Because we didn't have a title deed to our home, we couldn't make any improvements - now this has changed."

Families were paying between R250 and R270 rent a month to the City of Cape Town.

Addressing new homeowners in Delft last night, Madikizela emphasised the responsibility that came with ownership, "because taking ownership is not only about the legal transfer of your house from the Department of Human Settlements to you. What is also transferred from the government to you is the responsibility to look after your house. Taking ownership also means taking responsibility," he said.

One of the conditions of the transfers was that the new owners would not be able to sell their properties for five years. Madikizela said: "You are receiving a valuable asset today, and you must look after it and make sure you do not give it away cheaply. Do not let anyone convince you that you should sell it - not your children or other members of your family, and certainly not a potential buyer."

He said the money received through the sale of government-subsidised housing was often used for short-term goals, as shown by surveys conducted in areas like Dunoon near Milnerton.

Madikizela emphasised the importance of residents insuring their properties against disaster since the City of Cape Town and provincial government would no longer be responsible for repairing damage.

Madikizela urged homeowners to save money for maintenance of their properties and for repair of possible storm damage.

- Cape Times

Philippi residents to fight eviction

Residents of the Egoli informal settlement in Philippi, who face removal from privately owned land, have vowed to fight to keep their homes.

About 200 residents gathered at Egoli on Sunday to plan the way forward after their protest about a week ago was broken up by the police and the army, when they burnt tyres and damaged several toilets, and blocked Kraal Road.

The residents received their eviction orders on June 18, from landowner Cassiem Alexander, who is still paying off the land and wants to use it for business purposes.

He has told the Cape Argus previously that he was disappointed at the turn of events, since he had been promised by senior city officials that, should he evict the residents, the city would make space for them at Blikkiesdorp.

On Sunday, however, Steve Hayward, head of the city's anti-land invasion unit, said Blikkiesdorp was full.

At Sunday's meeting community leaders from informal settlements across the Peninsula appealed to the Egoli residents to work together.

Owen Shanmugen, chairperson of the Hillview Residents Association, said the purpose of the meeting was not only to stop pending evictions, but to create unity among residents.

Lorraine Heunis, of the Civic Road informal settlement, warned: "If you're not going to work together, you are going to Blikkiesdorp or Happy Valley.

"Don't let the city divide you."

- Cape Argus

Mother, child die in shack fire

A woman and her one-year-old baby burnt to death when a fire broke out in their shack at the Lwandle informal settlement near Strand on Sunday, Cape Town disaster management officials said.

The fire broke out at about 5am and the only survivor in the fire - the child's father - sustained burn wounds and was rushed to hospital.

"The 22-year-old mother and the child were burnt beyond recognition. The cause of the fire is not yet known," said the head of disaster management, Wilfred Solomons-Johannes. - Sapa

Toilet wars may be over, thanks to Paarl firm

An end to Cape Town's "toilet war" may be in sight, thanks to an initiative by the SA National Civics Organisation (Sanco).

Sanco official Thanduxolo Sithekela said this weekend that a Paarl company would supply 100 fully-functioning precast concrete toilets in the Makhaza area of Khayelitsha.

Materials, labour and transport would all be covered by the company.

Makhaza hit the headlines earlier this year when a row over unenclosed toilets led to destruction of the units by the ANC Youth League.

On Thursday, Western Cape Premier Helen Zille and city mayor Dan Plato walked out of a meeting on the issue convened by Co-operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka in protest to what Zille described as threats by the league to make the city ungovernable.

Sithekela said his organisation had approached the company through a third party. The plan was to erect the toilets, using labour from Makhaza, within the next three months.

The initial batch would be used to replace those removed by the municipality. If people were happy, the provision of concrete structures would continue until every household in the area had them, Sithekela said.

Sithekela said Sanco hoped the initiative would bring the controversy to an end.

Sanco still had to discuss the proposal with the city council, said Sithekela.

- Sapa

Foreigners threatened with violence

There were a spate of xenophobic threats and attempted attacks in Khayelitsha last week following Bafana Bafana's exit from the World Cup, say worried staff of projects operating in the area.

Gavin Silber, a co-ordinator at the Social Justice Coalition branch in Khayelitsha, said they had received reports last week, mainly from the Somalian community, who had been warned of violence if they did not leave South Africa after the World Cup.

The Social Justice Coalition was established by individuals and NGOs around Cape Town in response to the xenophobia crisis that hit South Africa in May 2008.

"We are very concerned that it could spiral into the kind of violence that we experienced two years ago. That can't happen again and we would like the city and province to be prepared."

Silber said they had received affidavits from residents as well as Somali shopkeepers who had been threatened with violence or faced attempted attacks after the Bafana first-round exit.

"There have been threats of attacks on shop owners in the past few months, but they seem to have escalated since the start of the World Cup," said Silber.

But some residents are protective of the shopkeepers.

Siad Ali Arte, a Somalian shopkeeper in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, said a group of 10 men tried to attack his shop last week, but they were stopped by police and other residents.

"They said that after the World Cup they would rob Somalian shops and take everything. I am afraid because if I leave this place I don't know where to go."

He said the men blew vuvuzelas in front of his store and told him to leave after the World Cup. A customer warned him to close the security gates.

"Other community members stood in front of my store until it was time to close. Without the community we would have been attacked," said Arte.

Nomathemba Mdudu said she saw a group of eight teenagers throwing stones at her foreign neighbour's house and trying to break into a foreign-owned shop using a crowbar, and called the police.

Silber said the police did not arrest the teenagers.

"They released them back into the community and asked community leaders to find a suitable punishment, which was to clear rubbish in front of the shop."

Silber said the response from the police, city and provincial government had been poor during the last spate of attacks two years ago and they needed to be better prepared.

"Some of the causes of the xenophobic violence in 2008 included desperation, frustration, poverty and poor service delivery. Instead of confronting the government, the communities attacked the most vulnerable people in their community - foreigners."

He said most issues they had been angry about had still not been resolved in Khayelitsha. The toilet protests in Makhaza highlighted this.

Christina Henda, director of the Cape Town Refugee Centre in Wynberg, said women had volunteered to patrol the streets of Khayelitsha after the 2008 attacks.

"They said you people are not going to touch our Noor (the Somalian shopkeepers)."

Henda said that after the attacks some of the people who had been responsible for the violence in the area went to the shop as customers, but the women chased them away and told them to shop elsewhere.

"They were teaching them a lesson that if they don't protect the Somalians, they're the ones who will suffer in future."

Henda said research done after the 2008 attacks showed some of the causes of the violence included lawlessness, poverty and opportunism.

Police spokesman Colonel Billy Jones said they had not received any reports of acts of xenophobia, nor had Richard Bosman, executive director for Safety and Security at the city.

- Cape Argus

Zille threatens to sue youth league members

Western Cape premier Helen Zille may sue two ANC Youth League members who hurled insults at her during a botched meeting over open-air toilets in Khayelitsha on Thursday.

Zille told the Sunday Times she had asked lawyers to look at video evidence from the heated meeting in the township's Makhaza section to see if there is a defamation case to answer for ANC Youth League Cape metro treasurer Loyiso Nkohla and provincial youth league member Andile Lili, who called her a racist.

"The ANC Youth League think they can trample on the constitution and flout the law. President (Jacob) Zuma will never draw the line . someone must," she said.

Sicelo Shiceka, the minister of co-operative government and traditional affairs, attended the meeting and said Zille had the right to test the issue in court, but cautioned: "That will not resolve the delivery issues she faces in the area."

He said he would begin meetings this week with the Human Rights Commission, the provincial and local governments and the department of housing to find a solution to the crisis.

The open-air township meeting, requested by Shiceka, was attended by Cape Town mayor Dan Plato and provincial local government MEC Anton Bredell. It came after the city removed toilets from 51 households after angry youth league members had torn down the zinc sheets that had enclosed them.

The city had provided 1316 toilets on the understanding that residents would enclose them to avoid using communal toilets. Of these, 1265 toilets were enclosed and 51 remained open.

The Human Rights Commission has since ruled that the city violated the dignity of residents by putting up toilets that were not enclosed.

Nkohla was the first to lay into Zille at the meeting, accusing her of "bringing a white tendency".

"You are the most racist premier in the world. You must be awarded as the most racist premier of the Western Cape. We are not going to allow you to divide our people. We want (sic) to die because you are racist, arrogant and morally bankrupt. You are not going to intimidate us with police," he told her.

Shiceka stopped short of condemning the do-it-yourself deal struck between the council and a majority of the residents of the area, but said no ANC authority had ever built toilets without enclosures.

He said delivery by government should always be to national standards.

Nkohla said on Friday that he was ready to defend himself against legal action.

"We can't be silenced and intimidated by (Zille's) lawyers. It was not defamation. What we said was her approach and her policies are racist and that is a fact. If we have to pay then that is the price we will pay for raising issues of poor service delivery," he said.

- The Times

Zille, ANCYL in heated confrontation

The open toilets saga in Makhaza in Khayelitsha led to a clash between Premier Helen Zille and the ANC Youth League yesterday, with a league member calling her a racist and Zille walking out of a meeting with Co- operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka.

Shiceka visited Makhaza for a first-hand account of the toilet situation and, after he, Zille and community leaders addressed residents during a tense meeting on a field in the area, Shiceka suggested the different roleplayers meet elsewhere to try to find solutions.

But minutes after the closed meeting began in a nearby hall, Zille and Cape Town mayor Dan Plato stormed out.

"I'm happy to talk to the minister, the councillor and genuine representatives who have an electoral mandate. The ANCYL has not.

"It has intimidated people in the community and torn down their structures even though the community has pleaded with them not to.

"The ANCYL today threatened twice to make the city ungovernable and to continue their campaign of intimidation and violence.

"We don't recognise their right to represent everybody. While they have a presence inside there (meeting) and while they outnumber everybody else and continue with their threats, we will not continue with this discussion," Zille said, as she and Plato left the Solomon Mahlangu Community Hall.

At a media briefing inside, Shiceka said the open toilets in Makhaza had shocked him and that Zille, Plato and the community disputed the facts.

He would meet the Human Rights Commission, the provincial government, the city council and Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale to try to resolve the matter.

"My observation is that this matter is very serious. In our view, the issue of open toilets does not happen anywhere in the country except in the Western Cape," Shiceka said.

Earlier, when Zille arrived in Makhaza and greeted residents, she was confronted by youth league member Loyiso Nkohla, who told residents not to talk to her.

"You can't come as you please. You are supposed to come with the minister (Shiceka). We don't want you here with this white tendency of yours to divide our people," Nkohla said.

Shortly after she called Shiceka from her cellphone, Zille told Nkohla: "Now everyone can see how you operate. In a democracy, any citizen is free to go where they like. I was here yesterday, I'm here today and I'll be here tomorrow.

"The truth is that people here are friendly - unlike the ANCYL, who tell them what to do. You must stop intimidating people."

Nkohla responded by calling Zille a racist.

"We are not afraid of you and your police. You are racist, Helen Zille, the white premier. You are divisive and arrogant. You are emotionally bankrupt."

When Shiceka arrived to address residents, Zille told him of the verbal exchange with Nkohla.

"It is a very bad situation. He is a complete racist and he is very dangerous. The ANCYL is destroying the image of the ANC.

"He has been a total disgrace and I'm going to sue him for defamation," Zille told Shiceka.

Youth League member and Ward 95 Development Forum chairman Andile Lili challenged residents to step forward if they felt the youth league intimidated them.

"She (Zille) is looking for political gain, not for improvement of the toilets. This won't happen in white or coloured areas. If she can't attend to us, we will respect the World Cup, but after that we'll make the city ungovernable," Lili said.

- Cape Times

Zille walks out of toilet meeting

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille walked out of a meeting on Cape Town's toilet wars on Thursday after what she said was another threat by the ANC Youth League to make the city ungovernable.

The meeting was convened by Co-operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka in a bid to resolve a dispute over provision of toilets in the Makhaza area of Khayelitsha.

It began in a community hall in Khayelitsha soon after 2pm, but Zille and City Mayor Dan Plato emerged only 15 minutes later.

Zille told waiting journalists that youth league member Andile Lili had in the meeting repeated a league threat to make the Democratic Alliance-controlled city ungovernable. She and Plato were not prepared to give the league legitimacy by staying on in the meeting.

"We are not going to talk with people who threaten to make the city ungovernable and break down structures," she said.

She and Plato then left.

Lili later denied her accusation.

"That is false... she never wanted to sit with us," he told reporters.

Earlier Shiceka, Zille and Plato had addressed several hundreds residents at the site of the toilet dispute.

- Sapa

DA councillor fired after fleecing poor

A CAPE Town DA councillor being probed by police for fraud, has been given the chop after Local Government MEC Anton Bredell accepted the Council's finding that she had fleeced poor people and should be fired.

In April, a disciplinary hearing found Charlotte Tabisher guilty on charges of irregularly collecting "top-up" payments from R300 to R1 000 from people desperate to be included in a state-subsidised housing project. It also found she had helped a member of the public to draft a fraudulent document.

The hearing fined her R10 000 and recommended her dismissal. Yesterday a statement from Bredell's office stated that councillors were expected to be honest and perform their functions in a transparent manner - a code Tabisher contravened.

It referred to Bredell's budget speech earlier this year when he had said: "Councillors and public officials are elected to serve the people and not line their own pockets."

Independent Democrats councillor, Brett Heron welcomed Tabisher's dismissal.

Tabisher could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile Bredell still has to decide the fate of nine ANC councillors at the Stellenbosch municipality. Last month a Stellenbosch council disciplinary hearing found that they had breached the code of conduct for councillors when they missed three consecutive council meetings. Their absence had resulted in a delay in passing the council's budget.

- The Mecury

Man dies in fire at friend's home

Days after using his annual bonus to make improvements to his humble home, a Flats cop has died in a shack fire.

Durbanville police constable Alfred Sploboko, 39, was asleep in a friend's shack next door to his home in Bloekombos, Kraaifontein, when it suddenly caught fire.

Only his wallet and cellphone survived the fire.
Alfred's brother Thabiso Sploboko, 33, says he was shocked when he heard about Alfred's death.
"He died on Friday and I only heard about his death the next day," he says.

"I don't really know what happened but I was told that he was at a friend's place when the shack started burning; he was sleeping when the fire started."

Thabiso says Alfred, a divorced father of one, used his cash bonus to improve his home.
"He put up a new shack, bought himself a new television, a bed and a new kitchen unit," he says.

Alfred's friend and colleague Benny Ndhobe, 33, says Alfred also managed to settle his debt before he died.

"I was going to see him on Saturday but when I got home late Friday evening, I received a call that something happened at his house," he says.

"When I went to his shack nothing was happening there but the neighbour's house had burned down."

Benny says he found his friend's charred body among the remains of the shack. "I couldn't even recognise him until I saw his phone lying close by," he says.

Benny says he found it strange that Alfred's phone and wallet were still in perfect condition.

"When one of the neighbours tried calling him while the shack was on fire, his phone started ringing inside the fire," he says.

Kraaifontein police Captain Gerhard Niemand says cops are investigating the cause of the fire.

- Daily Voice

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

South Africa accused of 'cleansing' impoverished residents in WC beautification drive

Several 'impoverished' South Africans living in Cape Town claim that local authorities have forcibly moved them out of the city to present a good image of the nation during the World Cup, which begins today.

They said that the Jacob Zuma-Government has misplaced its priorities, and believe that their lives would not change despite South Africa hosting the world's most-watched sporting event.

Natasha Flores, one of the residents, said that she was driven out of her home near a new 450 million dollar stadium in one of Cape Town's busiest tourist areas.

Another resident, Shirley Fisher, claimed that she was evicted from a hostel near a stadium where soccer's biggest stars train.

Both ended up in Blikkiesdorp, a settlement of iron shacks ringed by a concrete fence, home to hundreds of evicted families.

"Why can't they take the money they spent on the stadiums and use it to build houses, not the dollhouses we now live in, but proper houses?" The Washington Post quoted Margaret Bennet, who lives with eight relatives in one of the shacks, as saying.

"The World Cup may be important for the high-powered people, but it means nothing for us on the streets," she added.

Cape Town officials, however, describe Blikkiesdorp as "a temporary relocation area" until proper housing can be built.

"We acknowledge that Blikkiesdorp is not a perfect solution, but it is what we can do with the existing resources," said Kylie Hatton, a city council spokeswoman.

She also denied that people had been "deliberately cleansed" from a neighborhood because of the World Cup. (ANI)

- sify sports

DU NOON TOWNSHIP, CAPE TOWN—The World Cup din doesn’t penetrate here.

There’s no glitter, no hoopla, no fan jols — the large screen public viewing areas where South Africans without tickets watch matches together and celebrate the joyous phenomenon of hosting a glamorous global sports spectacle.

That would require both electricity and televisions. The former is sporadic and obtained only by theft, tapping the illegal power lines that criss-cross dangerously overhead. The latter can be found in some households, but are invariably squint-teensy in size, with blurry images in black and white.

“I have been trying to follow the games because I know this is an important occasion for my country,” says Gerra Swartz, who is 63 and almost completely immobile from arthritis, needing help to get out of the single chair that comprises all of her furniture.

“But you can see how hard it is.”

Her grown daughter is rinsing dishes in a basin, the water hauled from a communal stand-pipe. Two young grandchildren live here as well, in a corrugated tin shack lit by paraffin lamps and candles, reached down a long muck-oozing alley that meanders through hundreds of similarly bleak sheds.

The shacks — and there are at least 27,000 of them slapped together in this settlement — are called “wendy houses,” built illegally behind other, slightly more solid houses of wood and brick. Those lucky enough to own an RDP house, government-subsidized dwellings with free-title deeds, typically charge $27 (Cdn.) to the shack tenants. The waiting list for an RDP house in Du Noon Township has more than 100,000 names on it and hopefuls at the top of the list have been waiting for 15 years.

That’s just about as long as Du Noon has been in existence. It is the newest of the “formal” settlements that encircle Cape Town.

Du Noon is also the fastest growing settlement in the Western Cape region, leaping from 100,000 to 300,000 in less than a decade. It has one high school, three elementary schools, a clinic, a clutter of raggedy little stores and other businesses, and dozens of shebeens — tawdry bars largely owned by local gangsters, the reviled “foreigners,” meaning Zimbabweans and Angolans, Somalis and, most detested of all, the Nigerians.

“They’ve brought all the drugs into Du Noon,” complains Nombuyiselo Ngali, a 47-year-old volunteer community worker who has lived here for eight years with her four children, eking out a meager income by raising chickens. She also works, without pay, as a reserve police constable, which mostly involves keeping a beady eye on the traffic in stolen merchandise.

“Foreigners will rob you blind in this place. When I get information about stolen goods in somebody’s house, I gather a group together and we march over there to demand it back.”

“There are women in Du Noon who work as domestics in the city,” continues Ngali. “When they come back in the evening, the foreigners are waiting to steal their money.”

Du Noon seethes with grinding poverty and bitter xenophobia.

That’s the underbelly of post-apartheid South Africa that hasn’t been put on display during the World Cup, the shame of a wealthy nation where much of the population still lives in townships as wretched as this one.

On the other side of the highway, behind high walls, there’s a vast horse-breeding enterprise whose sweeping green pastures occupy more space than all of Du Noon. But in the township settlement, each stinking outdoor toilet is shared by an average of 10 families. For most residents, there’s no running water, no sewage facilities, no power, no heat beyond wood fires.

White South Africa turned the lights out on apartheid two decades ago, yet nobody ever turned the lights on in hellholes like Du Noon.

The word travesty comes to mind.

Cape Town is a tourist mecca, with fine hotels and sleek boats in the pretty harbour, expensive shops in the Victoria & Albert Waterfront mall, so much of the recent development glistening bright. Green Point Stadium is a jewel — $610 million to construct — just one of half a dozen football venues built from scratch for the World Cup at a total cost of nearly $2 billion, a further $2 billion poured in improving infrastructure and security.

Not an iota of benefit will accrue to Du Noon.

“They can build a giant stadium in months and we’ve been waiting 15 years for housing,” huffs Ngali.

“All South Africa is sad now because our team didn’t win. Oh, they’re crying, waah-waah. I have to worry about how to feed my children tonight.”

The worst off in Du Noon are the squatters, shunted off to a hardscrabble tract of land alongside the railway tracks. As utter outcasts, they don’t even exist officially.

“Three times in the last five years, the authorities have pulled down my shack,” says Dinilysizwe Libala, a 32-year-old husband and father who earns about $2 an hour as a forklift operator. “Each time, I’ve rebuilt. Where else am I to go?”

Libala’s family pays to siphon off some electricity from a nearby house owner. Yet they don’t have access even to one of the outdoor shared toilets. They use buckets or relieve themselves in the scrubland along the tracks.

“The world has come to my country to watch football. And I’m a fan, too! But I’m not getting anything out of it. We were fools to believe anything would change. Even the construction jobs from building the stadiums and the new roads — they’ve gone now, finished. The only ones I see from around here who have profited are the foreigners.”

There it is again, that loathing for the outsider, this belief that others, undeserving as non-South Africans, are gaining while those who were always here fall ever further behind.

There exists a strange double-edged hatred of these fellow continental Africans. Many critics allege the foreigners don’t work, are parasitic layabouts. Yet at the same time, they are resented for taking menial jobs for wages as low as 67 cents an hour.

“We can’t survive on those wages,” says Libala. “But they’ll take them, so why should an employer hire us?”

The mass influx of migrants who have poured over South Africa’s borders have turned townships like Du Noon into emotional tinderboxes. Everyone fears an outbreak like the violence that tore Du Noon in May 2008, when Somali and Nigerian businesses, in particular, were torched and nearly 19,000 foreigners displaced as they fled the mobs.

“I’ve been warned that’s going to happen again,” says Sumaila Mahmah, 43, as he lies across a stack of mattresses. This is his business. He sells used mattresses in Du Noon and has been doing so for seven years, since arriving from Ghana.

“The foreigners are the ones who are actually trying to make something out of South Africa. But they don’t like us. We’ve replaced whites as the people they blame for all their problems.”

What’s weird, sad and funny at the same time, is that for himself and other Ghanaians, the World Cup has produced a kind of moratorium.

“Once South Africa is out of the competition, my neighbours say they’ll all be cheering for Ghana because that’s an African team. They hate Nigerians and Angolans even more.

“But they say, after the World Cup is over and everybody goes home, I better go, too. They promise they’ll come after me then.”

- thestar.com

CT mops up after floods, fire

Cape Town - Disaster teams in Cape Town were mopping up on Wednesday after floods and a blaze hit more than 2 100 shack dwellers.

The teams were placed on high alert at the weekend for bad weather that saw heavy rains, gale force winds, very cold conditions, widespread snowfalls and rough seas, the city said in a statement.

"Relief operations are continuing to get the situation back to normal," Greg Pillay, head of the disaster risk management centre told AFP.

The fire swept through an informal settlement in scenic Hout Bay on Tuesday evening, coming under control early on Wednesday after 60 homes were destroyed which left 250 people homeless.

This followed the flooding of 900 shacks in several areas that affected 1 900 people.

"The City of Cape Town's Disaster Response Teams are out in full force assisting flood victims, while still ensuring that contingency plans can be activated for the duration of the 2010 FIFA World Cup," the city said in a statement.

Cape Town has cold, wet winters with snow reported on the top of the landmark Table Mountain on Tuesday.

- AFP

Fire burn down 60 shacks in Cape Town

About 250 people were left homeless after a fire at an informal settlement in Hout Bay, the City of Cape Town said on Wednesday.

The fire started at the Imizamo Yethu Informal Settlement, Hout Bay just after 7pm on Tuesday, spokesman Wilfred Solomons-Johannes said in a statement.

About 60 homes burnt down. Those affected by the blaze were provided with shelter at the YMCA Hall in Mandela Park.

The fire was brought under control at 2am on Wednesday.

"The city's disaster response teams today assisted the victims with building materials, hot meals, clothing and blankets.

"Firefighters from the Hout Bay Fire Station battled in cold and wet conditions last night to bring the fire under control."

More fire engines and rescue vehicles were sent from Cape Town central, Sea Point, Goodwood, Wynberg, Ottery and Constantia.

Nobody was injured during the blaze and the cause was unknown at this stage.

- Sapa

'I have nothing left'

More than 200 people were left homeless after a fire tore through the Mandela Park informal settlement in Hout Bay, destroying 60 homes.

Cape Town Fire Control's Paul Joseph said they received the call-out at 7.27pm on Tuesday night.

The blaze was extinguished at about 2am today.
Disaster Management's Charlotte Powell said that those affected by the fire spent the night at a local hall.

"We provided them with hot meals and blankets. The city officials are expected to go out to assess the damage. Afterwards, residents will be given rebuilding materials although we are expecting them to remain in the hall for the next three days."

As the fire raged on night, adults and children raced through the streets in Mandela Park trying to salvage some of their belongings.

Raherb Mere, 36, who lives with her two children, a 19-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, said: "I lost my whole shack with everything in it, I have nothing left. I am very, very sad."

Mukhseli Sithole, 29, said he lost everything in the fire.

"I'm feeling very bad because I'm not working and I don't know how I'm going to get other stuff," Sithole said.

Cynthia Nesi, 34, who lives with her boyfriend and two children, said they could not get anything out of the house in time.

"I'm seriously very hurt. All we now have are the clothes we are wearing. We'll have to go to my friend to find somewhere to stay," Nesi said.

Mteteleli Mondi, 28, said that he lived alone and only found out that his house had been destroyed as he headed home from work on Monday.

"My friend called to tell me that my house had burnt down. Everything was gone when I got here and I feel very angry," Mondi said.

- Cape Argus

Dozens of homes ruined in Mandela Park blaze

Firefighters on Tuesday night battled a blaze which destroyed at least 100 homes in Imizamo Yethu in cold and rainy conditions.

Nearly two hours after the fire broke out, scores of firefighters were able to surround and contain the flames which had spread quickly through the Hout Bay informal settlement popularly known as Mandela Park.

Theo Layne, station commander at the city's Fire Control Centre, said on Tuesday night there were "numerous" wood and iron structures still burning in the blaze.

He said firefighters had reported there was no wind hampering their already difficult task.
Police spokesperson Tanya Lesch said late on Tuesday that the blaze was "very strong" along NR Mandela Road.

She said the road, just above the police station, was easily accessible to the eight fire and five water tenders which had been sent to the scene. Lesch said about 100 wood and iron structures had been damaged in the fire and an estimated 500 people displaced.

"The fire is still strong so we don't know how many more structures will be damaged. We don't know if there is any deaths or injuries yet." Layne said the fire had broken out about 7.30pm and spread quickly through the houses.

The cause of the fire was still unknown.

Community members told the Cape Times they thought the blaze may have been caused by a resident who had used a heater or started a fire to keep warm.

Lesch said police had worked to control the crowd and provide assistance to community members.

Imizamo Yethu was the scene of one of the most devastating informal settlement fires in recent history. The blaze destroyed an estimated 1 200 homes and left about 5 000 people homeless in February 2004.

While no one was killed by the blaze, a number of people were injured.

The cause of that fire was not immediately known, but council officials said it began in a shack just after midnight and was brought under control more than six hours later.

Shocked residents spent days afterwards sweltering in a heatwave, sifting through the remains of their homes.

- IOL - Cape Times

HRC demands state get rid of all bucket loos

The national government must do more to ensure the eradication of the bucket toilet system and must strive towards the complete phasing out of communal toilets, the Human Rights Commission says.

In addition to three recommendations aimed at getting the City of Cape Town to reinstall 51 toilets controversially removed from the Makhaza informal settlement, the commission's long-awaited report on the "toilet wars" made a further recommendation - urging the national departments of Human Settlements and Water Affairs to ensure better sanitation across the country.

"The National Department of Human Settlements, in conjunction with the Department of Water Affairs, should intervene more actively in all provinces, to ensure that its stated policy of ensuring the eradication of the bucket system is achieved more expeditiously throughout the country.

"This intervention should strive for the phasing out of the communal toilets and ensure that all toilets installed are adequately enclosed," the commission said.

According to the latest general household survey conducted by Stats SA in July last year, 4.2 percent of households in the Western Cape had no toilet facilities or made use of bucket toilets.

The Eastern Cape, where 18.9 percent of households had no toilets, scored the worst.

Limpopo (8.8 percent), the Northern Cape (8.7 percent) and the Free State (7.5 percent) also fared badly.

Gauteng (1.6 percent), North West (3.9 percent), KwaZulu-Natal (6.3 percent) and Mpumalanga (5 percent), like the Western Cape, fell below the national average of 6.6 percent of households without toilets.

Chris Vick, the spokesman for Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale, did not respond to requests for comment on the commission's recommendations and its implications.

But Butch Steyn, the DA's shadow minister for human settlements, was sceptical about whether the commission's ruling would spur the government into providing services faster.

"There is no final date (in the commission report) by which they must get rid of the bucket system, and that clearly leaves it open for national government," Steyn said.

"They can always say they can't (implement the recommendation) because they don't have the resources."

The city said it would have to first study the commission's report before commenting on how it would proceed.

The commission cannot force those who appeared before it to implement its rulings, so it remains to be seen whether the city will abide by the commission's recommendations.

It has been recommended that the city reinstall "with immediate effect" 51 toilets removed after the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) and residents prevented them from being enclosed with corrugated iron structures.

The commission said the city should adequately enclose the reinstalled toilets and inform the commission of its progress every month.

However, in a letter to Local Government Minister Sicelo Shiceka, Western Cape Premier Helen Zille has said the households that had toilets removed still had access to concrete-enclosed toilets, in line with the national ratio of one toilet for every five households.

"The City of Cape Town and the Western Cape provincial government have therefore not violated any constitutional or policy prescript with regard to the provision of services in Makhaza.

"All residents in the community have access to toilet facilities," Zille said.

She said that when studying the commission report, the city and province would consider the norms required under the housing code and the implications of increasing this to a 1:1 ratio of concrete enclosed toilets.

Zille said the party would then also expect this "new norm" to be applied equitably across the country.

Both Zille and Shiceka's representatives confirmed that a joint visit to Makhaza would not take place this week, as some had expected, and that a later date for the visit had not yet been set.

- Cape Argus

HIV/AIDS a Major Issue at World Cup

pp

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Toilet war divides ANC

Cape Town's toilet war continues to divide the ANC, with the Women's League criticising their comrades in the ANC Youth League for demolishing the enclosures.

The Women's League in the Western Cape has written to the provincial task team, led by Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, complaining about the action.

Meanwhile, claims have emerged that local youth league leader Loyiso Nkohla, who led the demolition of the corrugated-iron toilet enclosures built by the City of Cape Town, does not live in the Makhaza informal settlement in Khayelitsha, but is a branch secretary of the ANC in Nyanga (Ward 39).

Chairwoman of the Western Cape women's league, Nonzaliseko Makhanda, confirmed they had written to the ANC leadership.

"We are awaiting a response on the things we raised and complaints we made," she said.

While the women's league was against exposed toilets, it was opposed to their demolition. "We are part of the ANC... and it is not a party that destroys, but one that builds.

"The community has a right to speak for themselves if they want the toilets or not and we will be behind them... but you don't see us destroying toilets. As the women's league (we feel) there is a better way to handle the issue," said Makhanda.

Nkohla told Weekend Argus that it was "mad people" who were claiming he lived somewhere else.

"I stay at Makhaza, I'm no longer the branch secretary of Ward 39. The women's league has its own programmes and they have nothing to do with us," he said, adding that the youth did not regret tearing down the zinc enclosures.

Co-operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka is to visit Makhaza this week, alongside Premier Helen Zille.

His spokeswoman, Vuyelwa Qinga-Vika, said Shiceka had spoken to Zille "to get a sense of what is going on" and would meet the community over the matter.

Last week, Weekend Argus reported that former arts and culture minister Pallo Jordan stormed out of a provincial ANC leadership meeting after he was attacked by the youth league for criticising their "criminal" action.

Jordan was particularly unhappy with the lack of discipline shown by the league.

Mdladlana has also criticised the youth league for lack of discipline.

The DA accused the ANC of using the toilets controversy to galvanise support for next year's local government elections.

- Weekend Argus

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

Archbishop takes up Cape loo fight

ANGLICAN Archbishop Thabo Makgoba says Cape Town mayor Dan Plato must obey the Human Rights Commission and return the 55 toilets he removed from Makhaza in Khayelitsha.

The Archbishop of Cape Town yesterday sent a strongly worded letter to Plato and Western Cape Premier Helen Zille.

A copy of the letter was also sent to Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica and Cooperative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka urging them to act on the matter.

Makgoba said he wanted to meet all four politicians at his headquarters next week. He called on them to have “cool heads” and get together to solve the toilet problem.

“I was saddened when toilets provided by the city were demolished by community members. However, the photographs taken last week of armed policemen – in action reminiscent of the dark days in our history – demolishing the remaining toilet structures, leaving the poorest even more destitute, upset me greatly,” Makgoba wrote.

“I was further distressed to learn that the city not only removed the toilets, but the standpipes, leaving affected residents without access to water.”

Makgoba sent the letter after he inspected the Makhaza area on Tuesday evening.

Sowetan accompanied him on his inspection. He told Sowetan: “The poorest of the poor need to be assisted before this becomes a national disaster.”

He met 76-year-old Nthombenthasa Beja, who showed him a stab wound she sustained while using a communal toilet at night, far from her shack.

“Sanitation does not only affect you when you do a number two, but it affects people’s health and safety,” Makgoba said after meeting Beja.

After entering a toilet enclosed by cardboard, with a sandy floor and windy gaps in the walls, Makgoba said he had seen, smelt and tasted the problems of the community.

The city installed more than 1000 outside toilets in Makhaza some years ago, but left it up to their owners to enclose them. About 55 families could not afford to do so and were forced to use them as open-air toilets.

After a media outcry the city set up zinc and wood enclosures. But the ANC Youth League demolished these, demanding proper concrete enclosures. The city then removed the toilets.

Mayor Plato vowed not to bring the toilets back until people had erected their own enclosures.

But last Friday the HRC ruled that the city must return about 50 toilets it removed, and enclose them with “bricks and mortar”.

So far the city has not complied with the ruling.

- Sowetan

ANCYL presses Shiceka over Makhaza toilets

A Cape Town African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) leader has told Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka that he is welcome to visit the strife-torn Makhaza settlement in Khayeltisha -- but he must bring toilets for the community.

Shiceka was expected to visit Makhaza earlier this week to defuse escalating tensions there, but his spokesperson, Vuyelwa Qinga Vika, was later reported as saying Shiceka would come when his diary permitted.

Chumile Sali, deputy secretary of the ANCYL's Dullah Omar region in Cape Town, told the Mail & Guardian it was "no use the minister just coming to the area with the media. What we need is toilets. If he doesn't bring us toilets, there's no need for him to come to Makhaza."

According to newspaper reports, the violent protests have shaken the ANC, with senior leader Pallo Jordan allegedly storming out of a Western Cape task team meeting two weeks ago after being insulted by a youth league official.

Jordan allegedly criticised the league's conduct after its Dullah Omar region led the move to demolish the corrugated-iron toilet enclosures erected by the Cape Town council.

Sali said he was not aware Jordan had visited Cape Town, but as a Makhaza resident he had experienced at first hand the pain of a community treated with indignity.

'It's very dangerous'
After two days of violent protest over the corrugated-iron toilet enclosures last week, 65 toilets were removed by the council, assisted by metro police.

"It's hell. We're all going to the toilet in the bush," said Sali. "It's very dangerous -- people are scared of being raped or attacked. And it's a violation of our human rights."

Shiceka has been in communication with Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, who told a media briefing that she has invited him to inspect Makhaza with her. No date has been set for the visit.

The protests flared after the city first installed open toilets in Makhaza, believing it had struck an agreement with the community that each shack could have a toilet if residents paid for enclosures.

The city intended providing the prescribed national government norm of one toilet per five households in an informal settlement, but the community apparently requested a toilet for each household. Some residents erected enclosures, but others could not afford this, the league said.

The city eventually erected enclosures around all the remaining toilets, but these have been torn down twice during protests.

Sali said the World Cup would not prevent the Makhaza community from protesting if it applied for a permit, and that ANC national leaders had not asked the league in Makhaza to suspend protests until after the World Cup.

"Our protests has nothing to do with the ANC national. We are elected by the people," he said. "There's nothing in the Constitution that says we can't protest during the World Cup if we apply first for a permit."

Sali said he had not spoken to Cape Town mayor Dan Plato, as Plato "is just a puppet of Helen Zille. He can't take any decision. We don't speak to tokens," he said. "He was just used to get black votes."

Plato said the council had received a letter from the youth league's attorneys "and they want to engage with us". He added that the league had the right to apply for a permit to protest in Makhaza, "but should be careful not to embarrass the country and the party".

Human Rights Commission report
Meanwhile, the long-awaited Human Rights Commission (HRC) report on the toilets saga has still not been released. Last week Sali said the commission was "useless and incompetent" for taking six months to report on a league complaint.

The commission immediately called a media conference in Cape Town last Friday, where it recommended that the city reinstall 51 toilets and enclose them.

Plato said the city was later told it would be given an extension by the HRC to reinstall the toilets but was still awaiting its report and an official letter.

"If we had to provide 51 residents with concrete enclosed toilets, we would have to do it for everyone," said Plato.

- M&G

Toilet politicking not to benefit of residents

WITH the local government elections drawing closer, the Makhaza toilet saga is now being used to gain political mileage and for point-scoring. For some residents of Makhaza, in Khayelitsha outside Cape Town, like Lwandiso Stofile, their need for basic services has been overshadowed by the politicking.

“Council does not care about us. Instead, they are now focusing on settling political scores with the African National Congress (ANC) and the youth league,” Mr Stofile says . His plight is a humiliation and a violation of his human rights, he says . “This situation is an utter disgrace. I cannot believe that providing a simple toilet should be such a huge problem. The council is racist.”

But another Makhaza resident, Siyanda Xozwa, says the ANC Youth League should be blamed.

“The youth league are to blame for the whole situation and the violent protests. T hey are not representing the community,” she says . Ms Xozwa, who had her toilet destroyed by members of the league, now has to use a neighbour’s toilet. “We want any toilet. It’s not safe for me to go out at night and use my neighbour’s toilet, which is far,” she says.

The toilet saga began when the city decided to provide individual households with toilets. Cape Town mayor Dan Plato was quoted this week as saying the city intended to provide the national standard of one toilet for every five households, but that the community prevented their installation and requested individual toilets.

“This was done after an agreement with the community that individual households would enclose the toilets themselves,” he said. “The funding available according to national housing policies was not enough to provide individual concrete toilets.”

But Mr Stofile, who has been living in Makhaza for the past 13 years, says the council did not reach any agreement with the residents. “If the council says they reached an agreement with us, then they should show us the signed papers. I do not know of a single resident who reached an agreement with council,” he says.

Mr Stofile says the issue should not be turned into a political battle between the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the ANC. “This should have nothing to do with politics. All we are saying is, provide us with decent housing and toilets as this is a human right enshrined in the constitution.”

The city last week removed 51 toilets in Makhaza which remained unenclosed after the youth league and Ward 95 Development Forum members destroyed the corrugated iron structures the city tried to erect around them.

Mr Plato says the city had no choice but to remove the toilets until an agreement with the beneficiaries can be reached.

“The city is concerned about the dignity of its residents and on two occasions attempted to enclose the toilets with corrugated sheeting,” he says. “On both occasions the structures were destroyed.”

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille this week sent a letter to Co- operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka ahead of his planned visit to Makhaza. “The so-called ‘open-air toilets’ saga is an issue that has been hijacked for specific agendas to the detriment of residents in this community,” Ms Zille wrote.

Attempts by the City of Cape Town to enclose toilets in Makhaza had been blocked for political reasons and not genuine concern for residents . “We tried to rectify the situation but it did not suit (the youth league),” she wrote.

Earlier this week, the league brought a criminal charge of malicious damage to property and incitement of violence against Mr Plato. Mr Plato last week called on Makhaza residents to burn tyres and protest against the “hooligans” and “thugs” from the league who destroyed the toilet enclosures.

While the toilet battle between the DA and the league continues to simmer, Makhaza residents continue to worry about basic services.

Mr Stofile says the community is not enjoying their hard-won freedom. “We are free but we are not enjoying the freedom. We want permanent structures and whoever is in government should focus on service delivery. People are fed up with all the political talk.”

- BusinessDay - News worth knowing

Makgoba intercedes in toilet fight

The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, has offered to act as a mediator in the ongoing row around unenclosed toilets in Makhaza, Khayelitsha.

Makgoba visited the area on Tuesday afternoon with the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) and spoke to residents whose toilets had been removed by City of Cape Town officials.

He also inspected some of the flimsy enclosures of the remaining toilets. Many of the enclosures, put up by the owners, were made of wooden boards and zinc sheets.

Nophumzile Mbutho, 42, said that since her toilet had been removed, she has had to revert to the bucket system. Her neighbours have an enclosed toilet, but she said they were not keen on sharing.

"We have prayed about this, so I think God sent (Makgoba) here to help us," said Mbutho.

After speaking to residents, Makgoba said he felt "pained and sad" that people did not have access to the basic right of sanitation.

"I came here because I wanted to see, touch, smell and walk what these people were going through," said Makgoba.

Makgoba said that all people involved needed to acknowledge that things had gone horribly wrong in Makhaza, apologise for their part in it, and seek a resolution.

"Let's not point fingers and have political point-scoring. I am pleading that people's dignity be respected and the issues of health and safety are taken into consideration," said Makgoba.

He said he would ask for a meeting with Mayor Dan Plato and Premier Helen Zille, and would offer to help.

The SJC's Gavin Silber said it was important that someone of Makgoba's stature serve as mediator in the process because he was a non-partisan leader respected by the community and the government.

Meanwhile, the provincial government and the City of Cape Town will now consider the recommendations made by the Human Rights Commission on the Makhaza situation.

Zille said if the report suggested the city had acted inhumanely and violated human rights by erecting unenclosed toilets and then breaking them down, national legislation would be called into question.

Zille on Tuesday addressed the press, saying she had liaised with Sicelo Shiceka, the Minister of Corporate Governance and Traditional Affairs.

Zille and Shiceka are expected to visit Khayelitsha together in the coming weeks.

Zille has given the minister a memorandum outlining the events she says have led to the current situation in Makhaza.

Makhaza made headlines in May when ANC Youth League leaders and city officials clashed over the unenclosed toilets.

-Cape Argus

'I'm not a conspiracy theorist'

The ANC and its youth league have come under attack from Premier Helen Zille, who accused them of trying to prevent the Democratic Alliance-led council and the province from delivering services to poor communities.

This comes as Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba sought to intervene in the often violent toilet saga in Makhaza, Khayelitsha. This, and last year's prepaid water meter controversy in Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain, were linked to a political agenda against the City of Cape Town and the province, Zille said on Tuesday.

In October, some Tafelsig residents alleged to Zille that a local ANC leader had told them to turn off their water mains before Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka visited the area. Shiceka later threatened to strip the city and province of their powers.

At a press briefing on Tuesday after hearing that Shiceka planned to visit Khayelitsha in the wake of recent violent protests, Zille said: "I'm not a conspiracy theorist. What we are trying to do is to deliver services to communities and do what government is suppose to do - do those things for people which they cannot be expected to do for themselves.

"I have very little doubt that the ANC and the ANCYL are determined to stop us from delivering those services."

In a letter to Shiceka on Tuesday, Zille gave a broad outline of the open toilets issue. It included a list of Makhaza residents who gave written consent for the city to enclose their toilets.

She said that, on Tuesday morning, Cape Town mayor Dan Plato had met a delegation of affected Makhaza residents who told him, among other things, that they had been intimidated by members of the youth league.

Chumile Sali, the youth league's deputy secretary of its Dullah Omar region, rejected Zille's allegation.

"There is nothing political when a black person relieves him or herself in full view of the public. The DA should not use the ANCYL as justification for its own failures."

About intimidation and attempts to stop services, he said: "There is not evidence to substantiate a claim of intimidation. We resolve problems through dialogue. That is why we went to the Human Rights Commission. The fact is that 80 percent of the city's budget is directed at rich suburbs, and poor communities are not benefiting at all. It is fallacy to suggest the ANCYL is stopping development."

Makgoba said the open toilets were not only "demeaning" to Makhaza residents, but were a health risk and made women vulnerable to rape.

Makgoba took to the streets of Makhaza on Tuesday and spoke with several residents, listening to their complaints about the unenclosed toilets.

He said he had been moved by the residents' plight: "These are people who have nothing - taking away the little that they have is a bad thing. I will plead with leaders to show these people of God respect."

Makgoba said he would write to Zille, Plato and Shiceka and "plead with them to help these people of God".

- Cape Times

Sexwale set to quiz NHBRC chiefs over contract awards

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale is to engage with the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) over serious alleged conflicts of interest involving both the council's chairwoman and chief executive.

It is alleged that NHBRC chief executive Sipho Mashinini was awarded a contract worth about R32 million to build houses for the Gauteng Housing Department, while NHBRC chairwoman Granny Seape was awarded a contract worth about R70m to provide outsourcing services to the NHBRC.

The contract awarded to Mashinini apparently made provision for a second phase comprising 832 units costing R45m.

Chris Vick, a special advisor to the human settlements minister, said yesterday that Sexwale was studying the two matters and would comment after engaging with the NHBRC.

The NHBRC is a statutory body created to protect housing consumers against unscrupulous homebuilders and manage a warranty fund in the event of claims by homeowners against builders who do not fulfil their obligations.

Butch Steyn, the DA's spokesman on human settlements, said the award of these contracts involved a conflict of interests, which pointed to serious management problems within the NHBRC.

Steyn questioned how the NHBRC could provide proper oversight if the individuals heading up the council had personal financial interests in the same industry.

He claimed Seape was also the chief executive of Ahanang Hardware and Construction, a company not only involved in the construction of credit-linked housing, but now also providing inspectors to the NHBRC.

Ahanang was currently the service provider for the outsourced inspectorate for the NHBRC in Gauteng and this contract was worth about R70m, said Steyn.

"Considering Ahanang is also involved in the construction of houses which have to be registered and inspected by NHBRC, her (Seape's) very senior position in the NHBRC is therefore sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of her official duties and may place undue influence on staff who are directly beholden to her for their employment through Ahanang."

He said the DA would bring these apparent conflicts of interest to the attention of Sexwale and pose parliamentary questions to determine whether the correct tendering procedures were followed in the awarding of the tenders and on what basis the tenders were awarded to Mashinini and Seape.

- Business Report

Shiceka steps into open toilet altercation

The African National Congress Youth League’s (ANCYL’s) attempt to win the backing of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka in its fight with the Democratic Alliance (DA)-run Cape Town metropolitan council over the Khayelitsha toilets saga could backfire, as the minister is already involved with the council and the Western Cape government in his own quest for a solution.

Mr Shiceka, who was invited by the youth league to intervene, has asked DA leader and Western Cape Premier Helen Zille and someone from the council to accompany him on his planned visit to the Makhaza community. His spokeswoman, Vuyelwa Qinga Vika, said the visit would take place when the minister’s diary allowed for it.

The council installed 1316 toilets in the Silvertown/Town 2 upgrade project, enclosing all but 55 of the 280 put up in the Makhaza area.

When the council provided galvanised iron enclosures for the unenclosed toilets, these were demolished by the youth league. The council then decided to remove the open toilets and promised they would be replaced once the enclosures had been erected.

Yesterday, Ms Zille sent a detailed memorandum on the controversy to Mr Shiceka, ahead of his visit that was initially planned for today.

“The so-called ‘open-air toilets’ saga is an issue that has been hijacked for specific agendas to the detriment of residents in this community. I hope that we can use the opportunity to engage constructively,” Ms Zille said in her letter to the minister.

Asked whether Mr Shiceka was likely to disagree with the youth league, Ms Zille said “it would take a very, very brave minister to go against the ANCYL”. She recalled how ANC veteran Pallo Jordan was recently chased out of a meeting for suggesting it was not a clever idea for youth league members to have demolished the enclosures.

The youth league lodged a complaint against the council with the South African Human Rights Commission, which made a preliminary finding last week that the unenclosed toilets were a violation of human dignity and should be enclosed.

Ms Zille told a media briefing yesterday that the commission’s finding that the toilets were an affront to dignity was in fact an indictment of the national norm for sanitation laid down by the ANC government. This norm was one toilet for five families. The council had supplied one toilet per family on condition that residents enclosed them.

Ms Zille said the commission’s finding represented an attack on the national norm that, if not followed, would blow housing budgets apart because it would require each dwelling to have its own toilet.

In Cape Town alone there were 223 informal settlements with no services or bulk infrastructure, and 500,000 families waiting for houses, she said.

- Business Day - News Worth Knowing

World Cup 2010: The Ugly Side Of The Beautiful Game

The world cup will kick off in just three days, and it is the first time that the biggest sporting event worldwide is being held on the African continent. Since the end of apartheid, 21 years ago, South Africa has apparently come a long way, and the mega sporting event is supposed to showcase the progresses made by a country which racist policies excluded from the international community for decades.

However, a vast majority of South Africans and Africans will not be able to attend the world cup in the news fancy stadiums built for the occasion because they can not afford to buy the tickets for the games. Even worse, in the past two years, some residents of shantytowns have been evicted and forced to live in what they call “apartheid dumping ground” and even “concentration camps”.

It is the case in a suburb of Cape Town where, for the past two years, residents of the Symphony Way shantytown have been forcefully evicted and move into what the South African authorities call “temporary relocation camps”. The camp near Cape Town provide housing, in the form of corrugated iron shacks, for 15,000 people. The rules in the “temporary relocation camps” are strict: No building, no cooking outside, and a curfew after 10:00 PM. The residents complain that they are deprived of their basic liberties.

The authorities did not even bother to give the camp a postal area code. There is an 80 percent unemployment rate, no school, no clinic, and there are an average of five to seven people living in the corrugated structures measuring 3 by 9 meters. The residents are enduring these conditions just 20 kilometers from Africa’s most expensive stadium, Cape Town’s Green Point stadium (see photo), which comes with a price tag of more than $450 million.

In the Western Cape Province alone, there are more than 400,000 people waiting for housing, and all of the housing projects have been put on hold because all of the money is being spent on the World Cup. For the resident, this echoes the apartheid era, and most of them think they were put in what they call “concentration camps” because the authorities did not want World Cup fans to be faced with them when they come visit the beautiful Green Point stadium in Cape Town.

On June 4, 2010 Amnesty International expressed their human rights concerns in South Africa during the World Cup. Amnesty International is reporting a notable increase in police harassment of street vendors, homeless people and refugees who are living in shelters or high density inner city areas. The harassment has included police raids, arbitrary arrests, ill treatment as well as destruction of informal housing in shantytowns.

The regulations created to comply with FIFA World Cup requirements are being used by the police to expel homeless people and street vendors from “controlled access sites”. Penalties for offenses under the regulations includes fines of up to $1,300 or imprisonment of up to six months. Protesters from poor communities have continued to raise concerns that the vast majority of South Africans are excluded from the benefits of hosting the World Cup. The requirements under the FIFA regulations, which create extensive exclusion zones for informal economic activities, are particularly prejudicial in a country where many are totally reliant on the informal economy sector to survive.

News Junkie Post

Home owners reject shacks

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille has called on Khayelitsha residents living in formal houses to have compassion for shack dwellers in flood-prone areas.

Devaluation of properties

The premier's call comes after residents from a formal area objected to the province and city's flood relief programme to move flood victims to temporary relocation sites.

The residents claim moving shack dwellers into the area will devalue their properties.

Relocation funds available

Zille said she hopes an agreement can be reached with all sides and urged residents to make a decision quickly, stating that rules did not allow for money to be put aside and carried over.

"We just hope that people will have empathy with their fellow citizens, so we can get people out of the water," said the premier.

"I am desperate to spend the R96-million before the financial year ends," says Zille.

Sewerage 'flowing into houses'

A resident living in one of the flood-prone areas, and who attended a community meeting with Zille on Monday night, said she was not happy with the consultation process.

Angy Peter said she is tired of being spoken to and not listened to.

"Why do they have a short meeting where we can't tell them how we feel? Why can't they show us the place? The say they have discussed the place with community leaders. I don't trust any leaders of any party."

She said often Khayelitsha community leaders ignore the plight of residents whose homes are flooded.

"There was a section in RR where the sewerage was flowing into some houses. Those people couldn't get any assistance. I don't understand when they say the councillors know every corner of their sections; that is not true," said Peter.

- Eyewitness News - iafrica

Relocations have to be done now - Zille

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille says time is running out for families living in flood prone areas to decide whether they want to be relocated.

The provincial government and the City of Cape Town are planning to relocate just over 1 700 families living below the flood line in Khayelitsha and Mfuleni by the end of this month.

Politicians and officials, however, have to first get the residents to agree to the move.

Zille attended a consultation with Khayelitsha residents on Monday night.

The sound of the rain beating down the roof of a school hall was a clear indication of how urgently the relocation needs to happen.

Some of the residents are eager to move, arguing that they have to deal with water damaging their possessions every winter.

The premier has acknowledged the situation will cause conflict, but urged residents to make a decision quickly, stating that rules did not allow for money to be put aside and carried over.

“I am desperate to spend the R96 million before the financial year ends,” says Zille.

During the meeting it emerged that residents near the temporary relocation area complained that their properties would be devalued when the shack dwellers move in.

- Eyewitness News

Flood relief programme can't help all: Zille

The Western Cape government has identified five available sites to which families affected by flooding during winter's heavy rains can be moved.

The province's relief programme, for which R96 million has been allocated, will help 1 774 families move out of flood-prone informal settlements.

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille and provincial Housing MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela met Khayelitsha residents on Monday night to outline the programme.

Zille explained that the programme should not be confused with a housing project.

"A housing programme works on a housing waiting list. There are people living in water who won't get helped, because there are many before them on that list," she said.

Madikizela said that after meeting affected communities, the provincial government had decided to include backyarders as beneficiaries.

"There are many backyarders and to be fair we have decided to split it 50/50 between backyarders and flood victims," he said.

He said residents were supposed to have moved into dry structures as of June 6 and he blamed community leaders in Khayelitsha for delaying this process by complaining about the size of the new plots and structures in the five designated sites.

Zille urged the residents to work with local authorities to make the programme work, saying the R96m allocated to it had to be spent by the end of June.

If people within the community spent the whole of winter arguing with authorities, she said, everyone would be stuck in water-logged areas and no one would be able to move to dry land.

"We can't solve everyone's problem at once - we need to take one step at a time and this causes conflict.

"If there is conflict over development we can't do a lot. We have got to deal with the conflict first," said Zille.

- Cape Argus

NHBRC chairperson bags R70m outsourcing contract from NHBRC - DA

In April, the Democratic Alliance (DA) revealed that the CEO of the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC), Sipho Mashinini, had been awarded a contract worth an estimated R32-million to construct houses for the Gauteng Department of Local Government and Housing. Provision was made in the contract for a second phase for 832 units at an approximate cost of R45 million. We can now reveal that this apparent conflict of interest is not only confined to the CEO through his direct involvement in the provision of subsidised houses, but that the Chairperson of the board of the NHBRC, Granny Seape, was awarded a contract worth an estimated R70-million to provide outsourcing services to the NHBRC.

This points to serious management problems within the NHBRC. How can the NHBRC provide proper oversight if the individuals heading it up have personal financial interests in the very same industry?

The NHBRC is a statutory body created to protect housing consumers against unscrupulous home builders and manage a warranty fund in the event of claims against such builders who do not fulfil their obligations.

In addition to being chairperson of the NHBRC board, Ms Seape is also the CEO of Anahang Hardware and Construction, a company not only involved in the construction of credit-linked housing, but now also providing inspectors to the NHBRC. Currently, Anahang is the service provider for the Outsourced Inspectorate for the NHBRC in Gauteng - a contract worth an estimated R70-million. Considering that Anahang is also involved in the construction of houses which have to be registered and inspected by NHBRC, her very senior position in the NHBRC is therefore sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of her official duties, and may place undue influence on staff who are directly beholden to her for their employment through Anahang.

In April, the Democratic Alliance (DA) revealed that the CEO of the NHBRC, Sipho Mashinini, had been awarded a contract worth an estimated R32-million to construct houses for the Gauteng department of Local Government and Housing. Provision was made in the contract for a second phase for 832 units at an approximate cost of R45 million. We brought this issue to the Minister of Human Settlements in Parliament.

Ms. Seape appears to have conflated her interests in a private company with her position at the NHBRC - she and her staff are even portrayed on Ahanang's company website in NHBRC t-shirts. It is also interesting to note that Ahanang's other clients, according to the website, include the Centurion Town Council and the Gauteng Department of Housing.

The DA will be bringing this apparent conflict of interest to the attention of the Minister, and will also pose parliamentary questions with the intention of ascertaining, firstly, whether the correct tendering procedures were followed in the awarding of these tenders and secondly, on what basis the tenders were awarded to Mashinini and Seape.

- Politicsweb

ANCYL lays charges against Cape Town mayor

The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) has laid a charge at the Khayelitsha police station against Cape Town mayor Dan Plato, party member Xolisa Hlwempu says.

"We have opened a case in Khayelitsha for Dan Plato to be arrested," he said.

"We will be briefing the media on when the mayor will be arrested so that they can be there to see it."

ANCYL spokesman in the Dullah Omar region, Chumile Sali, said a case had been opened against the mayor on charges of malicious damage to property and incitement of violence.

Rulleska Singh, spokeswoman for Plato, said the mayor's office had heard about the charges through the media.

When the police started investigating they would speak to the mayor himself, she said.

This came after members of the ANCYL two weeks ago demolished tin-and-wood structures the city was putting up around toilets to give people privacy, demanding brick and mortar instead.

The council last week removed the toilets altogether, a move followed by violent protests in which 32 people were arrested.

Plato last week called on Makhaza residents in Khayelitsha to burn tyres and protest against the ANCYL "hooligans" and "thugs" who destroyed the toilet enclosures.

"I want to throw it back at the community... that you need to tell those rude hooligans, those thugs, that you must march and burn tyres against those hooligans," Plato told a press conference at the time.

"What is happening now is that the Youth League is taking decisions on the part of the community without the community having any say in it."

On Monday morning the SABC reported that lawyers representing residents of Makhaza had given Western Cape premier, Helen Zille, until the afternoon to respond to their demands that the toilets be rebuilt and enclosed with brick and mortar structures.

Zille's spokeswoman Trace Venter said that the letter was faxed to the Premier Office late on Friday afternoon and so they had only seen it on Monday morning.

Legal advisors were going through the letter but she was unsure of whether they would respond to it by the afternoon.

The Human Rights Commission had found that the City had violated the rights of residents by not supplying them with properly enclosed toilets.

In 2007 the Democratic Alliance-led council began building a toilet for each household in the area, on condition residents enclosed the toilets themselves so the council would have money for more toilets.

- Times Live