Abahlali baseMjondolo: 'a home for all'
QQ Section Press Statement and AGM Invitation
For Immediate Release - 2nd July, 2008

Event: QQ Section Annual General Meeting
Date: 5 July, 2008
Time: 12h00-16h00
Venue: QQ Section Community Crèche
RSVP and directions: 073-256-2036

At 12h00 on Saturday, 5th of July, 2008, the abahlali of QQ Section in Khayelitsha will hold an Annual General Meeting to approve the launch of Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape. The event will be held at the new QQ Community Crèche that was built and funded by abahlali.

QQ Section residents have been living under appalling conditions for more than 20 years. Even the advent of our so-called democracy has been meaningless to abahlali (residents) of QQ. For us, all the rights to basic services, land, and safety which are stipulated in our country's constitution, signify a democracy on paper but not in our everyday lives. In QQ Section, we are 620 families who have no access to electricity, no toilets except a nearby field, no sanitation system, and only 8 water taps to share between over 3,000 abahlali.

Anti-Eviction Campaign Press Statement
Sunday 29th June, 2008
Police Intimidate/Assault Delft-Symphony Pavement Dwellers

AEC v SAPS

Delft-Symphony -- Last night, three police vans pulled up to Symphony Way dressed in riot gear. Without warning, they began pepper spraying people in the settlement and attempted to arrest an older resident named Auntie Tilla. When it was all over, the road's pastor had been assaulted, beaten and abducted and five residents had been pepper sprayed multiple times. An American journalist had also been sprayed merely for taking photographs of police officers. The Anti-Eviction Campaign believes this intimidation and violence is uncalled for and condemns such cowardly actions by police. As of today, residents and the American journalist have laid charges of assault against Superintendent Van Wyk and the police under his command. Pavement Dwellers call on police to work with them to protect them from speeding drunk drivers rather than against them.

The Country That Never Was

Zimbabwe, ……………..wait before you……………….!

Excitement gripped me when I was able to go back across the border to visit my family in Zimbabwe. Pleased as I was, I tried to ignore all the media reports on the country's disregard of acceptable and proper treatment of human beings. Before going home, I braced myself for whatever the hell was to befall me! Imagine going back home to unpredictable situations, disastrous conditions, or even impending death - and when home is Zimbabwe this is no exaggeration. If you have been in South Africa you are immediately suspected of being MDC. Anyway, going home was the only way to please my mum!

24 June 2008
Statement from Abahlali baseMjondolo bakuAsh Road

Sekwanele! We are fed up and cold here in the tents

The tented 'transit camp' into which some residents of the Ash Road settlement in Pietermartizburg have been forced.

We see many things planned for us, promised to us, and written about us in the newspapers but there is never our voice - always it is the words and the empty promises and the visions of the politicians, the so-called leaders, and the Municipality. It is not right for outsiders and 'leaders' who are not forced to be living in tents in the winter to be the only ones who speak and act. They tell us again and again in different ways the same thing – “be silent, be patient, we are making plans and visions for your future”. For us who are living here, this makes us to see that we are treated as if we are not people. We are human beings and now we are saying No! No more of this disrespect and lying. We are fed up; the time has come for the world to know that we think, we speak, we act. Councillor Green and his family have not been living in the tents. As far as we are concerned he must therefore shut up.

3:03 p.m.
Wednesday 25 June 2008

Update: All charges brought against James Pillay by Leon Govender were dropped in the Pinetown Magistrate's Court today. The Pinetown SAPS now have to account for why they twice arrested James on patently ridiculous charges after assaults and intimidation by Govender's thugs and, the first time, held him for 47 hours and 45 minutes. The good news is that James and his wife Mallie remain in their house despite Govender's ongoing attempts since 2005 to have them evicted.

Update: Ash Road burned too... On the same night at the second Kennedy fire in two days 20 shacks burnt down in the Ash Road settlement in Pietermaritzburg. The City is, following the Jadhu Place model and the previous misuse of minor flooding in Ash Road, refusing to allow people to rebuild and trying to force them to accept 'transit camp' accommodation. The Cities create disaster by refusing to invest in shack settlements and then misuse those disasters to legitimate their agenda to eradicate shacks (i.e. to push the poor out of the cities).

You can also read this statement in isiZulu, Türkçe, Português, Deutch and Afrikaans

Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Unyawo Alunampumulo

Abahlali baseMjondolo Statement on the Xenophobic Attacks in Johannesburg

There is only one human race.

Our struggle and every real struggle is to put the human being at the centre of society, starting with the worst off.

Housing and Evictions at the N2 Gateway Project in Delft
A Report for Abahlali baseMjondolo
Kerry Chance
May 8, 2008

Anti-Eviction Campaign Office, Symphony Way, Delft, Cape Town.

Click here to read this document in word with footnotes and here to see some photographs.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A768901

by Marie Huchzermeyer in Business Day, 19 May 2008

NEWS that the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act will be replicated in other provinces comes as no surprise. Since 2001, national and provincial housing departments have been mandated with achieving this target, which stems from a fundamentally flawed South African interpretation of the United Nations’ (UN’s) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of 2000.

ANTI-PRIVATISATION FORUM & ALEXANDRA VUKUZENZELE CRISIS COMMITTEE
PRESS STATEMENT (TUESDAY 13TH MAY 2008)

STOP THE XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS IN ALEXANDRA & ELSEWHERE!

DON’T BLAME THE POOR FROM OTHER COUNTRIES FOR THE POVERTY AND JOBLESSNESS IN SOUTH AFRICA - BLAME, AND ACT AGAINST, THOSE WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE!

The Anti-Privatisation Forum and its affiliate, the Alexandra Vukuzenzele Crisis Committee, unreservedly condemn the recent violent, xenophobic attacks in extension 6 and extension 10. These violent attacks are aimed at people from other countries who are living and working in Alex and have been fed by baseless allegations that have fed other xenophobic attacks in poor communities across our country (e.g. Diepsloot, Atteridgeville, Mamelodi, Sebokeng, North-West, Khayelitsha etc).