Sunday Tribune: Plea to premier over slum Bill

http://www.sundaytribune.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3934547

Sunday Tribune

Front Page
Plea to premier over slum Bill

July 15, 2007 Edition 2

CHRIS MAKHAYE and LUKE REID

KWAZULU-NATAL Premier, Sbu Ndebele, has been urged not to sign into law a provincial Bill on slum elimination, or he will face challenges from shack-dwellers in the Constitutional Court.

The Bill was passed by the KwaZulu-Natal legislature last month but will only come into effect once Ndebele has signed it and sent it to be gazetted.

Shack dwellers’ organisation, Abahlali Basemjondolo, has engaged a number of non-governmental organisations and advocacy groups to help in its campaign against the Bill, which it likens to apartheid-era laws.

The KZN Elimination and Prevention of the Re-Emergence of Slums Bill 2006 calls for the mandatory clearance of unlawfully occupied land in KwaZulu-Natal.

It makes provision for evicted persons to be accommodated in transit areas until proper accommodation can be provided.

People who resist will face fines of up to R20 000 and up to five years imprisonment and the same applies to owners of unused land and buildings who do not evict squatters.

The chairman of Abahlali Basemjondolo, Sbu Zikode, said last week that his organisation and Geneva-based NGO, Centre on Housing and Eviction (COHRE), had sent a letter to Ndebele urging him not to sign the Bill.

“We feel that the Bill as it stands is in direct conflict with our country’s constitution and the premier should refer it back for further consultation,” said Zikode.

His organisation asks for municipalities to upgrade existing slums, rather than evict inhabitants.

An Abahlali Basemjondolo delegation met activists, lawyers and advocacy groups at Kennedy Road hall on Friday to devise ways of fighting the Bill.

In addition to challenging the validity of the Bill in the constitutional court, they are also planning mass action and an awareness campaign to garner the support of middle class people.

Zikode said the eThekwini municipality had been making illegal evictions without court orders, and threatened to have municipal workers arrested. “This Bill was being implemented long before it was put on the table,” Zikode said.

“Before they were acting illegally, now they want to make it illegal to resist them.”

The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Housing said it would be going ahead with the implementation of the Bill.

Illegally

Spokesman Lennox Mabaso said they had consulted widely before taking the Bill to the legislature.

“The Bill has nothing against poor people who have genuine need for housing and it says very clearly that existing informal settlements will not be demolished before people are allocated houses.”

“The Bill is against the shack farmers – people who have more than one shack for the sake of renting. It is also against people who rent out their RDP houses and return to shacks, and people who invade vacant land and build new shacks,” said Mabaso.

He said Abahlali Basemjondolo had the right to take the matter to the Constitutional Court.

The chief director of communications in the premier’s office, Cecil Msomi, said the letter by Abahlali and COHRE came two days after the premier had left for Japan and he would look at it when he returned this week. “I cannot tell what decision he will take after reading the letter, but I am sure that he will take it into consideration when he makes his decision,” said Msomi.