AbM March on Mayor Mlaba – 28 September 2007

Friday, 21 September 2007
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Abahlali baseMjondolo to March on Obed Mlaba for Land & Housing in the City on 28 September 2007

We will march on Mayor Obed Mlaba on Friday 28 September 2007. We will leave from the Kennedy Road settlement at 9:00 a.m. and will, once again, march to Cllr. Yakoob Baig’s offices at the corner of Sparks Road and Randles Road where Mayor Mlaba has been asked to meet us.

The City gives us no choice but to march. If we just carry on with our ordinary lives our ordinary lives will continue to consist of being burnt in the fires, being raped when we try and find a place to go to the toilet in the night, having our homes demolished and either being left homeless or being forcibly removed to rural human dumping grounds like Park Gate far from where we work, school, shop and pray and far from the libraries and sports facilities that we use. The city flagrantly breaks the law when it carries out its illegal demolitions and evictions. When we try to speak we are beaten, arrested and slandered. The basic rights to free speech and association guaranteed to us in the law are just denied to us. Our requests for meetings for us to be able to discuss our future are not honoured. For instance on 28 June we received a fax from Cogi Pather, the Head of Housing, stating that “The Municipality is not keen to enter into a protracted debate with a large group of people.” We are treated as if we do not belong in this country. We are treated as if the law is not for us, as if the land is not for us, as if the electricity is not for us, as if the schools are not for us, as if the city is not for us. This is not democracy. This is not justice. The City gives us no choice but to march. We will march under the banner of ‘Land & Housing in the City!’

Operation Vuselele & Our Demands

We have elected a team of march organisers who have been setting up meetings in settlements everywhere. We have a large number of mass meetings scheduled in other settlements for next week at which support for this march will be discussed and so is likely that support for the march will continue to grow. Each settlement, group of people in each settlement or organisation that decides to support the march are discussing their list of demands. Next week representatives of all the settlements and organisations will meet and we will draw up a collective memorandum. But there is already strong support for the following demands to be made to Mayor Mlaba:

• An immediate moratorium on all evictions, demolitions and forced removals
• An immediate moratorium on the eviction and harassment of street traders
• An immediate commitment to seriously explore the possibility of upgrading rather than relocating each settlement and to undertake this exploration in partnership with each settlement
• An immediate moratorium on the selling of government owned land to private developers
• A commitment to the expropriation of privately owned land (e.g. Moreland land) for collective, social housing
• An immediate moratorium on the exclusion of the poor from schools and universities
• An immediate commitment to breaking with the current undemocratic form of development and to accepting the right of people to co-determine their own future.
• The immediate building and maintenance of toilets in all settlements (for our dignity, to keep us safe from disease and to keep women safe at night)
• The immediate provision of electricity in all settlements (to stop the fires that have plagued us since the City stopped providing electricity to shackdwellers in 2001)
• The immediate provision of adequate water in all settlements
• The immediate provision of refuse removal in all settlements
• An immediate explanation as to what happened to the R10 million Phoenix East housing development promised by Obed Mlaba after we marched on him on 14 November 2005
• An immediate explanation as to what happened to the piece of land adjacent to Loon Road promised to the Foreman Road settlement for housing by Obed Mlaba when he visited the settlement while campaigning for the 2000 local government elections.
• An immediate investigation into the rampant corruption in the drawing up of housing lists
• An immediate investigation into the activities of the notorious Pinetown gangster landlord Ricky Govender (including his violent intimidation, illegal evictions and alleged cut rate purchase of publicly owned municipal land with the aim of evicting shack dwellers and building high-cost housing for his private profit)
• An immediate investigation into the activities of the notorious police officer Glen Nayager

We also have demands to the provincial government:

• The Slum Elimination Act is immoral and illegal. Our settlements are communities to be developed not slums to be ‘eliminated’. This Act must be scrapped immediately.
• There must be immediate action to prevent farm workers from being evicted and harassed.
• There must be immediate action to prevent the enclosure of land for private game reserves.
• There must be immediate action to prevent the eThekwini & Msunduzi Municipalities from continuing to carry out illegal evictions
• We opposed the hosting of the 2010 World Cup on the grounds that we couldn’t afford to be building stadiums when millions have no houses. But now that it is coming there must be an immediate commitment to declare that the World Cup will be an ‘100% Evictions Free World Cup’ all across the province. i.e. That there will not be any evictions of shack dwellers or streets traders.

We will also use the platform created by this march to publicly state our full support for the people of Joe Slovo, in Cape Town, who are heroically resisting forced removal to the human dumping ground of Delft, and for the people of Khutsong. Since 2004 shack dwellers across the country have been protesting against evictions, forced removals, failure to provide even the most basic services to settlements and the completely undemocratic form of development that ‘delivers’ us out of the cities. All of these struggles began in confined corners but now we are getting to know each other. We will stand together and fight together. We have no choice. Everywhere we are under attack.

Support for the March

So far people from the following settlements and organisations have confirmed that they will attend this march:

Durban: Kennedy Road, Foreman Road, Jadhu Place, Puntan’s Hill, Burnwood Road, Banana City 1 & 2, Joe Slovo, Crossmore, Arnett Drive, Pemary Ridge, Shannon Drive, Kenville, eMgudule

Pinetown: Motala Heights, New eMmaus, Mpola

Pietermaritzburg: Ash Road, Eastwood, iSaka (Mkondeni), The White House

Port Shepstone: eGamalakhe

Rural Network: Babanango, Newcastle, Pongola, Utrecht, Richmond, Greytown, Melmoth and eNkwalini.

Landless Peoples’ Movement: Pongola, Eston

Socialist Students’ Movement & other UKZN students: UKZN, Durban

Various churches and clergy: Durban & Pietermaritzburg

Contact

Mnikelo Ndabankulu 073 5656 241
Shamita Naidoo 0764940965
Lousia Motha 0781760088
Philani Zungu 0729629312