Housing Rights Workshop, 2 December 2006

[fsg_gallery id=”435″]Abahlali Workshop on Housing Rights
Saturday Dec 2 (Minutes by Antonios Vradis)

About 50 people present from 15 different areas.

Notes:

Workshop 1 Housing Inputs

Motala Heights (Pinetown): Bheki Ngcobo

Development committee of Motala Heights. Repression: as a community they realise how hard it is to engage with the municipality. There is a specific chancellor who they tried to engage with and talk about the development of the area, but since they affiliated to abahlali the chancellor started sending signals of dissatisfaction as they were not part of the committees of the ANC. Chancellor made sure that the areas with red t-shirt wearing people had their shacks demolished and people were taken to Nazareth. The tenants were left homeless. Up to date they do not know where to sleep.

Legal resource centre trying to intervene… from the judge s side: he needs to know who are the homeless and who are relocated to Nazareth. It took almost three weeks, till Nov. 29 which is when the municipality was given ultimatum not to touch Motala heights until further notice. Continuous demolitions took place before that order was given: 15-20 shacks would go every time the council visited. No attempt to listen to what people have to say. The Motala Heights people do want houses. Relocation attempts disorientate the local people.

They have tried to get lawyers to work on the issues. Diaconia council have been very helpful: the municipality have tried, and succeeded, to evict people in Motala heights/ Pinetown. Took the story to the lawyers and thanks to them the municipality have been stopped. Because they were stopped there, the municipality moved to Juba Place Hills and demolished all shacks. Some children were taken to the community hall of an adjacent area but the hall can only accommodate a small number of people and the rest are homeless.

There are other areas where the municipality is threatening the communities: They say we will come tomorrow and demolish your houses… People do not want to move. Lawyers try to stop the municipality from even entering any of these areas. Municipality officials feel they have all powers to do anything to the people in the shacks. They feel that the areas are inhabitable but we are here to prove the opposite.

Anti-Eviction Campaign (Cape Town)

Key points about the anti-eviction campaign: how it started, current and past struggles, knowledge received fighting evictions legally etc.

How do we respond to evictions? How do we respond to policy and procedures? How do we fight to have a progressive housing policy from the state? Methods of struggle – in legal and other ways.

In 1999 first evictions happened in Mandela Park, Cape Town. Then the neighbouring Manenburg was also attacked with evictions. Tafelson (?) township, first evictions took place in October 2000. Pensioner/paraplegic person on a wheelchair was evicted. That morning people were loud in resisting. That morning, six different units of national defence were present -speaker s teeth were kicked in.

Current Struggles in Cape Town:

Anti-eviction campaign is 6 years old. What we struggle against is the effect of privatisation, modification of social services like housing, health care, schooling, social services, outsourced by the municipality, speculators, so many things that are effected by privatisation introduced via a policy called “GEAR” in 1996, by Nelson Mandela… Current struggles are taken up by different communities: In Tafelson we are mobilising against banks, which buy up houses. Banks claim that you can be the owner of your house, but you take a bond and thus effectively the bank owns the house. Also: school fees issue – people do not get reports because they have not paid their school fees.

Also: why does a pensioner has to have his pension reviewed? Or a paraplegic, will be in a wheelchair? Why re-affirm they are in a wheelchair?

Also: massive problem with parties (ACBP, ANC, ID, etc) which are active in the area. Anti-eviction campaign does not mobilise for any parties: no land, no house, no vote!

200-300 low standard houses… 140mm bricks, not approved materials are used. Five years later, after struggles by the community to respect each house individually. In this area the municipality has not transferred the house to the people, so they do not own the houses.

Lentefield community: houses still belong to the ex-Current Affairs department, now defunct, so the regional government owns them instead. Houses were to be transferred in 1987. but they want to sell them for more than 2000% more: from 7000 -> 140000 rand.

In many areas, we have occupied many of the houses that the people were evicted from. Trying to normalise the situation for the people occupying these houses. Kwezi: exactly the same situation, fairly mixed community. Registered owners are people that have died a long time ago; the people who got to live there need to transfer the ownership, again a lengthy process. Trying to establish that you can only evict someone if you are the owner.

Woodstat? Street notorious for gangsters, drugs etc. six rooms in each house, each room hired to one family or even two! Each house has more than six families. Owner of the property tries to sell it to the city of Cape Town. Upgraded it, increased the rent and evicted families, but electricity and water is cut off, just like during the Apartheid.

Sole (?) Town: coloured people were given a bicycle and rented the houses for two rand. Because the original owners are not there any more, they do not have control. Most houses belong to the city of cape town. Valued more as the neighbouring area is valued more.

Delf? Seven communities Totally mixed area… Delf Concerned Residents – affiliate of the AEC they no more do developmental work, they also resist evictions, resist the pink letter

Frayhond(?) Oldest informal settlement in Cape Town (1929!!) Land owned by frendhound development trust (supposed to be a trust for the people) selling it to the people without participation of the owners of that particular land, as the beach is round the corner.

Gugulehu? People that have lived there for a long time… no real development happening there. Upgrades of hostels, painted in nice colour… but no meaningful upgrades.

Freedom Park: informal settlement used to belong to the city of Cape Town, was to be a school originally, land occupied. 10 years latter they have water, roads but still no houses. 73 pockets of land have been occupied this year. Anti-eviction campaign also work with farm workers who are being evicted now more than ever, even more than in the apartheid era. Farm workers children are being evicted. When you work in a farm you have security of tenure on that farm. But because there are three generations who live on a farm, the council now claims the generation after the one who worked on the farm do not have the security of tenure and force removals to peri-urban areas.

Anti-privatisation and anti-state force… similarly with the Abahlali, people join the AEC because they are protected within it. Many small victories: but the real victory will be to have no more privatisation in the country. Battles are fought, one is won in one area but others are lost elsewhere.

Immense knowledge gained; grannies know about water policies, children know about their rights to education so that when they go to the street they go there with power, knowing it s right, without doubts in their minds.

Campaign for the Recognition of the Fundamental Right to A Home: purposefully long as it is used in court and therefore adds weight to the campaign. You never win completely in court: This country s law is based on Roman Law, but this is Africa!

Put your faith in your family, community, other communities you fight with, not in a lawyer. Power lies in the street! We do not know Latin like lawyers do, we do not speak English like the academics do, but we know how to fight in the street – and that is where our power lies.

Word comrade gets misused. From now on we should call ourselves abahlali.

Richard Ballard: Abahlali PAIA And eThekwini Municipality

[also look at power point file]

4 points

Application under PAIA piece of legislation (Promotion of Access to Information Act).

A lot of information that came back, 8 or 9 docs came back on different issues.

We asked what was going to happen to the settlements from the wards that abahlali operates in. Two things: some will be upgraded where they are (in-situ) though there will still not be enough houses for all. Some settlements will be relocated to new (greenfield) developments.

Document has not yet been approved by the abahlali, people need to look at it and make comments to the organisation.

Decision on when to implement a relocation is determined by factors behind the scene: if a corporation wants to move and build a shopping centre urgently, it might go at the front of the queue for relocation. Keep an ear to the ground! Is there a plan for the use of your land after you are supposedly moved out of it? That can help you resist plans that are not serving your best interest. Do not be vulnerable to rumour!

Louisa, Motala: It is not that the municipality cannot afford to build houses, but a local businessman has an agreement with the local councillor in order to establish a business venture on a land once cleared. Then, what is the point in having a local municipality altogether, if it does not serve our best interest? Why not dismantle it altogether?

Why is not Joe Slovo on the list? And also, those set for relocation, is there another way to make the municipality reconsider…?

Application under PAIA: Government is supposed to answer everything properly and they haven t – we are now considering whether we should take them to court over that…

Process of accessing the information is a long one and unproductive in some sense.

Workshop 2: Evictions

Stuart Wilson, Centre for Applied Legal Studies, a public interest law firm, research department at University of Wits. They work primarily on Jo burg, help people in the inner city to access housing and services.

Talk on Policy and Legal Rights

3 points

1) On the law in general and how it can be used by abahlali and similar movements: what it can and can t do, what kind of alliances have to been made
2) Law, section 26 of the constitution and the possibilities it opens up
3) Evictions law: what the state can/ cannot do if it wants to get people out of place and into another. Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act…

everything is in the power point file!

After the presentation: Five questions to Wilson

* Kennedy Road

* Motala Heights

* Npolo demolitions: make no difference that the house was built without bricks – it was illegal nevertheless. It s illegal and it is a crime. Get an interdict from the court to restrain the municipality from demolishing more shacks or houses. It will not necessarily work but it is a legal remedy. Or get compensation: sue the municipality for damage to the property. Municipality acts outside the law! So what is there to be done about it? Name and shame? Use the media? Protest…

* Motala Heights: People here have gone in a legal process that stops the municipality from demolishing shacks without court order. They got this because what the municipality was doing was illegal. The law is the state s; when the state stops obeying the law, you should take charge of the law yourself by protesting and letting everyone know that the state in itself acts illegally.

• What happens if you eventually move and the new house is substandard?
The house you move in is going to be under warranty – if it is not of decent standard they have to improve the house free of charge for you.

Last question: the municipality intents to provide 2600 houses for people in Kennedy Road but there are 7000 households here!

First tell the municipality it s got its figures wrong. Then you say that until you and the municipality agree on the figures no-one will move and take it to court saying the municipality intend to relocate all people in the area, rendering 2/3 of the community homeless: it is very unlikely that any judge would issue an eviction order under those circumstances.

But it is key to let the municipality know as soon as possible that they have got their figures wrong.

Formally, each individual group has to apply to the court to halt a council decision etc. But under certain circumstances the council can act on behalf of a whole community. In that case it is good to have as many people as possible named as standing for the community… the court will usually accept that as they would rather err on the side of caution, at least on an interim basis.

Also

Richard Pithouse asks: Durban municipality distinguishes between owners and renters of shacks, moving away the owners and leave the renters with no rights whatsoever.

Answer: No distinction between so-called shack renters and shack owners in terms of rightful eviction. If you are occupying it as your home and it is your own home, section 26 (3e???) applies.

S bu welcomes all the people that have arrived from Open Democracy Advice Centre, from the anti-eviction campaign, Richard Pithouse etc.

Workshop 3: Relocations versus Upgrades

Marie Huchzermeyer, Witswaterstand University

Housing Policy – to make architects think more critically about what they do in this regard.

• Everything is on powerpoint

Highlights difference between local and national approaches and politics regarding slum housing. Durban municipality uses a very different language, dangerously close to that of the Apartheid era.

Questions:

Fazel: table with new braking ground shows contradiction and needs to go out to the whole community just like the other pamphlet. Government wants to sell Durban South area to business; can we not apply for 5,000,000 rand from the government to build the 20,000 necessary houses?

Responses: Blends in with discussion in strategy.

Brake New Ground: 3 Jo burg settlements: lawyer repeatedly quoting from braking new ground. This has worked in the sense of getting the municipality to consider in-situ upgrading rather than relocating.

Apply for funding? The municipality would have to apply through the local government, which would mean getting support from the municipality. The community itself cannot apply for that funding.

National Government is on our side – how do we get eThekwini municipality to side up with it? The answer is that the media strategy is key here;

Someone proposes to have an action next year, coordinated between people from all over the country: no matter ho w much you lobby the government they cannot feel the pain of people living in shacks. No point in sitting down and talking: all nine provinces in South Africa have to work together.

Question: Relocation: If we agree on relocation and six months later the city comes to evict us then what? The city plays very clever and the relocation idea is very, very dangerous. Coordination between settlements is very important.

The advantage with in-situ upgrades is that you wouldn t be weeding out those who don t qualify and not help those who don t; you would be upgrading the settlement as a whole and thus helping the entire community.

Workshop 4: Legal Strategies

Stuart Wilson and Marie Huchzermeyer: Legal strategies for advancing housing agenda

Starts with a question put to Marie: is there a possibility of enforcing the implementation of braking new ground?

This session is not for Stuart to hand a legal strategy: we have to come up with a political strategy in a away that makes sense for us… Decide what our main aims are and strategies for achieving them and where/when the law slots into that.

3 topics:

1) The hardware, machinery needed to evoke law effectively
2) where is law evoked?
3) General observations about the relevant legal issues here.

1) In order to properly exploit any of today s legal avenues first step we have to take is to get the dedicated time of a lawyer. Not any lawyer! It has to be someone who knows and understands our struggles, someone who has the guts to stand up and someone who does not understand law in a traditional way… being a lawyer who simply takes on individualised cases. They have to have a sense of what your movement stands for. Sense of the movement s objectives, strategic weaknesses of the opposition (i.e. municipality ), to have a sense of how to work with a movement that has political strategies which often can clash with the law. And of course to know how the law works and how it can be used effectively.
Equally most important quality of the lawyer: There are two conceptions of law, one of it as a sum, values at one end, answers at the other and the laws tell you how to do it. But law is not like that: it is a game, with different players exploiting different resources at different times and your lawyer should understand this.
Your lawyer s job is to achieve your objectives with the given values. They need to find a way through for you, not a set of prescriptive principles that are limiting and narrow. Rules are flexible and can be strategically exploited! Put simply, you need a lawyer that looks at the law and sees what is possible, not what is impossible.
2) Ways in which law can be evoked. Breaking new ground policy… meetings with officials… principles of BNG need to be evoked every day, every single time you are in contact with someone from the council. Moving towards meeting housing needs… constitutional rights need to be one of the central things you talk about :educate each other and make clear to the people you re talking to that you will not be made fun of. Examples: public participation exercises that each municipality has to adopt; public meetings you can go to. Go as abahlali, take over the meetings and talk about your housing rights. Where the state opens up these spaces, you should be there to fill them in. The state is like a rock with cracks in it: you fill them with water, it freezes and opens up the cracks even more; your space gets bigger.
3) Biggest problem: manner in which municipality engages with you (which is not at all!), flavour of ignorance of the law in the way they engage with you. Getting into court at the moment, you would want to consider whenever the municipality tries to demolish shacks, get indecent (legal document preventing one from doing something that might be illegal). A few of those and the municipality will realise it will not have an easy ride. Make damage claims on behalf of people who had their property destroyed. Make more trouble for the municipality, make it hard for them to get away with demolishing shacks.
Two other strategies: force them to implement BNG policy – one way, if you are in a settlement that has been earmarked for relocation, then that decision is an administrative decision and it can be reviewed according to the Just Administration Act. For example: you can review the decision on that there has been no effort to take into account the possibility of BNG. That does not force them to implement BNG but with the assistance of media and protest you can force them to make the decision you want them to make.
If you ever find yourself facing an eviction application: unlimited facts can be taken into account by the court when considering to grant this order or not.

Workshop 5: Housing Aims and Strategies

Ashraf Cassiem of the anti-eviction campaign.

Experiences of legal strategy in Western Cape. Why is it that we need a legal strategy? We must remember that the law as a strategy is not even 1% of our struggle. It is not on our side. We must consider it, but not as a main form of our action. In Cape Town we have always used resisting evictions when they occur. In some communities there is no organisation, or they are not taking up the issue of evictions. In those cases what we have done is that we have an advocate exactly as Stuart recommended, who looked at the law critically and looked for the gaps in this law, who wanted to help… But he could not take on 50-60 cases/day! So what we did is that he asked seven of us to go through a crash course in law. He bought books on law and he said, read it . And then we took a six month crash course in law with him. We only oppose cases if the community is not mobilised. In court there is a five step procedure:

First you meet outside the court room. When the judge arrives you introduce yourself, explain what case you are defending. Then you leave, but you know he expects someone to represent the standing, which hence now becomes a hearing. You explain that you are not a lawyer but that you have formed an association and according to the constitution (clause 25e) an association has the right to represent its members.
When in court you have to focus exclusively at your procedure, never actually look at them, they re way too intimidating! Go into court, represent yourself, etc. So you do not end up arguing the eviction, you argue representation: “why are you representing this case” etc. Which means the case gets a postponement. Then next time you re on court the struggle begins, as you can show up with members of the community, people who will be effected by the ruling – that has a tremendous effect on the magistrates and judges, to see in face the people who are to be effected by their ruling. So you have bought some time to mobilise the community for that particular case.
Each case that you take up, you have to do properly. Go to the family s house and write down everything you can: when and where they were born, how they were treated under the Apartheid, everything. Include everything from the apartheid to colonialism and privatisation today. You will end up with a 55-page document and no lawyers will try to oppose it because it is just too long! Another way of doing this is that you prepare one of these on the family and you insist that you give evidence verbally. That can waste seven days in court easily. You need a person or group of people that will be doing this day in, day out – a person that will not have a life!!

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Summary of the day:

What we started on the 4th of September is far from over: the municipality is breaking the law and it is up to use here and up to the movement to make some harsh decisions and to move forward.

Responses were taken to experts dealing with housing policies and one of the experts came with depressing outcomes, saying there s nothing we can do. Another said of course there is much we can do, excerpt pressure…

Request is not answered and if it is, it is not what the abahlali wanted. We can safely say there is a lot of work to do and the wealth of knowledge that has come from this room give more weight to the argument that the municipality has broken the law.

Challenge for Abahlali is to discuss what to do re the unsatisfactory results given by the municipality.

Nationally, our future is in our hands! Let s join in and fight…