http://www.dailynews.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5625422.
Women protest at poor service delivery
August 30, 2010 Edition 2
Vuyolwethu Gwala
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has taken flak from irate female shack dwellers and occupants of low-income municipal rental flats who claimed the government was sidestepping serious service delivery complaints.
Marching under the banner of the Abahlali baseMjondolo Women’s League, the protesters were hoping to hand over a memorandum to Zuma in Durban on Friday, and were not amused to learn he was out of the country.
Abahlali baseMjondolo, the South African shack dwellers’ movement, and its women’s league members marched through the city centre to voice their dissatisfaction over the lack of service delivery and adequate housing by the government.
“It’s funny how, when Zuma needed our vote he came to our houses, but now that we are demanding what is due to us, he is too busy to come to us,” said Bandile Mdlalose, the organisation’s general secretary.
Mdlalose said that during Women’s Month they, as women living in poverty, had felt sidelined by the government because little was done to improve their lives.
She said Abahlali had previously handed over memoranda to officials, but was unsure if these had reached the president’s office because there had been no response.
Mdlalose said on Friday they would give Zuma seven working days to respond to their grievances. “Failing which, we will resort to plan B,” she said, without elaborating.
Among other demands, the women wanted the government to build houses, provide them with proper sanitation as well as water and electricity.
They also complained that municipal housing rentals were too high.
They called for job creation, full transparency in the awarding of government tenders and an end to corruption by government officials.
Nonkululeko Gogwana, of Richmond Farm, south of Durban, said she had been living in a one-room shack for 32 years with her two sons and daughter.
“It’s degrading. My boys need their privacy, but there is no such thing in a one-room shack,” she said, urging Zuma to come and see the horrible conditions they were living in.
Robert Sibiya, a representative of the Department of Human Settlements in KZN, said he would forward the memorandum to the Office of the Presidency. However, he was not sure what would happen thereafter because the matter was, he said, out his department’s hands.