March on the Housing Department in Joza, Grahamstown, Today at 12

05/05/2011

The Rebellion of the Poor Continues in Grahamstown
March on the Housing Department in Joza, Grahamstown, Today at 12

On the 1st of May 2011 the people of Sun City barricaded the roads and set alight tires. Sun City is a shack settlement in Grahamstown. The land was occupied and the first shacks erected in 1982. Since 1982 the people on Sun City continue to use the bucket system to shit. There are no houses, no electricity and no roads. Sun City is a broken place. After 17 years in power the ANC have completely failed to develop it into a decent community fit for human beings.

The residents of Sun City are rebelling because:

• The Makana Municipality will be sending back R 53 Million to the Provincial government at the end of the current financial year because they failed to spend this money.
• The Makana municipality could not account for R 19 Million during the 2010/11 financial year
• The Makana Municipality could not account for R 24 million during the 2009/10 financial year
• The Mayor is indebted to Makana Municipality for an amount of R 60 000 for his person use
• The ruling party is recycling and imposing councillors on people
• There are high level of injustices at the hand of the ruling party
South Africa is the second most unequal country in the world after Namibia and Grahamstown remains one of the most unequal cities in South Africa. This is a disgrace. Inequality has got worse under the rule of the ANC.

The Sun City residents’ demands are for:

Electricity: The majority of people including Sun City residents don’t have access to electricity and, especially with all the shack fires around the country, electricity is required urgently.
Water: Water scarcity and crises continue without any meaningful interventions from the local authorities.
Jobs: Unemployment continues to be hovering around 70% despite UPM’s call for labour absorbing programmes by the municipality.
Housing: There is a general lack of housing. The RDP houses that have been built are a drop in the ocean and even the few RDP houses that have been built are crumbling down.
Democracy and Freedom: People did not fight and dies for only the freedom to vote every few years but to govern themselves, control their destiny and restore their sovereignty every day.
An end to economic oppression: Economic oppression is so rife and scary in South Africa. The economy needs to be democratised.

The residents of the Transit Camp in Grahamstown have decided to go to protest today, the 5th of May 2011. They will march on the Housing Department in Joza at 12.

The RDP houses that they are supposed to move into cannot be finished because the contractors have not received their money from the provincial government for over six months now. This means that the long awaited houses that people have been promised will not be finished once again. Because their houses are not ready they are still shitting in buckets and some of these buckets will be taken to the housing department.

This is not the first time that a housing project has stalled because the government has not paid the contractors. This has happened before in eLuxolweni. And in eVukani the houses were built but they were built so badly that they are falling down

U.P.M. Publicity Secretary
Xola Mali
072 299 5253 – xola.mali@yahoo.com