Water For All Campaign – Cape Town

In the townships of Cape Town the latest instrument and symbol of evil is a round, stainless steel disk about 2 millimetres thick with a diameter between 2 and 4 centimetres and a puncture of less than a millimetre in the centre.

WATER FOR ALL COALITION PRESS KIT
(Version with pictures attached)

The “water for all campaign” is comprised of community based organisations, unions, academics and students working together to fight privatization and to ensure that all people have access to basic services including access to water. The campaign works in poor and working class communities in and around Cape Town, South Africa.

In the townships of Cape Town the latest instrument and symbol of evil is a round, stainless steel disk about 2 millimetres thick with a diameter between 2 and 4 centimetres and a puncture of less than a millimetre in the centre.

When you cannot afford to pay your water bill the local government sends you a final demands notice known as a pink letter, because it is printed on pink paper. If you are unable settle you bill local government sends its agents to put a disk in your supply pipe. You then have to make do with whatever water seeps through the puncture. Put the disk to your lips and blow air through the puncture and your eyes will bulge and your throat constrict from the effort. But be careful. If the local government finds out that you have removed the waterstopper it sends its agents again to block your pipes. This time with concrete.

In a place with up to 80% unemployment and generalised absolute poverty and despair everywhere, millions face the threat of the waterstoppers. Millions have been victimised by the neo-liberal approach of the government that puts the profits of the rich above all else. The rent defaulters are evicted from their houses. The victims of Apartheid still wait on reparations and restitution. The HIV infected are denied proper treatment. The outsourced and casual workers are condemned to the status of the working poor. The manufacturing workers are thrown out of their jobs. The shackdwellers. The unemployed. The victims of murder, rape and robbery.

All these people and groups lack the means of communication with the millions of people whose solidarity is needed. The water for all campaign works with these marginalized groups in order to:

• Undertake popular education around policy and rights
• Support community based campaigns and strategies of resistence
• Link various localised campaigns
• Encourage mass resistance against waterstoppers and neo-liberalism in general.

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Daan Louw 073 356 5924

19 March 2007
WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT
Stop Water Cut-off’s in Mitchell’s Plein

Thousands of residents of Tafelsig and Olifantshoek in Mitchell’s Plein will take to the streets on the 21st of March 2007, South African Human Rights Day to claim water for all as a basic human right.

Angry residents have for months tried to get redress to the notorious pink letters to no avail. Now, hundreds of people’s only water supply has been cut off.

Many residents have prepaid electricity meters in their homes, and they say their families end up in the dark for several days each month. Senior citizens, people with disabilities, women with young children, are the most common victims of the water cut-offs.

With a hard-line, pro-business approach, the city of Cape Town has instituted an aggressive plan of debt collection with subsequent disconnection of services if residents are unable to pay the charges. This at the expense of poor residents.

Water for all Coalition member Alfreda Kennedy stated, “Water is essential to sustain life. It is enshrined in our constitution, this is part of our right to life and dignity, but daily, the right to water is violated. The cutting off of the water supply to poor areas in order to ensure profitable supply and services means that ordinary poor and working class citizens are cut off if they fall behind on their payments. This is why we are taking to the streets.”

Community organisations together with the Water for All Campaign will march on a route that stops at the households of those who have had their water disconnected and they will demand that local government stands accountable for violating their human rights.

Residents demand that, the mayor stop and reverse water cut-off’s. They are also saying no to pre-paid water meters; no to the trickle system. They are demanding free water for the poor – everyone earning less than R5000 per month.

The Water for All coalition works with groups in and around the city to fight water privatisation and defend clean and affordable water as a right.

For more information, or to schedule an interview, please contact Shereen Essof 079 383 1528, Ronald Wesso 084 459 8420, Alfreda Kennedy 083 592 215, Daan Louw 073 356 5924, George Adams 072 226 1672, Veronica Abrams 073 635 9181

“I didn’t know what to do without water, I am borrowing from a neighbor now. I make R 800 a month, my husband is paid R 1 200, I don’t even buy anything, and the money is gone for the month.”
– Rachel Classen, 49

Rachel Claasen, 49, has lived in a one-bedroom house in Lost City for 10 years. She shares her home with her husband, 5 children and 2 grandchildren. The family has constructed a shack as an addition to their home to add more room to sleep. Rachel’s home has had no water for 3 weeks. She has been borrowing her water from a neighbor. When she began to receive notices that her water would be cut-off, Rachel went to the city council. They told her that since she did not own the home, she could not make a payment arrangement with them.

Financially, Rachel’s household income could not withstand making payments on the more than R 10 000 she owes in arrears. Rachel works as a counselor for people living with HIV/AIDS in Mitchell’s Plein and makes R 800 a month for her work. Her husband works for a builder who pays him R 1 200 a month.

While the council sorts these bureaucratic matters out, Rachel’s family, which struggles to buy food, must find water like hundreds of families in Mitchell’s Plein.