Sweet Home Farm: This is who we are, don’t listen to the politicians

Statement by Sweet Home Farm Residents’ Committee
21 September 2012

(See also, this independent report on our community published in the Mail & Guardian)

We will march on the mayor and premier on the 1st of October!

We write this letter as a committee that represents the residents of Sweet Home Farm, a shack settlement in Philippi with about 15,000 people living in poverty, with very bad health problems and almost no services.

Our community is angry and we are fed up at the empty promises of our Councillor (ANC) and our Mayor (DA). They promise service delivery and then when it comes time to deliver, they ignore us. But then they want us to vote for them? This is not democracy. Helen Zille says that we are ANC Youth League. But none of us are from the Youth League. We are not even ANC. We are from all political parties – including the DA

This is why we take to the streets. We are demanding that government deliver on their promises and treat us as human beings with dignity. It doesn’t matter what political party we vote for, we are all human.

How government ignored us:

During 2011 and early 2012, the community committee tried to engage with our councillor for Ward 80, Thembinkosi Pupa, and other members of government. We were ignored.

Eventually the community was so fed up that on the 5th of March 2012, the community decided to take to the streets. Some of us took our chemical toilets to the corner of Duinefontein and Landsdowne road where the toilets were burned.

Finally the councillor responded. We had a meeting with Cllr. Pupa where we told him that government sees the people in our community as lacking value and not worthy of dignity. We have been living in Sweet Home Farm for almost twenty years but still don’t see any changes in our living conditions.

Cllr. Pupa said he has tried to work with the City but they did not answer his calls. He then requested that we accompany him to go directly to the Civic Centre for a meeting. Five of us joined Cllr. Pupa at the Civic Centre where we had a meeting with Mayor Patricia de Lille and Mayco housing member Ernest Sonnenberg who then showed us a document explaining that the City had bought the privately owned land on which Sweet Home is situated in December 2011. She promised to us that by the 1st of July 2012, the city would begin upgrading the settlement and specifically providing us with electricity, paved access roads and a sewage system.

A week before the 1st of July, our chairperson, Siya James, called Johan Gerber who the Mayor said was in charge of the project to make sure that everything remained on track. However, Mr. Gerber then said he will be on leave for four weeks and began ignoring our phone calls and attempts to meet with him. The 1st of July came and went with no communication from government officials.

It was at this point that Cllr. Pupa and Mr. Sonnenberg also began ignoring our calls and requests for meetings. Our committee then went to the Sub-council in Ottery where they played dumb and pretended to know nothing about our situation.

After weeks of being played around with and ignored, we called a mass meeting on the 30th of July, where we reported the situation back to the community.

So we protested again:

The community, furious with being mistreated and ignored, decided all together to go protest in the streets. Early in the morning on the 31st of July, we blocked Landsdowne, Duinefontein and Vanguard roads. Some community members burned tyres in the streets and a few people decided to destroy the robots at the intersection – because we don’t even use them. As the committee, we didn’t support this but we also could not stop some of the community members who were very angry.

When the police arrived, they gave us five minutes to disperse so we left the streets and went back to our homes. When we were already inside Sweet Home, the police all of a sudden followed us in and started shooting at all of us – even our family and people who had been asleep and were waking up for work. One community member, Thandikhaya, was shot in the face with a real bullet and lost his eye. We have empty bullet casings to prove this.

Because of our protest, the City finally stopped ignoring us. We were visited the next day by Lwandiso Stofile from the Mayor’s office along with many others. They promised to start the development immediately as long as we stop protesting. Still, a few days later, the City was back to ignoring us. Mr. Stofile was also now dropping our phone calls.

This is just another example of their empty promises.

If the government treated us as human beings, we would not take to the streets. But they threat us like we do not matter. The only way our voice can be heard is through protest.

And again:

On the 1st of October, the Sweet Home community has decided once again to take to the streets. We have raised money to bring residents all the way to Cape town and we plan to march to the Mayor and to the Premier.

Do you think they will meaningfully engage with us this time?
Do you think they will fulfil their many empty promises this time?

If you want to find out more about Sweet Home and our struggle, contact:
Siya @ 0730151454
Nosipho @ 0783399794
Lindiwe @ 0834708903

* Click here to read the ground-breaking report on Sweet Home Farm.