Can’t this city of prosperity find accommodation for 50 families?

June 10, 2009 Edition 1

The Catholic Justice and Peace Commission paid a pastoral visit to the people of Macassar in Nkanini and has these comments:

The ink from the recent national and provincial elections has not yet dried and peeled off our left thumbs and already the poor of our province, with their children as small as one month old, have been left to fend for themselves in wintry conditions.The judge, the premier, the mayor, the politician, all go home after deciding on the fate of 50 families who have been evicted from a piece of land they have called their home for more than two years. Their shack materials have been confiscated by the powers that be.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/western_cape

April 7, 2009
The Nation

An Open Letter from the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa to US Activists

To: All poor Americans and their communities in resistance

The privatization of land–a public resource for all that has now become a false commodity–was the original sin, the original cause of this financial crisis. With the privatization of land comes the dispossession of people from their land which was held in common by communities. With the privatization of land comes the privatization of everything else, because once land can be bought and sold, almost anything else can eventually be bought and sold.

PRESS RELEASE FROM eMASANGWENI COMMUNITY
9 January 2009

eMasangweni Community Still Awaits Justice for 2006 Farm Killing

In 2006, two school boys from eMasangweni were killed at an area farm by two employees of Farm Watch. Five boys were crossing a sugarcane field on the afternoon of June 17. After being spotted in the field they were chased by Farm Watch; and after surrendering to the guards, two boys were fatally shot. Thembinkosi Mpanza, age 19, was shot in the head and died instantly. Vukani Shange, age 15, died a few months later from gunshot wounds to his abdomen.

Tuesday, 25 November 2008
eMacambini Anti-Removal Committee Press Statement

Ten Thousand to March on S’bu Ndebele in Protest at eMacambini Evictions

Date: Wednesday 26 November 2008
Time: 10:00
Route: From Isithebe airstrip to the Mandeni Municipal Offices

At least ten thousand people are expected to march on KwaZulu-Natal Premier S’bu Ndebele tomorrow morning. A memorandum will be handed to the Premier warning him to immediately retract his plans to evict 10 000 families from eMacambini and to cease his collaboration with new forms of colonialism.

29 October 2008
Landless People’s Movement Press Release

Join Gauteng landless communities (Freedom Park, Protea Glen Bond Houses, Protea South Informal Settlement, Precast-Lenasia Extension 11, Chiawelo, Tembalihle Crisis Committee, Eldorado Park, Harry Gwala Informal Settlement)in a peaceful March demanding free basic services, the removal of the useless ward councillors and a halt to mass evictions. On the 30th October 2008, the march will start at Peacemakers Ground in Protea South and then proceed to Old Potch road and Union Road to deliver a memorandum to the Premier of Gauteng Paul “Mathousand” Mashatile.

Statement in solidarity after the Foreman Road fire

Power to the Poor

Even if our whole settlement burns down, the reality is the land on which our community lives will remain our home. A fire, like the devastating one yesterday at Foreman Rd, will not change the way we view our homes. No matter how disadvantaged our communities are, we will not allow individuals who are on power to label our homes as slums because once we allow that they'll will want to eliminate our homes and throw us in unsuitable asbestos filled temporary relocation areas.

These unnecessary fires can be prevented if our government was caring and democratic. But this government is only democratic and caring about issues that matter to their pocket book. Whatever we, as shack-dwellers, say to them does not matter. Only our votes matter so that they can attain more power and enrich themselves further.

"Hands off the MST Brazil!" say South African social movements

7 August 2008

To the poor of the world, to all people of good will who work for progressive change

We, the landless and homeless people and associated activists of South Africa, decry the secret campaign by the so-called Workers' Party (PT) government of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul to criminalise, outlaw and otherwise illegitimately harass our landless comrades of the MST.

Under PT governance, Rio Grande do Sul has made substantial sums of money off hosting four World Social Forums – and yet that same government is now cynically using its militarised police forces to wage a clandestine war against Brazil's most important, poor-driven social movement.