[Note - this story was scheduled for inclusion in the first issue of Izwi Labampofu, but was omitted for reasons of space].

It’s not just shackdwellers who suffer from the imperial behaviour of the eThekwini Municipality. It has been happening to residents in South Durban too. At the end of November, the Deputy Mayor Logie Naidoo announced that pockets of residential land would be rezoned for commercial purposes, right next door to peoples’ homes.

The effect of this would be to turn back the clock to the Apartheid era, with poor black residents being placed side by side with polluting businesses, and with toxic waste being produced right next to the places where families eat, and children play. And those families who object, or who get in the way, will be subject to forced removal.