Millions pumped into Jika Joe re-settlement programme
07 May 2008
Sandile Waka-Zamisa

Jika Joe shack dwellers who were displaced by floods early this year
will be housed in a temporary establishment while construction of
permanent accommodation is under way.

A budget of R4,3 million has been allocated for the emergency settlement
programme. More than 200 people who are currently staying in tents
provided by the Msunduzi disaster management will be accommodated near
Masukwana (East) Street.

The emergency settlement programme comes after hundreds of people were
displaced in floods in January and February.

(Mnikelo is from Foreman Road, not Kennedy Road and S'bu and the meeting in general stressed the need for mass mobilization and legal strategies and discussed, carefully, how to ensure that the later don't weaken the former)

Shack dwellers to oppose ‘slum’ bill
•Mon, 16 Jul 2007

By Thabisile Gumede

THE Abahlali baseMjondolo (shack dwellers'’) Movement, an organisation of shack dwellers with members in more than 40 informal settlements in the province, has vowed to oppose the KZN Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Bill, 2006 by all means necessary.

This was revealed at a meeting to discuss legal and political strategies to oppose the slums bill on Friday at the Kennedy Road settlement community hall.

Housing policy ‘anti-poor’
•Tue, 19 Jun 2007

By Thabisile Gumede

MSUNDUZI’S low-income housing policy has been criticised by housing rights organisations for being regressive and anti-poor.

A document sent to city officials and residents by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) and the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) states that the general lack of affordable housing in the city has led to an increase in the number of informal settlements.

The two organisations embarked on a joint investigation of possible housing rights’ violations after the 2005 Willow Gardens estate evictions.

Dissent Can Still Get You Killed

On Youth Day we are asked to gather in stadiums to hear big men celebrate what our democracy offers to ordinary people. A better way to celebrate the spirit of the Soweto Uprising would be to listen to what ordinary people have to say to big men. But this, in Durban anyway, remains dangerous.

In the march local government elections there were two primary challenges to the ANC from within the poor and working class African constituencies that it claims as its own. In the shack settlements nestled into the valleys in the suburbs of Clare Estate and Reservoir Hills longstanding ANC supporters were unhappy with their councillors. They felt that the nomination process had been rigged and decided to boycott the election under the slogan ‘No Land, No House, No Vote’. Across town in Umlazi township, a group of longstanding ANC and SACP activists were unhappy with their councillor, Bhekisasa Xulu, and claimed that he had withheld ANC membership cards to engineer his renomination despite widespread unhappiness with his conduct. They decided to put up an independent candidate, Zamani Mthethwa, to oppose Xulu. In both instances the response to these expressions of open dissent was swift, brutal and clearly illegal.

Tongaat-Hulett are the colonial and apartheid era sugar plantation barons and the largest landowner in Durban who have now diversified into property development. After the savage repression of a Abahlali protest against Mayor Mlaba made it into the New York Times and The Economist Mlaba (a former manager at Hulett's) announced a deal that would resettle shackdwellers on land owned by Tongaat-Hulett. Although the deal has disappeared without a trace, the profits of the group continue to rise with all kinds of public subsidies from the Municipality sweetening things up for the company that made its money on stolen land and with indentured labour. So it goes...