For pictures click here.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-08-24-its-our-duty-not-to-be-silent

News | National | Land & Housing
'It's our duty not to be silent'
PEARLIE JOUBERT | CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - Aug 24 2008 06:00

After 15 years of fighting with government and the Cape Town municipality about their right to live in Langa, the Joe Slovo community finally had their day in the Constitutional Court this week.

Opposing their right to continue living in Cape Town's Langa township -- earmarked for housing development -- were Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, government-appointed housing agency Thubelisha Homes, former Western Cape housing minister Richard Dyantyi and the city of Cape Town.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-08-07-party-tricks-and-power-play

Party tricks and power play
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, KWAZULU-NATAL - Aug 07 2008 06:00

If enough wine has flowed during an evening, eThekwini municipal manager Michael Sutcliffe has been known to start balancing empty bottles on his bald pate.

This late night party trick serves as a metaphor for what Sutcliffe feels is the hardest job he's done: managing South Africa's third-largest metropolitan area with close to 3,5-million residents and an annual budget of R17,4-billion.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-07-10-destitute-cold-hungry-and-beaten-up

caught on cellphone:
* http://www.youtube.com/v/WBY0v2yx81Q
* http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8426042120707645558&hl=en

Destitute, cold, hungry — and beaten up
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Jul 10 2008 17:46

A pregnant Congolese woman was beaten by private security guards hired by the eThekwini municipality on Thursday evening as foreign nationals displaced by xenophobia staged a sit-in on the steps of Durban’s City Hall.

'Apartheid state remains'
Ferial Haffajee
28 May 2008 06:00

Often, when I read your articles, I wonder, who is writing? Malcolm X of Ku Klux Klan-era America or Andile Mngxitama of liberated Azania. Is your thesis of the world and of your country not caught in the past?

The Ku Klux Klan and lynching have simply mutated into the prison industrial complex, the electric chair and the needle. Black America is still under siege.

Liberated Azania is a nice thought, but if you have seen what I have seen then you’d be less celebratory. What do you think the millions of landless and hungry would say to this or the harassed and criminalised Abahlali baseMjondolo [a shack-dwellers’ movement in KwaZulu-Natal] or the communities facing violent forced removals from platinum areas in Limpopo and the North West?

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=326470&area=/insight/insight__national/

A lethal find
Pearlie Joubert
01 December 2007 11:59

A massive row is brewing between the Joe Slovo squatter community and the government after a Cape Town professor found the presence of the lethal crocidolite asbestos in material similar to that used to build the walls of temporary houses in Delft -- a suburb outside Cape Town where government wants to move this 25 000-strong community.

Crocidolite is the most lethal carcinogenic known and, if inhaled, causes mesothelioma, an aggressive and untreatable lung cancer. South Africa is believed to have the world’s highest rate of masothelioma and one of the highest rates of asbestosis.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=321174&area=/insight/insight__national/

When Cape Judge President John Hlophe ordered a nine-week postponement to the state's attempt to evict about 25 000 Joe Slovo residents from their shacks in Langa, the 2 000 people outside court broke into wild celebratory song.

The 6 000 households of Joe Slovo have been opposing government's attempts to remove them from this piece of land bordering the N2 highway for close to three years now. Every week people are allowed to stay in Joe Slovo is seen as another victory against the state's attempt to remove them forcibly to the outskirts of Cape Town.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=320524&area=/insight/insight__national/

Courtroom number one in the Cape Town High Court is proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

On Wednesday, an entire Bench in court was taken up by senior government and housing officials all anxious to secure eviction orders so they can start the relocation of about 5 000 homeless Joe Slovo residents -- “relocation” is the preferred term used by the political authorities these days for “forced removals”.

Outside court 1 500 residents of Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa sat in the road patiently waiting to hear their fate. When local leaders announced the judge’s ruling of an eight-day stay of execution the ululations and cheers could be heard for blocks.

http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=319877&area=%2finsight%2finsight__national%2f

An oppressive pall hangs over the Motala Heights informal settlement in Pinetown near Durban. It comes not from the dump site nearby the wood-and-iron houses nor from sewage, but rather from the clampdown on basic civil liberties -- the freedom of movement and political association.

“Ever since we became more aware of our rights and started fighting for them we have been living with this sense of threat from the landlord [Ricky Govender],” says resident Shamita Naidoo, who lives on a property adjacent to Govender. “He has sent me a letter saying I am prohibited from entering his land -- where my mother lives, in the house my parents built and where I was born. I will be arrested otherwise.”

(For the archive)
http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=241580&area=%2fmonitor%2f
25 May 2005

In March 19, 750 people from the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Clare Estate, Durban, blockaded Kennedy Road with burning tires and mattresses for four hours.

Residents in the informal settlement had been promised for more than a decade that a small spit of land in nearby Elf Road would be made available to them for the development of housing. They were participating in discussions about the development of this housing when bulldozers began clearing the land. People were shocked to be told that a brick factory was being built.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=313154&area=/insight/insight__editorials/

Red alert

06 July 2007 07:18
If the wealth-gap is the most dangerous fault line in South African society, then service delivery protests are a seismograph charting the anger of desperate people whose government is failing them.

However you count the protests, the indicators are now in the red.

This week angry residents at Deneysville in the Free State killed an ANC councillor, an indication that the protests are increasing not only in number, but also in violence.

ANC leaders blamed the opposition United Democratic Movement for stoking resentment, but that was possible only because the fuel of bitterness and frustration was running so deep.