http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-12-05-cops-break-up-protest-over-kzn-development

Police used pepper-spray and rubber bullets to disperse 3 000 people who had closed off a section of the N2 highway on Thursday in protest against a R44-bn development in the area.

Early morning traffic was brought to a standstill as protestors burnt tractor tyres and logs on the national highway between KwaDukuza and Richards Bay.

Disgruntled residents from the eMacambini area on KwaZulu-Natal’s north coast were protesting against KZN premier Sbu Ndebele’s failure to respond to community concerns about the proposed development.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-11-20-david-vs-goliath-in-gugulethu

David vs Goliath in Gugulethu
PEARLIE JOUBERT - Nov 21 2008 05:00

David is squaring up to Goliath in the form of a small, petite butcher staring down developers of a R350-million mall in Gugulethu.

Construction work on this massive luxury shopping mall, called Gugulethu Square, in Gugs township is under threat because owners of a 25-year-old family business are refusing to make way for the mall.

The owners of SKhoma Butchery, Thandi Kama and her sister Nolothando Koyana, inherited their business from their father. They are refusing to move out of the building from which they operate their highly successful butchery and eatery, saying the mall will only benefit the elite and not the residents of Gugs.

'New land Act like apartheid'
YOLANDI GROENEWALD - Oct 23 2008 06:00

The land ownership rights of about half of South Africa's population hinges on a landmark court action heard last week. Four communities from three different provinces are challenging the constitutionality of the controversial Communal Land Rights Act (Clara) in the Pretoria High Court.

The Act will affect about 21-million people living under traditional leadership, by handing control of their communally owned land over to traditional leaders for administration. The intention of the legislation -- scheduled to come into effect at the end of this year -- is to give millions of rural South Africans security of tenure.

Slumming it with the NGO jet-set
NIREN TOLSI: COMMENT - Oct 20 2008 05:00

The national Housing Department and Slum Dwellers International (SDI) hosted a workshop in Durban last weekend focused on building partnerships between slum-dwellers and various governments.

From this talk-shop emerged the Durban Declaration, which, according to SDI president Jockin Arputham, will serve as a "rallying point for lobby and persuasion" at the World Urban Forum, a biennial meeting established by the United Nations to examine issues of urbanisation. It will be held in the Chinese city of Nanjing in November.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-10-16-three-horsemen-visit-durban

Three horsemen visit Durban
NIREN TOLSI | DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - Oct 16 2008 06:00

In the past weeks the streets of eThekwini appear to have been preparing for the horsemen of the apocalypse.

For three weeks a wildcat bus driver strike has left miserable commuters huddled in lashing rain waiting for taxis or simply forced to walk to their destinations.

The thunder of electric storms sounds like the hooves of Pestilence's horse drumming in anticipation as the rubbish piles up in the rain because garbage collectors have also been on strike. Nineteen municipal buses and five trucks from the city's Durban solid waste (DSW) department have been torched -- the flames resembling War's red horse.

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.