(Click on the link below to read the original version of the letter on the letterhead.)

26 September 2007
Dr Lindiwe Sisulu
Minister of Housing
Private Bag X654
Pretoria
0001
Tel: +27 12 421 1309
Fax: +27 12 341 8513
Email: mareldia@housing.gov.za

Dear Minister Sisulu

RE: Relocation of Joe Slovo informal settlement residents

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) is an international human rights nongovernmental
organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, with offices throughout the world.

COHRE has consultative status with the United Nations and Observer Status with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. COHRE works to promote and protect the right to adequate housing for everyone, everywhere, including preventing or remedying forced evictions.

OPEN LETTER TO POLICE SUPERINTENDENT NAYAGER
P.O. Box 19080
Dormeton 4015
OR
3MC CAFFERTY RD
SYDENHAM 4014
SOUTH AFRICA
Sydenham-saps@saps.org.za

Dear Mr. Nayager,

Forgive me for taking your time, but I felt that, given what I have heard about you and what is going on there, I had to do everything possible to reach you in a way that, maybe, just maybe, no one has been able to do. Moreover even if others have tried, and been rebuked and/or not listened to, given the gravity of what I hear, I should nevertheless give a try to reach out to you.

I am doing this because despite all of the suffering you are alleged to have inflicted to the poor, to the Shackdwellers in Durban, I am certain that deep inside you there is a side which does tell you that the beating, the harassment, the insults, the threats of inflicting worse punishment, there is a voice deep from within you which keeps telling you to do otherwise.

[Note: Despite a number of requests before and since, the authorities refuse to give details about their housing policy to shackdwellers. The following questions - known as the "W-Questions" because they ask who, what, where, when - are a comprehensive list of unknowns concerning the government's housing policy, and were sent to Mayor Obed Mlaba on 27 November 2005. A year later, no answers have been given. The attached pdf shows the demands, and a letter from the municipality cancelling a meeting at which these questions were to be discussed.]

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TO: HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR THE HONORABLE OBED MLABA

Dear Dr Sutcliffe

RE: YOUR ONGOING DENIAL OF OUR CONSTITIONALLY GARUANTEED RIGHT TO PUBLIC PROTEST

I write on behalf of Abahlali baseMjondolo to register our organisation's protest, in the strongest terms, against the way you and other Metro authorities are dealing with our exercise of our Constitutional rights.

While you may not agree with content or urgency of the demands we press, and we would not expect you to ensconced as you are in a huge beachfront apartment, you must realise that they are legitimately posed demands seeking nothing more than what is guaranteed in the Constitution; access to housing. As we have very little money, no institutional power and limited access to the mass media, we have only our collective protest action to rely upon with which to persuade you to divert greater resources to the scandal of the housing situation in eThekwini. Where directors of Moreland, for instance, can pick up a phone to you to address their interests or the rich of Clare Estate can get your attention at a cocktail party, we are not that fortunate. Our recent experiences have convinced us that we can only attempt to influence policy formation and delivery by protesting.