http://www.dailynews.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5234313

South Durban residents in service delivery march

November 06, 2009 Edition 2

MPUME MADLALA

More than 250 South Durban residents and Abahlali baseMjondolo supporters marched down Pixley Kasema (West) Street to Durban City Hall to protest against poor service delivery.

The marchers, mostly dressed in white Wentworth Development Forum T-shirts, shouted slogans like: "Down with Eskom's high rates" and carried banners reading "Dear mayor, please fire Sutcliffe", "Logie Naidoo, please bring Clairwood back to former glory" and "Stop the talk implement the upgrade of Wentworth".

http://www.dailynews.co.za/?fArticleId=5095860

Looting sprees to continue
94 arrested for protest thefts at supermarkets

July 23, 2009 Edition 3

MPUME MADLALA

PROTESTERS behind the looting of two Durban supermarkets have pledged to continue targeting food retailers to highlight their hunger and desperation.

One of the supermarkets has announced, in the wake of surprise invasions yesterday which saw 94 people arrested, that it would pursue prosecutions in each and every case.

KwaZulu-Natal has been hardest hit by the recession in terms of job losses, and the SA Unemployed Peoples' Movement (SAUPM) said today the food snatches would continue until the plight of the jobless was recognised.

This is not even vaguely accurate...it is what happens when stories are written with, of all people, the police as a single source. And it must be noted that there are always attempts to slander the victims of shack fires - most often as ungrateful quarrelling drunkards who cause the fires and then reject help.In fact the police arrived long after the fire brigade who had already got the blaze under control. There was a clash with the police after they tried to arrest a woman who had been blamed for the fire. People resisted the attempt at arrest and then started shooting with rubber bullets. They always shoot at any crowd of people in or coming from a shack settlement. Negotiation is not on their agenda. Not ever. It was after they started shooting that the stones were thrown. The actions of the police, and what they told this journalist, was just more of their usual attempts to blame the victims. The Kennedy Committee has to intervene and explain to the police that their job was to protect this woman.

Click here for pictures of police injuries.

http://www.themercury.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=vn20081205110652344C943369

Police 'shoot' Macambini protesters
5 December 2008, 11:47
By Mpume Madlala

Angry Macambini residents near Mandini on Thursday said they were shocked at the brutality of the police, saying that the treatment meted out to them smacked of the apartheid regime.

At least 10 people were arrested and several injured when a crowd of 3 000 people clashed with police.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=124&art_id=vn20081111111710380C561956

'They gave our homes away'

November 11 2008 at 02:41PM
By Mpume Madlala

Desperate Clermont residents who waited 16 years for low-cost houses say
they have resorted to using force after seeing the homes allocated to
them being given to other people.

The residents accuse the local councillor, Neli Nyanisa, of putting
people on the list for the New Germany development Harmony Heights ahead

http://www.dailynews.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4541813

Eight die in Cato Crest shack fires
People watch girl (9) die

August 04, 2008 Edition 1

MPUME MADLALA

SHACK dwellers in Cato Crest watched helplessly as a nine-year-old girl burned to death after her home caught fire in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The young girl was one of eight people killed in two separate fires there on the same day.

Three adults, including a pregnant woman and four children, aged seven months, two, the nine-year-old and a 14-year-old, died when their shack was gutted.

The notorious Lennox Mabaso strikes again....Once again the poor are blamed for failing to endure the consequences of poverty without accident or complaint while any attempt to hold the state accountable for the conditions in which people are forced to live is considered unacceptable....At least this time Mabaso doesn't make wild allegations about the movement being under the sway of a 'foreign intelligence agent bent on destabalizing South Africa' and hasn't issued any threats of arrest against the leadership....That's his usual style. Maybe the Daily Sun needs to renew its call for Mabaso to spend some time living in a shack before he comments on shack life again.

http://www.dailynews.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4506205

Blaze guts 80 homes
Settlement fire leaves 200 homeless

July 14, 2008 Edition 3

MPUME MADLALA

SCORES of shacks went up in flames in the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Clare Estate this morning, as firefighters battled to bring the blaze under control.

Black smoke billowed into the sky, drifting across Durban, and could be seen kilometres away.

By 10am, firefighters had doused most of the flames and had managed to contain the fire to a corner of the settlement.