Category Archives: Ashraf Cassiem

Ashraf Cassiem Speaks in Baltimore – 16 November 2009

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http://www.redemmas.org/event/1731/

Ashraf Cassiem, chairperson of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (South Africa)
Monday Nov 16, 7PM @ 2640 (2640 St. Paul St.)

The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign has been fighting since 2000 on the frontlines of the struggle for the right to the city in postapartheid, neoliberal South Africa. The AEC is a grassroots coordinating body for over 15 community organizations fighting against displacement, privatization, poverty and police brutality, organized from below by and for the poor people of the Western Cape province. Join us as we welcome Ashraf Cassiem, AEC chairperson, for a presentation of the work of the AEC.

“As coordinators of the anti-eviction campaign, we are not leaders in the traditional authoritarian sense. Instead, we are like a set of cutlery. We are the tools that are there to be used by poor communities fighting against the cruel and oppressive conditions of South African society. Power to the poor people!”

Ashraf Cassiem Speaks in Chicago – 11 November 2009

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SOUTHSIDE SOLIDARITY NETWORK & STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY present

FIGHTING DISPLACEMENT FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO CHICAGO

A Visit from Ashraf Cassiem

Ashraf Cassiem is the lead organizer of South
Africa’s Anti-Eviction Campaign in the Western Cape.

An activist from the Mitchells Plain township with a
long history in the anti-apartheid struggle, Ashraf
has been one of the leading critics of the
continuing attacks on poor people’s human rights in
South Africa after the fall of apartheid. The
Anti-Eviction Campaign has been written about and
reported on around the world for its innovative,
bold, and defiant resistance in the face of
evictions, privatization and violation of the right
to housing that have increased with the spread of
IMF and World Bank-imposed economic policies through
post-apartheid South Africa.

Fighting Displacement from South Africa to Chicago will be a chance to
hear reflections from Ashraf on the situation
confronting South Africa’s poor, the resistance they
have organized, and lessons to be learned by groups
struggling for the right to housing in a U.S.
housing market plagued by foreclosure, evictions
and destruction of public housing. Local leaders
from Southside Together Organizing for Power, a
tenant organizing group based in Woodlawn, will
share their own struggles to stop evictions and
housing demolition and engage with Ashraf and the
audience in a discussion on making local-global
connections in struggles for human rights.

Wednesday, November 11
Harper 140
7:30 P.M.
Free dinner will be served

For more information, contact Divya Sundar at
divyasundar@uchicago.edu

M&G: Small victory for homeless

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http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-06-15-small-victory-for-homeless

Cape Flats families given a reprieve from eviction, writes Glynnis Underhill

Ashraf Cassiem and 139 families who have set up home under the stars along Symphony Way in wind-swept Delft on the Cape Flats cele-brated a small victory last week after being given a reprieve in their fight against eviction.

“We’ll gladly move to houses that are safe, clean and adequate to our families’ needs,” said Cassiem, chairperson of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.
On Tuesday residents were granted a postponement of the eviction application by the City of Cape Town, acting for the Western Cape government.

Cassiem, who represented them, was delighted when acting Judge Jake Moloi ordered the families to file answering papers by June 30, and that the matter be heard on September 3.

“I’m happy that the court is finally listening to poor people who can’t afford legal representation,” said Cassiem.

The Symphony Way families illegally occupied newly completed homes intended for beneficiaries of the government’s N2 Gateway project in Delft.

When police evicted them in February last year, they erected makeshift shelters in Symphony Way, resisting removal to Blikkiesdorp, a crime-ridden “temporary relocation area”.

Cassiem said the battles of the Symphony Way community bore a striking similarity to moves to evict 20 000 shack-dwellers of the Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa in Cape Town.

These residents are being evicted to make way for housing for the controversial N2 Gateway project and are uncertain whether they will be offered housing in the “flagship” development.

Five judges of the Constitutional Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday that they would allow the eviction of Joe Slovo residents but that they had to be given alternative housing.

Joe Slovo representative Mzwanele Zulu said he had mixed feelings about the judgment.

“I’m happy, but I feel an element of disappointment. There’ll have to be negotiations with our lawyers before there are relocations.”

Welcoming the Joe Slovo judgment as “groundbreaking”, the director general of human settlements, Itumeleng Kotsoane, said it made the fast-tracking of integrated human settlements and organised progress towards “the achievement of a South Africa free of slums and informal settlements” possible.

SAPA: Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers Get Reprieve

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This article was also published in the Citizen.

COURT-DELFT
CAPE TOWN June 9 Sapa
SYMPHONY PAVEMENT DWELLERS GET REPRIEVE

There were cries of “hallelujah” in the Cape High Court on Tuesday when pavement-dwellers from Delft on the Cape Flats won a reprieve in their fight against eviction.

Acting Judge Jake Moloi “reluctantly” granted their request for a postponement of the eviction application, which was supposed to be argued on Tuesday.

He ruled instead that the matter be heard on September 3, and ordered 139 families facing eviction to file answering papers by June 30.

So far they had filed nothing, and the court did not know whether their opposition to the eviction was valid or frivolous, he said.

The application was brought by the City of Cape Town, acting on behalf of the Western Cape provincial government.

The families are among those who illegally occupied newly-completed homes in Delft intended for beneficiaries of the N2 Gateway project.

When they were evicted in February last year, they chose to erect shelters on the pavement of Symphony Way, rather than move to rudimentary corrugated-iron homes offered in a temporary settlement area nicknamed Blikkiesdorp.

The families did not have legal representation on Tuesday.

Instead, the bid for the postponement was argued on their behalf by Ashraf Cassiem of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.

“I’m happy that the court is finally listening to poor people
who cannot afford legal representation,” he told Sapa afterwards.

He said the families wanted to be evicted, but to proper homes, not a temporary relocation area.

“We will willingly go today if they make that proposal,” he said.

About 50 pavement-dwellers and their supporters, closely watched by police, attended the hearing.

They applauded when Moloi announced his decision, ululated, whistled and shouted.

Source : Sapa /dbm/clh

Date : 09 Jun 2009 13:02