Category Archives: Democratic Alliance

The Nomzamo Eviction: A Potential Turning Point?

http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/2041

The Nomzamo Eviction: A Potential Turning Point?

Richard Pithouse

The destruction of the Nomzamo settlement in Lwandle, Cape Town, has received an extraordinary degree of political and media attention, much of it noting the illegality and brutality of the eviction, and much of it sympathetic to the occupiers.

Evictions, generally illegal and frequently violent, have been an everyday part of actually existing modes of urban governance in post-apartheid South Africa. Most of the major cities have units maintained for the sole purpose of mobilising state violence, usually unlawfully, to combat land occupations. But despite the routine violence and illegality of these actions, as well as their striking resonance with images from the past, they have, in practice, been broadly accepted as necessary and legitimate actions by both the ANC and the DA, as well as much of the media and civil society.

Continue reading

The ANC Must be removed from Office

06 May 2014

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

 

The ANC Must be removed from Office

For nine years our movement has boycotted elections. We have been clear that no political party represents the interests of the poor and that it was necessary for us to build our own power in order to present our own needs and demands to society. In these nine years we have won many victories but most of us remain in shacks. Twenty years of shack life is a disgrace in a democracy.

Corruption is also a disgrace. In Durban you get nothing without a membership card for the ANC. All development goes through the councillors and their ward committees and ANC branch executive committees. Development is there to make ANC leaders rich and to control the rest of us by only making it available to ANC members. Development is not for the people. This kind of corruption is a disgrace in a democracy.

But an even bigger disgrace is the repression that we have faced from the ANC, its members, its leaders and its assassins. They have banned our marches; attacked our marches; arrested us on trumped up charges; assaulted us in detention; used armed men to drive us from our homes with police support; used death threats, attacks in our homes and torture in police stations to intimidate people to manufacture evidence against us; detained us for months and months while we wait for a trial that gets thrown out of court because there is no evidence against us; used their anti-land invasion unit to evict us for political reasons and beaten and shot us in our communities. Senior members of the ANC and the Municipality have made public death threats against us. Two activists were assassinated in Cato Crest last year and another, an unarmed teenage girl, was executed by the police.

Continue reading

UPM: Election 2014: Our Position

Monday, 05 May 2014

Unemployed People’s Movement Press Statement

 

Election 2014: Our Position

The Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) has endorsed the 'Sidikiwe! Vukani! Vote No!' campaign. We are calling on our members to refuse to vote for the ANC and vote for any of the small parties, but not the DA, or to spoil their votes if they cannot bring themselves to support any of the small parties.

We have received a number of calls from people wanting to know our stance on the decision by Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) in Durban to offer a tactical vote to the DA in response to the serious repression that they have experienced from the ANC.

Continue reading

The Abahlali/DA pact: difficult situations require difficult decisions

http://www.polity.org.za/article/the-abahlalida-pact-difficult-situations-require-difficult-decisions-2014-05-05

by Raymond Suttner

In observing the current election campaigns one is struck by the lack of debate and vacuousness of ideas circulated in order to win votes.  Silences may tell more than what is said.

Insofar as opposition parties present themselves as alternatives to the Zuma-led ANC, can they say they have addressed the most important features of that government they purport to oppose and ask us to entrust them with replacing? They have referred to some of the most glaring cases of corruption, as in Nkandla, but there has been little concern about the way in which the lives of people at a less visible, local level are affected.

Continue reading