Category Archives: Ekurhuleni

Two deaths, dozens of injuries and counting…An investigation into politically motivated violence against the LPM in Gauteng

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Two deaths, dozens of injuries and counting…

Investigation into politically motivated violence in eTwatwa (Gauteng) and other Landless People’s Movement affiliated settlements during May 2010

prepared by Jared Sacks for the Gauteng Landless People’s Movement
5 July 2010

Click here to download the report in pdf.

Introduction

Reports of political violence in South Africa are on the upsurge. There has been a clear increase in aggressive attempts to undermine social movement activities in the past few years. As a result of the violence, social movements activists, migrants and ethnic minorities have often been forced into exile from their communities.

The following report investigates allegations of politically-sanctioned and coordinated attacks on the Landless Peoples Movement in the informal settlement area of eTwatwa in the Municipality of Ekurhuleni in Gauteng. These attacks have resulted in the forced removal of numerous residents who have, as a direct consequence of the attacks, been forced from their homes and, often, into hiding. This report focuses on the historical context behind the attacks as well as how the attacks have affected the relevant communities.

This report is based on interviews conducted during the first weeks of June 2010. The interviews focused on the experience of landless people in eTwatwa in which 15 community-members were interviewed both individually and in groups. Interviews were also conducted with members of the Protea South community. Unless otherwise cited, all the information contain within the report is the product of these anonymous interviews and empirical evidence gained from the investigations into the events of May 2010.

For comment from the Landless People’s Movement please contact:

Dan Mofokeng (eTwatwa) 078 679 9435

Clement (eTwatwa) 078 571 4927

Edward Leople (eTwatwa) 083 885 5009

Solly (eTwatwa) 078 498 3280

David Mathontsi (eTwatwa) 073 914 9868

Tsepo (eTwatwa Youth) 078 839 4874

Maureen Mnisi (Protea South) 082 337 4514

Bongani Xezwi (Protea South) 071 043 2221

Maas Van Wyk (Protea South) 079 267 3203

Thomas Maemganyi (Protea South) 072 613 2738

Bazino Lihlebi (Harry Gwala) 084 704 4144

Johnson Nokutwana (Harry Gwala) 078 240 5538

Moray Hathorn (lawyer for LPM) 083 266 1081

M&G: Evicted shack dwellers seek legal recourse

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http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-07-02-evicted-shack-dwellers-seek-legal-recourse

Evicted shack dwellers seek legal recourse
KARABO KEEPILE | JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Jul 02 2010 14:18

Evicted shack dwellers from Gauteng and Ekurhuleni — accused of illegally occupying council land — are now seeking legal recourse after their shacks were demolished recently. Their legal reprentatives believe they stand a good chance of winning the case because an eviction without a court order is unlawful.

Shack evictions across the country

In the lead up to and during the Soccer World Cup, South Africa experienced a string of shack demolitions.

While Durban’s Moses Mabhida stadium was being completed, thousands living in informal settlements around the area were threatened with eviction.

Residents living at an informal settlement on Durban’s Kennedy Road claimed an armed gang of about 40 men attacked residents, killing at least two people and destroying 30 shacks.

Residents, now living in Blikkiesdorp in the Western Cape — a temporary relocation area — said they were forcibly evicted from their former homes before being transported to the area.

They blamed the Soccer World Cup for the evictions.

On June 28 2010, Johannesburg shack dwellers living in Sandown claimed that 55 shacks were burnt by the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD).

The JMPD said it had the authority to demolish the shacks but denied setting them alight.

Evictions in Kliptown

Eight shack dwellers from Kliptown’s Freedom Charter Square informal settlement in Soweto have sought legal representation from the Socioeconomic Rights Institute (Seri) of South Africa, after their shacks were demolished by Johannesburg metro police officers on June 28.

The institute, which is a new NGO set up to provide legal assistance with housing, basic services, and migrant rights, said the shack dwellers had their affidavits taken on Tuesday before an urgent application was filed in the South Gauteng High Court on Wednesday. The shack dwellers want the city of Johannesburg and the metro police to restore their possession of their land and reconstruct their homes.

The eight shack owners said they had received notices from the Department of Housing’s implementation and monitoring unit, stating they had illegally occupied council land. The notices, dated June 21, were pushed under the doors of many of the shacks and gave residents seven days to vacate their premises.

The unit is responsible for ensuring that plans drawn up by the city’s housing department are implemented, such as the upgrading of informal settlements and the redevelopment of hostels.

Zoleka Ton was one of the eight Kliptown shack dwellers the M&G spoke to this week.

The Freedom Charter Square informal settlement is dusty and overpopulated. Used condoms and dead rats litter the ground between the streams of raw sewage. Longtime residents claim the informal settlement has been around since the signing of the Freedom Charter in 1955.

Ton arrived in Kliptown in 2001 from the Eastern Cape, looking for work.

“I came to live with my mom but after I had a child I decided to move.”

Ton and the father of her child built a shack in the informal settlement they call home.

She said she had refused to accept the eviction notice from an official because it did not have an official stamp but a Soccer World Cup logo instead.

“I asked them where they expected me to go but they said it wasn’t their problem.”

Ton and her child have now squeezed into her mother’s tiny shack nearby.

Zoliswa Mdleleni, also from Eastern Cape, is Ton’s neighbour.

‘I am scared to build again’

Mdleleni and her boyfriend built their two room shack when they had nowhere to live.

Mdleleni, pointing to a dusty patch which used to be their dining area and bedroom, told of how she had been planning on buying more furniture for the room.

She was was on her way to the informal settlement’s spaza shop when residents warned her to lock her shack and leave.

“I ran back so I could collect my stuff,” she said, only to find armed metro police and over a dozen men demolishing the dwelling.

Mdleleni is currently unemployed and now lives with a woman she has come to know in the area.

“I don’t know what to do and I am scared to build again because they may bring it down again,” she said.

Ekurhuleni shack dwellers evicted

Evicted shack dwellers from Gabon informal settlement in Daveyton, Ekurhuleni, gathered outside Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg on Thursday to consult with a legal team about the evictions.

General Moyo from the Informal Settlement Network in Ekurhuleni said they were signing confirmatory affidavits.

On May 15, the Informal Settlement Network’s Gauteng provincial leadership met with residents of the Gabon informal settlement in Daveyton, Ekurhuleni, after they were served a “24-hour notice for eviction for having illegal structures”, said Benjamin Bradlow, a research and documentation officer from Shack/Slum Dwellers International.

According to Bradlow, on May 11, “Red Ants [security guards known for the colour of their overalls] and other unknown people destroyed about 350 shacks and stole many residents’ belongings”.

Also gathered at Constitutional Hill this week were evicted shack dwellers from Chris Hani Informal settlement.

Chris Hani community leader Mdumiso Langeni said 20 shacks had been demolished by the police on May 17.

Repression of the Landless People’s Movement Spreads to the Harry Gwala Settlement

Saturday, 12 June 2010
Landless People’s Movement Press Statement

The Repression of the Landless People’s Movement Spreads to the Harry Gwala Settlement

The repression that the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) has been facing in Protea South and eTwatwa has now spread to the Harry Gwala settlement near Wattville in Benoni in Ekurhuleni.

On Sunday last week the elderly chairperson of the LPM in the Harry Gwala settlement, Johnson Nokutwana, was arrested on trumped up charges. Mr. Nokutwana was accused of threatening a man who has been abusing people in Harry Gwala by pointing a gun at him.

The police searched Mr. Nokutwana’s home and could not find any gun. Everyone in Harry Gwala knows that Mr. Nokutwana does not own a gun and that the hands of the old man are not working. His hands were badly injured in a work accident. When he wants to pick something up he has to ask someone to help him. There is no way that he could have threatened anyone with a gun.

The real reason why Mr. Nokutwana was arrested is that the local ANC councillor the police to arrest him. When the councillor calls a meeting in the settlement know one comes. When Mr. Nokutwana calls a meeting everyone comes. The councillors is saying that the LPM in Harry Gwala have not right to call themselves a committee. We as the LPM are saying that we have every right to set up our structures where ever we like.

Mr. Nokutwana has been released on bail of R1 000 but the charges have not been dropped.

It is unacceptable that the councillors continue to misuse the police to oppress our movements by harassing and arresting our leaders, or protecting mobs that attack us.

For more information and comment on the situation in the Harry Gwala settlement contact the Harry Gwala Landless People’s Movement spokesperson, Bazino Lihlebi, on 084 704 4144

For more information and comment on the general situation confronted by the Landless People’s Movement in Johannesburg contact the chairperson of the Landless People’s Movement in Gauteng, Maureen Mnisi, on 082 337 4514

The Protea South Five & the eTwatwa Twelve Have Been Released

Landless People’s Movement Press Statement
8 June 2010

The Protea South Five & the eTwatwa Twelve Have Been Released

All of the Protea South Five, arrested after the electricity war in Protea South, Soweto, have been released on the grounds that ‘there is no evidence against them’. None of the five were harmed while in detention. A sixth person from Protea South (who is not an LPM member) has now been arrested and charged with burning the transformer. There are currently conflicting reports at to whether or not there has been an arrest for the murder of the LPM activist shot by the Homeowners’ Association in Protea South.

In eTwatwa, Ekurhuleni, seven of the twelve people that were finally arrested have been released with all charges dropped. The other five have been released on bail but still have charges pending. No one has been arrested for the burning of the homes of two LPM militants. No one has been arrested for the murder of the the activist shot by the police in eTwatwa. Is there a licence to shoot activists with the intention to kill? Why are we arrested when there is no evidence against us but others can kill us freely?

The LPM condemns the way in which the police arrest activists against whom they have no evidence in the strongest terms. Across the country all of our movements are increasingly facing the systematic misuse of power of arrest granted to the police as a form of intimidation against militants. We are arrested all the time without any evidence being brought against us. The arrest itself has become the punishment. People are often assaulted while they are being arrested. Very often it is the ward councillors that are directing the police to arrest people.

The struggle against oppression by ward councillors will continue.

For further information and comment please contact the chairperson of the Landless People’s Movement in Gauteng, Maureen Mnisi, on 082 337 4514 or David Mathontsi, Chairperson of the eTwatwa Landless People’s Movement, on 076 486 0569.

LPM: The Police are in eTwatwa Looking for LPM Activists – They Have Made One Arrest Already

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Landless People’s Movement eTwatwa
Emergency Press Statement
1 June 2010

The Police are in eTwatwa Looking for LPM Activists – They Have Made One Arrest Already

The police are current in eTwatwa. They have a list of LPM members and are looking to make further arrests. They were able to arrest one person but the remaining LPM members in the area have been able to evade capture.

For more information please contact Dan Mofokeng from the eTwatwa LPM branch on 078 679 9435

Repression, feel it, it is here.