Category Archives: Fouzia van der Fort

Weekend Argus: Call for discipline as criminals blamed for protest violence

http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5696538

Call for discipline as criminals blamed for protest violence

October 21, 2010 Edition 2

FOUZIA VAN DER FORT Staff Reporter

CRIMINAL elements were re responsible for the violence during service delivery protests in Khayelitsha, says the provincial leader of the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Andre Traut confirmed yesterday that two trucks and a private vehicle had been set alight in Khayelitsha and that seven vehicles including a police car had been damaged in Lingelethu West on Tuesday.

Traut said public violence cases were being investigated and police were patrolling.

Abahlali baseMjondolo’s leader, Mzonke Poni, claims that criminals were behind the acts of violence.

However, he called on residents to “barricade roads, burn tyres and sing Struggle songs” in a “disciplined and peaceful way”.

Over the past few weeks protesters have thrown stones, burned rubbish and moved shipping containers into the middle of the road on Mew Way and Lansdowne roads.

Also, in Khayelitsha two Golden Arrow buses were torched, at least 10 other buses were stoned and R15 000 damage was done to the Lansdowne Fire Station during service delivery protests.

City spokeswoman Kylie Hatton said the damage to municipal infrastructure was counter-productive to a service delivery protest.

Cape Argus: Nine die in horror fire

http://www.capetimes.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=vn20100707134742898C478362

Nine die in horror fire
7 July 2010, 14:47

By Fouzia van der Fort and Natasha Prince
Staff Reporters

Five young children – one of them a six-month-old baby – and four adults have died after their home caught alight in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Two sisters, their boyfriends and their children were trapped in their Lingelethu-West home when the fire started at about 2am – and frantic relatives and neighbours were unable to rescue them as the door was bolted shut on the inside.

Sisters Marche, 30, and Nomampondo Mdla, 26; Marche’s boyfriend, Bulelani Nqundwana, 38, and Nomampondo’s boyfriend, David Khoboka, 33, and the sisters’ five children died in the fire.

Nomampondo’s eight-year-old daughter Asimahle Mdla, and Marche’s sons – Aviwe, 5, Luxolo, 4, and Spumzo, who was six months old – and daughter Andisiwe, 3, also did not survive the blaze.

Marche and Nomampondo’s brother, 22-year-old Lufefe Mdla, said he believed the fire had been caused by candles which his sisters were using to light their home after their prepaid electricity meter “exploded” about a month ago.

Mdla, who lives in a house in front of his sisters’ home, said he had been woken in the early hours by neighbours who told him the house was on fire.

He knocked on the door of his sisters’ house and looked through the window and seen flames.

He told the Cape Argus he had tried to open the door, but found that it was locked. “I couldn’t do anything.”

Mdla then phoned his mother, who called police and fire services to the scene.

Neighbours were unable to open any of the house’s doors, because one was chained shut and a crowbar was keeping the other closed. Firefighters had to break the door down.

Lingelethu-West police spokeswoman Warrant Officer Siphokazi Mawisa said police had been contacted at about 2.30am.

Cape Town Fire and Rescue Services’ Theo Lane said two fire tenders, two water tenders, one rescue vehicle and about 18 firefighters and rescue personnel had been dispatched to the scene.

The fire was extinguished quickly, with the last vehicle leaving just before 3.40am. Police were still on the scene at about 8am, carrying out a final check inside the structure, which was still standing.

Mdla said his sisters were “always together”. He said they were very close, and had been good friends. He had visited them every day after work and the siblings had eaten meals together.

He was going to move in with his mother for a few days, Lufefe said.

David Khoboka’s sister, Boniswa, said her mother, who lives in the Eastern Cape, had been taken to hospital after hearing the news of her son’s death. “We don’t know yet what we are going to do. We waited from 3am to make sure whether they were dead or still alive.”

City of Cape Town Disaster Risk Management spokesperson Wilfred Solomons-Johannes said the fire had started when a candle fell on to a plastic chair. “We encourage people to put out their candles, open flames and lamps at night before going to sleep,” he said.

* This article was originally published on page 1 of The Cape Argus on July 07, 2010

Cape Argus: 27 people share a one-roomed shack after being removed from Macassar land

The City does not, in fact, have any proof that it will be building on the site. And its interdict was to stop further occupation – it did not make their demolition, against the interdict won by Abahlali baseMjondolo, legal.

http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5037779

All we want is a patch to call home
27 people share a one-roomed shack after being removed from Macassar land

June 16, 2009 Edition 1

Fouzia van der Fort

IN ALL her 27 years, Macassar mother-of-two Ronelle Muller has never lived in a brick house – in fact, she has moved from backyard to backyard more than 12 times.

Although she wishes for something better for her children, the reality is that Muller and her family call a single-room shack home. And they share it with about 26 other people.

They are forced to take turns sleeping, the men taking shelter under plastic sheeting outside or keeping watch around a fire throughout the night.

Muller’s family is among those who got on the wrong side of the City of Cape Town by setting up home on a piece of land close to the N2, which is earmarked for a housing project of 2 500 units.

A few weeks ago, their makeshift home was demolished after the city secured a court order to prevent people from occupying the open land. An environmental impact assessment of the land is under way.

Muller explains that her family resorted to putting up a shack there after she was retrenched last August and could no longer afford to pay for backyard accommodation.

She says her husband is a painter whose work is weather-dependent.

Sitting close to the fire outside their latest home, hands clasped tightly between her thighs, Muller says: “I don’t want my children to see this. All I want is to put a roof over their heads.”

The shack the family now shares with 26 other backyard dwellers, who were all evicted from the land destined for development, is built on the edges of the property in question.

“We are on the waiting list. I am tired of renting here and there. All I want is a small piece of land,” Muller said.

Their makeshift shack is built from the remnants of the demolished shacks, and the roof, which is made of thin plastic, sags with the water that collects whenever it rains.

The city court order to prevent anyone moving on to the land came in response to an order obtained by the Anti-Eviction Campaign last month, which prohibited the city from breaking down any structures built there.

Another woman living on the land, Nolundi Mkhutshulwa, 33, says she has moved three times in the past six months. Shortly after passing matric in 1995, Mkhutshulwa moved to Cape Town from Port Elizabeth in search of a job.

She moved in with her cousin in Madala Bos, an informal settlement in Macassar. In 2003, she registered to study business management, but was unable to finish the three-year course due to financial constraints.

About four years ago, she moved with her cousin’s family to a single-room house, but last September he asked her to move because “he wanted his house”.

First, Mkhutshulwa moved to a backyard structure that cost her R400 a month, but she was asked to move again.

She then moved into a wendy house, but had to leave when the rent was hiked from R150 a month to R300, excluding water and electricity.

When a family friend saw she was living on the pavement, after she joined other evicted families on the streets, she was offered another backyard in which to erect her wendy house.

“I dream of a job, any job, just as long as I can earn some money at the end of the day,” she said.

Mkhutshulwa is one of five children and said she would not return home until she found a job. Her parents are pensioners and only her youngest sibling has a job.

“There are better working opportunities in Cape Town. My brothers and sisters are not working back home.”

Mkhutshulwa’s boyfriend, Gladson Clive Tom, 33, who hails from the Northern Cape and is a qualified plumber, also does not have permanent work.

City of Cape Town spokeswoman Kylie Hatton said the people they had initially evicted from the site in Macassar were told to seek alternative accommodation at the Ark Night Shelter.

“They refused to accept that proposal,” she said, adding that they were not “trying to diminish their plight”.

“The council acknowledges their plight,” Hatton said.

According to her, the law was clear and the city would continue to abide strictly by the Prevention of Illegal Evictions and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act, as well as the provisions of the constitution.

The leader of the evictees, Johnny Jeffery le Roux, said they wouldn’t move to the night shelter because it was about 10km out of Macassar.

“Men, women and children would be divided.

“We will be away from our home,” he said.

Cape Argus: In Macassar, June 16 is no cause to celebrate

The city can not provide proof of its plans to build on the site. Moreover the City’s interdict (which prevents further occupation and the erection of new structures) most certainly did not give legal sanction to the demolitions which were illegal (and in fact criminal) as well as in contempt of court.

http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5039385

In Macassar, June 16 is no cause to celebrate
Evictees rally to ‘decelebrate’ Youth Day

June 17, 2009 Edition 1

Fouzia van der Fort

YOUTH Day was no cause for celebration for the people evicted from Macassar Village land earmarked for formal housing, and their fellow shack dwellers turned out to support them in their protest to “de-celebrate” June 16.

Representatives from different informal settlements across the Peninsula, along with members of the shack dwellers group Abahlali baseMjondolo, toyi-toyied in protest at the site yesterday.

“We want to pledge our solidarity to expose the appalling conditions our comrades are living in,” said Mzonke Poni, chairman of the group.

He said the 1976 struggle was fought by ordinary people, and it was the ordinary people who should be mobilising now to “take back our history of struggle from the politicians”.

“We want to empower the occupants of Macassar.

“They are not alone. There are people supporting them,” Poni declared.

About 50 residents have been sleeping either in makeshift shacks or without any shelter at all since they were evicted from the land, which is currently the subject of an environmental impact study.

The city has plans to build 2 500 houses there.

Poni claimed the residents were fighting “for a small thing – a piece of land – so that they may be recognised as people to whom the government will provide a minimal level of service of water, roads and electricity”.

Following previous clashes with police in the area, Poni was expected to appear in the Somerset West Magistrate’s Court on a charge of public violence today.

For the past month the group has been living on the side of the road, alongside the open land.

Yesterday, their mattresses and other belonging were lying covered in black plastic beside an open fire which they used for cooking and warmth.

The homes they built on the land were demolished by law-enforcement officials from the City of Cape Town, in accordance with a court order preventing occupation of the land.

For Theliwe Macekiswana, 33, who has 10-month-old baby Iphendule, the fight for freedom is meaningless when she has nowhere to live.

Unemployed since March, she said she had nothing to celebrate.

The municipality had evicted her, taking her materials “instead of protecting us on this land”.

“They took my whole hokkie,” she said.

Joseph Jantjies, 52, who has been living in a Macassar backyard for 20 years since his arrival here from the Eastern Cape, said they had resorted to protests to force the government to take notice of them.

“These people have nothing to celebrate.

“They can’t be satisfied with living like this,” he said.

Several Metro Police officers stood monitoring the protest throughout the morning yesterday.