Marikana Land Occupation Press Statement
27 May 2014
Marikana (Cape Town) heads to the Supreme Court of Appeals today
Today we, the Marikana community, have traveled for 12 hours in a cramped taxi to hear the appeal by the City of Cape Town on their illegal eviction of our members in January this year.
We believe we will win the case because we can't afford to rent and the landlords had chased us away so because of our poverty we have nowhere else to go. The "structures" they evicted us from where our homes as defined by the Cape High Court.
Right now we feel like we have already won the case because we now know our rights. When the City came to demolish our homes, we felt like we did not belong in South Africa. But now we know that we are not guilty and that we must fight for our rights. The poor must fight to be considered human in South Africa. We trust in God that we will win this case.
On the 28th of April 2013, the Anti Land Invasion unit came to illegally demolish our homes. For more than 8 months, we had been living in fear and often under the stars and in the cold rain. But our struggle continued and we rebuilt our homes each and every time they came to demolish them.