Category Archives: Sowetan

Sowetan: ANC councillor faces disciplinary hearing

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http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2012/07/23/anc-councillor-faces-disciplinary-hearing

ANC councillor faces disciplinary hearing

Hlengiwe Nhlabathi

AN ANC councillor in KwaZulu-Natal, who pleaded guilty to assaulting a critic, is due to be dragged before the party’s disciplinary hearing for ill-conduct.

Sowetan has learnt that the ANC’s provincial leadership has given the Umlazi branch permission to take disciplinary action against Ward 88 councillor Nomzamo Mkhize.

The ANC’s Umlazi branch executive committee sat yesterday to clear the party’s name against a rising perception that it had become a party that “undermined and frustrated” residents.

A source said there had been many complaints against Mkhize.

The final straw was the assault on Thabile Ngcobo, who was walking from a community meeting last Monday after residents had reiterated their call that Mkhize be removed for service delivery related failures.

Mkhize had initially denied any involvement in the assault, claiming she was being wrongly accused.

According to Ngcobo, Mkhize accosted her and questioned her about her attending the “stupid” meeting before she was slapped and kicked and had her T-shirt torn with a knife.

A criminal case of assault was opened and Mkhize was arrested the following day. But the matter was settled out of court.

In a meeting mediated by a social worker, Mkhize promised to pay R1500 within seven days as compensation for her wrongdoing.

Umlazi’s ANC branch secretary Sakhile Ngcobo would not to comment on the disciplinary proceedings, but said Mkhize’s assault on Ngcobo had “embarrassed” the party.

The ANC has been attempting to mend rifts between between Mkhize and Zakheleni residents.

A meeting held recently with lobby group Abahlali BaseMjondolo was derailed when Mkhize walked out, with Abahlali claiming that they had felt undermined by the party’s members.

Ngcobo said the party had managed to secure the presence of the eThekwini municipality chairman of the human settlements committee, Nigel Gumede, for a meeting to be held today.

Sowetan: Mixed requests for budget policy needs

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http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/10/25/mixed-requests-for-budget-policy-needs

Mixed requests for budget policy needs

FINANCE Minister Pravin Gordhan again faces conflicting demands across the political spectrum when he presents his medium-term budget policy statement this afternoon.

Cosatu spokesman Patrick Craven said yesterday the federation expected Gordhan to lower interest rates. “The other priority must be job creation,” he said.

DA MP Dion George said it would be “politically expedient” of Gordhan to dedicate much of his speech to the global recession when the government could save R5-billion by disbanding the National Youth Development Agency, Economic Development department and ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, and scrapping “pointless” district municipalities.

The DA called for R8-billion to be spent on new roads, R1-billion on teacher training and R2.6-billion to fill all vacancies in public hospitals.

It also wants subsidies to attract foreign companies to industrial development zones – and “labour market reforms” .

But Craven said Cosatu would strongly oppose this.

“Labour laws need to be strengthened and incentives inside these zones must be very carefully monitored so we can see if they are being used to create jobs and not just (to take) the profits overseas.”

Abahlali baseMjondolo (residents of the shacks) president S’bu Zikode said they had “become hopeless” about any relief for the poor.

UDM leader Bantu Holomisa called for an indaba on how to achieve economic freedom for all. “The ruling party has touted various economic policies. Consultants appear to be the sole beneficiaries.”

Cope MP Nick Koornhof said South Africa would not weather another recession unless Gordhan reined in the alarming levels of irregular government spending.

Elroy Paulus of the Black Sash said it opposed VAT being increased to fund health insurance.

Sowetan: ‘Shack here please’

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http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/07/13/shack-here-please

‘Shack here please’
13 Jul 2011 | Peter Dlamini

DA council orders man to raze his brick house in squatter area

THE City of Cape Town says a man who built a brick house in an informal settlement must tear it down because it is a safety hazard.

Though the city has no intention of demolishing any of the shacks in the West Beach informal settlement in Cape Town’s Du Noon, they have given Dayi Mondreki, 48, until today to tear down his house or else they will demolish it.

Mondreki was lauded by his neighbours for building a better home for his four children after living for 11 years in a rickety shack.

But the city’s anti-land invasion unit head Stephen Hayward confirmed that the city had served Mondreki with a notice to demolish his house.

“If a building collapses and kills someone and if that building did not comply with the health and safety regulations, the owner will be held responsible,” Hayward said.

He said the land belonged to the city and as such people could not do anything without getting permission.

Hayward did not say why there was no problem with shacks that were on the city’s land and which could also fall down and injure people.

The notice has not only enraged Mondreki but also his neighbours, who say their living conditions are bad. They were planning to emulate Mondreki by building brick houses on their own rather than waiting to receive RDP houses.

Mondreki’s wife, Nobuntu, said five city officials stormed into their newly built brick house last week and demanded an explanation as to who had given them permission to build a brick house on the city’s land.

She said they were then given seven days notice to demolish their new house.

Mondreki said he built his house with bricks he had salvaged from dumping sites.

“I only bought cement. We decided to build a brick house because it is winter and when it rains our shack floods,” he said.

Beatrice Mtati, 46, said residents in the area had vowed at a meeting to defend Mondreki’s house.

“Instead of improving our living conditions they want to make our lives difficult. We will also build brick houses because our living conditions are so bad,” said Mtati.

She accused the city of gunning for a man who was trying to uplift himself, instead of doing its job and fixing the communal flush toilets that broke down in June and have since been emitting an “unbearable stench”.

Dlamini Mdlalo, 58, who has lived in the informal settlement for 10 years, said by providing his family with a better home Mondreki had shown that he was a man.

Sowetan: Look at black townships to see evidence of inhumanity

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http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/columnists/2011/05/24/look-at-black-townships-to-see-evidence-of-inhumanity

Look at black townships to see evidence of inhumanity
24 May 2011 | HOME TRUTHS with Oupa Ngwenya |

EVERYONE born in the township, in any part of the country, needs no convincing that they were meant for black people.

Far from being an accident, black misery was by design from the cradle to the grave. Dumb or smart you were born into that life. And dumb or smart, meant to die there.

Conversely, white life was carefully ensconced in the northern suburbs, thoughtfully determined to be near towns and far from the madding crowds. The planned serenity was unmistakably a safe distance from the howling hours of industry and its attendant hazards.

South of this deliberate order of things stood the sprawling black townships. Its dwellers were confined to menial jobs, lowly paid, located further from workplaces and its children fed a demeaning education so as to perpetuate an endless cycle that renders them misfits in a white setting.

Against all odds, black life defiantly soldiered on to produce the peerless Albert Luthuli.

It graced us with indefatigable Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe who changed politics from protest to challenge. It gifted us with the acclaimed icon Nelson Mandela that the world just cannot get enough of.

Then there was that young, gifted and quintessential thought leader, Steve Biko, whose massive intellectual finesse set the country on an unstoppable liberation path as the founding father of Black Consciousness.

Even while producing such inspirational political stars, black life was, at least in the eyes of its oppressive tormenters, never destined to live in bodies deserving of common humanity.

Look at black townships to see evidence of this planned inhumanity. The haunting horror of that dehumanising undertaking today is evident in the scramble for shelter in desperate but permanent informal settlements due to lack of systematic policy response to urban-rural migration, cross-border economic refuges, job opportunities and poverty.

Never meant to be accorded full-blooded dignity and crammed in “matchbox houses”, life in black townships was bound to be unsafe, undignified, irksome and quarrelsome with propensity for crime.

Doubtlessly cruel to the core, it is a wonder how the authors of such a political system stopped short of building open toilets.

This shamelessly became the 2011 finger-pointing electoral issue, with some blaming it on budgetary constraints and others pleading ignorance of their existence.

Why is this unique to black life? This is one question that periodic elections, credited for helping a new-found democracy born on April 27 1994 to mature, seem unable to grapple with, nor possess a will to confront.

Being free to elect or stand for political office is well and good, but what matters most is a qualitatively different life for children to reshape a future we would like to see them inherit, keep and enjoy forever.

For as long as the dreams of some children are burdened with the longing for clean running water, enclosed toilets and struggle to go through school where they live, our democracy is far from maturing.

A democracy making no effort to change the misery of this unchanging reality risks being reduced to a ritual for leaders to take turns in the comforts of an uncaring power.

If these be vague words then those of Stanley Aronowitz and Henry A Giroux should be clear: “Democracy is not, for us at least, a set of formal rules of participation but the lived experience of empowerment for the vast majority. If one takes the view that schools are among our leading political and ideological institutions, it is a contradiction to envision a democratic society when its inheritors, the kids, are forced to live under conditions of unrelieved subordination.”

Sowetan: Midvaal council ‘runs the courts’

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http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/05/05/midvaal-council-runs-the-courts

Midvaal council ‘runs the courts’

5-May-2011 | Katlego Moeng
Municipality also seems to be ‘running property business’

THE Midvaal municipality has been in the news over the past months after a series of evictions of property owners who have decried both the loss of their houses and land and the manner in which they were left without a roof over their heads.

Midvaal resident Sonti Maseko, who has lived in the area since 1992, witnessed her home being demolished in November last year.

Despite not having a place to stay, she has refused to leave and has instead chosen to pitch a tent next to the rubble that was once her home. Her husband John Zeefal and daughter Thandeka are with her.

Maseko’s home was demolished after a default judgment in the Vereeniging magistrate’s court.

As a result of her experience and the fact that she has been helping scores of other property owners in a similar predicament, the PAC has drafted her as candidate for the coming municipal elections.

This is Maseko’s story in her own words:

I have lived in a tent in Midvaal since November, including on Christmas and New Year. Now that it is winter we have as as a family altered our sleeping arrangements so as to protect my six-year-old child.

I have kept the tent there for a reason: to communicate to the Midvaal municipality and its agents that the piece of land is still and always will be mine and that I have not abandoned the fight to get it back. I have no other place to go to and no means of acquiring new land and property elsewhere.

The cold snap has not made things easy. To make my situation bearable I remind myself every day that the tent stands as a monument to my harrowing experience.

Many who have supported us through the hard months and have witnessed the whole saga and were themselves traumatised by the demolition of my house, spur us to fight on.

My story is simply this: I lost ownership of my property in 2004 after the municipality’s debt collectors, attorneys Odendaal and Summerton – Odendaal being the chairman of the DA in Midvaal – claimed I owed the council R2700.

For that, in a default judgement, they asked for my property to be declared especially executable, meaning the municipality was not interested in recovering the amount by attaching my car, household goods or anything else. My house was attached as a result.

I only became aware of this in June 2007 when I was notified that my house would be put up for auction in a month’s time.

Despite having a job and a salary that could easily clear the debt, the municipal attorneys said they would not accept my money and instead gave away my property to a third party, thereby forcing me into a lengthy and costly legal battle.

In July 2007, when my property was allegedly sold, I was informed by the very municipality, some two months earlier, that my property was valued at R245000 by municipal standards, which I am told are conservative estimates for tax purposes.

I have since been advised that my property, along the main road constituted prime land and would have been at least worth four times more in market rates as it had business rights. To me the property was just my home, a one-hectare happy space to make a home for my only child.

This was the second time they had gone after my property, having first tried in 1999 by selling it to a company owned by then councillor Steve du Toit and his son Henk for R550, ostensibly to recover a debt of about R1600. How was this possible? Was it legal?

This scenario is possible and has indeed come about because the Midvaal municipality practically runs the Meyerton magistrate’s courts.

The staff in that court routinely stamp piles of documents of default judgements against residents on a daily basis from council attorneys.

In our experience as residents of Midvaal, properties, once attached by the municipality, are sold “at auction”, where the buyers always seem to be the same people.

These individuals and entities then begin eviction processes at the Vereeniging magistrate’s courts, where the proceedings also leave much to be desired.

The property business being run from Midvaal and paid for by Africans is a very lucrative enterprise. This is particularly so when properties – land and house – being auctioned are disposed of for as little as R100 to the buyers, who can then resell them at market rates for a minimum of R300000.

So lucrative is this business that it has spin-offs that trickle down to even the security companies driving around the wards in bakkies advertising eviction and “counter land invasion” services.

Syndicate members have been known in many instances to sell one property to various parties at the same time, pocketing the money and just walking away.

In some cases black residents occupy properties they have paid for but have never been transferred to their names despite their having paid the transfer costs.

As a result they remain vulnerable to legal proceedings to evict them for arrears and for water.

The water charges and rates and taxes are Midvaal’s weapon of choice. It is not unheard of for residents to be charged exorbitant amounts, often as high as between R17000 and R30000.

When reporting to the attorneys to discuss their accounts and make arrangements, residents have reported being humiliated, with one elderly woman having had cigarette smoke blown in her face and told that she must get a boyfriend to help her pay her account.

Others have reported being told if they cannot afford to pay, then they must go and live in the neighbouring (black) townships where they can be “packed like sardines”.