Category Archives: The Marikana Land Occupation

Marikana comes for surprise protest at “Open Streets”

25 May 2013
Abahlali baseMarikana

Marikana comes for surprise protest at “Open Streets”

Members of Abahlali baseMarikana have come to Observatory in Cape Town
to occupy and participate in a surprise protest at the Open Streets
initiative which is backed up by the City of Cape Town. Open Streets
aims to promote use of roads and public space for people and without
cars. They are encouraging bicycle use, roller skating, etc. But we
think that Open Streets should mean more than that. We think we need
an open city that is open to the poor, that provides the poor with
land and housing. We therefore are coming to disrupt the exclusion of
Open Streets to tell everyone of the Closed City we live in.

The City of Cape Town which supports Open Streets, does not support an
Open City. We the poor are excluded. Our homes are destroyed by the
Anti-Land Invasion Unit, we are evicted from empty public land that is
meant to be shared with us, we are beaten by the police that protect
the rich and we are left without a roof over our heads. Our protest
today is to claim the city. This is why, today, we are moving our
Marikana settlement to the streets of observatory so the privileged
classes participating in Open Streets can see how we are forced to
live by the government that they support

There can only be really open streets if the city is open too.

For comment, contact Sbu @ 0603147788 and Cindy @ 0760866690 and Vusi
@ 0839571102 Or just find us on Lower Main Road in Observatory after
1pm

The Daily Maverick: Welcome to Marikana, Cape Town

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http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2013-05-22-welcome-to-marikana-cape-town/

Welcome to Marikana, Cape Town

by Jared Sacks

Earlier this month, I spent a night with the Marikana community in Philippi East, Cape Town. What I found was a community fighting hard to protect itself – and others – from the might of the City of Cape Town, which has forcibly evicted them over half-a-dozen times. For these people, who are down to one tent to protect them from the elements, the struggle is only beginning.

On Saturday 18 May, I was invited to stay the night with the Marikana community in Philippi East, Cape Town. If my current count is correct, the City of Cape Town has now evicted them at least seven times – sometimes with brutal force. As legal experts such as Sheldon Magardie, Stuart Wilson and Pierre de Vos have said, these evictions are illegal and unconstitutional. Yet the people of this new community are still living each and every day on the land. Why? Simply because in this uncaring city, they have nowhere else to go.

I parked my car safely in the yard of some friends of the Marikana community. I then walked towards the settlement, passing their new “Welcome to Marikana” signs at the entrance and minding my way past the remnants of yet another illegal eviction only the day before.

It was already dark and cold, so people were huddled around a pair of gallies (bonfires). Staring into the fire, they tried to take their minds off their predicament. The local “clown” (as he called himself), named Sbu, was the most vocal. He spoke about his time working as a “chef”, preparing food to be cooked at a few restaurants in town. He debated well into the night with another resident, who used to work in the kitchen of another food joint.

Sbu reminds one of Dave Chappelle: a goofy comedian who makes social criticism a consistent part of his act. Yet, when it is time to be serious in defence of the community, there is no one more firm and fearless than he. People look up to Sbu for his bravery.

Then there is Makhulu, who braaied me a couple of rostiles over the fire a few days before. She is old enough that one would expect her to at least have a roof over her head rather than still be fighting for the small piece of land that she has now made her home. She is living proof that even elderly citizens in this country are treated without respect. In Marikana, Makhulu seems to be one of those dignified and seasoned community members who makes things right during community conflicts.

itting by the fire, I can see how every community member is playing a vital role in making sure their struggle for land and housing moved forward. No one is expendable in Marikana. Even while there are certain unjust hierarchies being reproduced inside the community – especially where sexism forced women into certain roles – women in the community are still valued as leaders and take an active role as such. The same cannot be said for the city of Cape Town as a whole. Certain people in this city, such as the people of Marikana itself, are expendable and deemed a nuisance to be forcibly removed, beaten, and jailed.

Why is it that the roof-less residents of Marikana can treat one another with respect and dignity, when wealthy and sheltered government officials and politicians have so little regard for people like Sbu and Makhulu?

Near midnight, the women (about 15 of them) went one by one to the large tent to sleep. This tent is put up every evening and taken down every morning so that the Anti-Land Invasion Unit isn’t given another excuse to harass and attack them. They cannot let government take their only protection from the rain and wind.

I eventually went to sleep in a small open-air shack that fits five people at most. My bed was a hard wooden bed frame covered by a single blanket to provide minimal padding. I would have preferred to sleep straight on the floor if it weren’t for the threat of scorpions crawling into one’s blanket. Yet I slept with more comfort than Sbu, who slept outside, and whose makeshift bed was a collection of beer crates.

Another community member, Vusi, slept sitting on a chair next to the fire, with only a single blanket. Vusi used to be part of a well-known Cape Flats hip-hop group called ETC. He also used to work in the film industry and made enough money that at one stage he rented in Gardens, near the Cape Town CBD. Yet, for whatever reason, a few years ago his employers moved to Jo’burg, he lost his job, and he was never able to recover. Vusi explained to me the difficulties of trying to work while living in the townships without a car, yet needing to somehow get to film shoots by four or five in the morning. It is nearly impossible to keep a job in that industry if one lives in Philippi East without access to private transport. Without a job, things deteriorated so much for Vusi that he joined the Marikana land occupation.
Finally, there was Siphiwo, one of the community leaders. He did not sleep at all because he sat next to the fire watching over the community the entire night. I wonder what he was thinking about the whole time. His family? His job? Was he trying to figure out a way for them out of this terrible situation? Was he thinking about his two comrades, Avela and Unathi, who were in Philippi East police station for the entire weekend? (The good news – finally – is that Avela and Unathi had their case thrown out of court on Monday). Siphiwo is a shop steward with a small and obtuse trade union named UASA (or United Association of South Africa). He knows that one must fight for every bit of scrap he gets – that without collective action, Marikana is nothing.

I asked him whether UASA had provided solidarity to the community in any way. He was slightly confused; he said no. Marikana residents who were members of other trade unions such as NUMSA and NUM also have failed to get their organisations to take notice. How is it that most unions forget that the struggle exists in the community just as much as it does in the workplace?

The next day, I woke up and stayed around for a few hours chatting to people. They fed me breakfast: rice, potatoes, some gravy and a few tiny flakes of chicken – so little chicken, in fact, that the meal might as well have not had any at all. I went home around lunchtime to take a much-needed shower. Some community members also left to clean up at the houses of their friends or family. However, most stayed right there, sitting by the fire, contemplating what to do next.

I also contemplated how the City of Cape Town seems to be engaged in an asymmetrical war with its poorest residents. There is so much empty land in this city. Only small portions are being allocated to housing the poor. Most of the land is being sold off to rich developers and the rest is just being sat on until the land becomes valuable enough to sell. This is not to mention the huge swathes of City-owned land being used as a golf course or for fancy parks for the rich and middle class.

This city is not working – at least not for the million residents without adequate, affordable and stable housing.

By the time you read this, our homes may have already been demolished

Update: The Anti-Land Invasion Unit and Law Enforcement of the City of Cape Town arrived once again this morning the 17th of May. They destroyed our homes again. As usual, no court order, no checking to see if the homes are occupied and lived in, no mercy. Actions were clearly illegal, immoral and just plain cruel. There have been three arrests. Residents also say that they saw one of the community members being tortured in one of the police Nyalas. Siphiwo – 0836842828, Nosibusiso – 0736128044, Masibu – 0603147788

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Red Pepper: South Africa’s poor resist home attacks

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http://www.redpepper.org.uk/south-africas-poor-resist-home-attacks/

South Africa’s poor resist home attacks

Caroline Elliot

While critics opposed plans to end £19 million assistance to the biggest economy in Africa, the government here shares a skewed judgement. In the same way as UK international development secretary Justine Greening exaggerates South Africa’s progress, president Jacob Zuma ignores the one in four South Africans who still face slum conditions, living in informal settlements.

As Cape Town, the country’s second most populous city, hosted the World Economic Forum on Africa, hundreds of shack dwellers pledged their determination to occupy land needed for their homes. These homes have been repeatedly destroyed by government agents at a settlement named Marikana, in a growing township between Nyanga, Mitchell’s Plain, Khayelitsha and Philippi.

The settlement in Philippi East is called Marikana in tribute to the 44 people shot dead by police – most of them miners working for the UK-registered multinational Lonmin, during a strike for a living wage last summer. It was given the name because the residents are also ‘organising ourselves peacefully and are willing to die for our struggle’.

‘They pull these people out like dogs’

Since the shacks were built and occupied on vacant land, the authorities must observe South African law which requires a court order to evict them. Yet, despite lacking such documents, day after day police and law enforcement officers arrived and demolished their houses, shot at residents with rubber bullets, dispersed them with pepper spray and arrested four people.

Abahlali (also known as AbM or the red shirts) is a shack-dwellers’ movement and campaigner Cindy Ketani says ‘When they come to destroy these shacks, they show us no court orders or papers. They just pull these people out like dogs’.

Activists complain the authorities are abusing their power, knowing residents have no access to legal support. So much for progress, with South Africa becoming the world’s second most unequal nation since apartheid ended. Its constitution proclaims that every citizen has a right to a house. But millions continue to live in settlements, often denied proper sanitation, water supply or aqueduct, electricity or telephone services.

Testimony to the risks involved without electricity came when three recent shack fires left 83 people homeless in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township. Abahlali has campaigned on this issue, demanding, among other things, the electrification of shacks, and connected thousands of people to electricity. Nonetheless, in South Africa, there is a daily average of ten shack fires, with someone dying in a shack blaze every other day. Meantime, the accommodation backlog in Cape Town alone is estimated at between 360,000 and 400,000 homes. Even so, the city’s rulers spent half a millon pounds (8 million rand) setting up its Anti-Land Invasion unit to pull down shacks.

White people take home six times more pay than their black compatriots

Forty per cent of South Africa’s 50 million population live below the poverty line on less than one pound (13 rand) a day, while more than one in three of the mega-rich earn over £14,000 (200,000 rand) a month. In addition, the TopEnd survey into the country’s most affluent individuals found that one in ten boast a household income of at least £35,000 (500,000 rand) a month. The average value of their property with continuing worth is above £443,000 (6.5 million rand). And amid the starkest and most poignant contrast, four in ten own more than one home, and three per cent six or more.

Almost 20 years on from South Africa’s first democratic elections, the first census in a decade exposed the disturbing fact that white people still take home six times more pay than their black compatriots. Another report, by Statistics South Africa, warned that two-thirds of the country’s youth live in poor households, with a per capita income below £47 (650 rand) a month. More than one in seven South Africans are unemployed, and the young are worst affected, with half of 18-to-25-year-olds jobless. The labour federation, cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions), says no other middle income country around the globe suffers from such high unemployment.

Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu’s general secretary, says: ‘We call it a ticking bomb. We think that one day there may be an explosion. Seventy-three percent of people who are unemployed in South Africa are below the age of 35, and a lot of them have been to universities’.

Lack of work, money and secure homes threaten to exact a corrosive effect on South Africa. But the spirit of people that resisted separate development based on colour now confronts the rich-poor divide. One of those forced out of their Marikana housing was Zoe Zulu, a mother of a one-month-old son and a five-year-old daughter. Like the other residents of the 126 destroyed homes, Zoe had nowhere to go, insisting she would rebuild her shack and not leave Marikana until she has been given a home.

M&G: ‘Shock and awe tactics’ used on shack dwellers

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http://mg.co.za/article/2013-05-10-00-shock-and-awe-tactics-used-on-shack-dwellers

‘Shock and awe tactics’ used on shack dwellers

by Jared Sacks

On April 27, while political parties were spending fortunes to celebrate freedom, the shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo commemorated – or “mourned” – what it called UnFreedom Day in Sweet Home, the shack settlement in Philippi on the Cape Flats.

On the same day, a group of shack dwellers from the Philippi East area increased their occupation of a piece of land just off Symphony Way, between Stock and Govan Mbeki roads. But a day later, the City of Cape Town decided to show them exactly how unfree they still are.

This settlement, according to community leader Sandile Ngoxolo, was named the “Marikana land occupation” in honour of the workers who died last year in North West province in their struggle for a living wage – and because “we too are organising ourselves peacefully and are willing to die for our struggle”. Homes were built and occupied, and families worked through the night of Freedom Day to put the finishing touches to them.

On Sunday April 28 the Democratic Alliance, which runs Cape Town and which is trying to showcase an anti-apartheid past with the “Know Your DA” campaign, showed that its approach to land issues is not so different from that of the old apartheid National Party. At 1.15pm a large contingent of the city’s anti-land invasion unit (ALI) and dozens of day labourers arrived. They were backed up by law enforcement units and police vehicles, including, for extra effect, a Casspir and a Nyala.

These forces evicted residents from their homes, often beating them in the process. They pepper-sprayed Abahlali activist Cindy Ketani and then stole her phone, shot another woman twice with rubber bullets and arrested Abahlali baseMjondolo activist Tumi Ramahlele and community member Kemelo Mosaku.

Ramahlele claims to have been severely beaten by law enforcement members inside the Casspir after being arrested and is preparing to lay a charge with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate after being examined by a doctor.

Counter-spoliation
For its part, the ALI then took apart the Marikana homes, often destroying people’s property in the process.

This was repeated on Tuesday April 30 and once again on Wednesday May 1, only with a much larger police contingent present, which took down yet more homes. Two more residents were arrested.

The May Day eviction finished the job begun on Freedom Day, destroying every last home. Moreover, most of the zinc sheets residents had used to build their homes were confiscated by the ALI.

On Friday May 3 I got a phone call from a newly homeless resident, Zanele: “Law enforcement is back again. They are not only taking our zinc sheets, but now they are even taking our sails [plastic tarpaulins]. We do not know what to do. It’s raining and we have nowhere else to go.”

I later found out that not only was removing people’s belongings illegal (especially if the city doesn’t allow residents to claim it back) but also it is against the ALI’s official guidelines. I also found out that not only were these evictions illegal but also that the city was citing a nonexistent Act to justify them.

City of Cape Town media manager Kylie Hatton claimed in a statement that the evictions were done in accordance with the “Protection of the Possession of Property Act” as an act of “counter-spoliation”. But Sheldon Magardie, director of the Cape Town office of the Legal Resources Centre, said there is no such law. Advocate Stuart Wilson, director of the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa, and constitutional law professor Pierre de Vos concurred.

The overarching law that regulates evictions is section 26(3) of the Constitution, which states: “No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances. No legislation may permit arbitrary evictions.”

Unfinished and unoccupied
The Prevention of Illegal Eviction From and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act of 1998 (the PIE Act) expands on that, as well as on “spoliation”, and details the procedures a municipality must follow in order to conduct a legal eviction.

According to Wilson, in common law “counter-spoliation … permits a person who is in the process of having property taken from them to immediately take that property back without a court order”.

But, as Wilson, Magardie and others explain, counter-spoliation does not apply to the eviction of people from their homes. Once they are deemed squatters, or even illegal land grabbers, as per the 2004 case of Rudolf vs City of Cape Town, the PIE Act must apply.

To justify the eviction in terms of counter-spoliation, the city claims the structures were not homes but were unfinished and unoccupied. This is a blatant lie. I saw the homes, and there are photographs and videos showing clearly that the homes were fully occupied and were being lived and slept in from as early as April 25.

On Friday May 3, for the fifth time that week, I set off for the “Marikana” occupation. When I arrived people were cold, wet, tired and depressed. “How could they take the only things we have that would keep us dry?” they wondered.

What could be the city’s justification for confiscating the tarpaulins? Did they want people to get wet and sick? Is it punishment for daring to build shacks in the first place?

I can understand the city’s perverted rationale for illegally evicting poor people from empty land. I can understand the economic logic behind the city leaving such land vacant until its value increases, and I can understand the city’s perversion of the PIE Act to place the interests of the rich and well connected over the welfare of the poor.

But, visiting Sweet Home on that cold day, I could not understand the reason why the ALI would be so malicious as to steal an item vital to the struggle to keep dry on such a miserable, rainy day.

Well-thought-out strategy
Then I remembered Naomi Klein’s discussion of the role of torture in her book, The Shock Doctrine. Torture is a notoriously unreliable way to extract information but, as Klein points out, that is not its primary motive. Rather, it is to put the victims in a position of such disarray that they could not resist power.

In the case of these occupiers, shocking them with aggressive displays of power, removing their belongings and making them as uncomfortable as possible in the rain was equivalent to the “shock and awe” tactics of the American invasion of Iraq. As Harlan K Ullman and James P Wade define it in their history of the war, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, the aim was “to seize control of the environment and paralyse or so overload an adversary’s perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels”.

Is this why the ALI flouted its own guidelines? Was it mere meanness, or a well-thought-out strategy aimed at breaking the will of the community?

Whatever the case, these actions show that the DA’s liberal ideal of small, “efficient” government is a farce, because it requires an extensive, violent, often illicit system of authority to contain the basic demands of the poor – as well as their larger, emancipatory aspirations. The ANC, too, in a city such as Durban, talks about the “rule of law” while responding to the organised poor with astonishing violence.

This violence is physical, social and spatial. Geographer David McDonald writes in World City Syndrome: Neoliberalism and Inequality in Cape Town (2008) that it is now “arguably the most uneven and spatially segregated city in the country”.

Abahlali baseMjondolo mourns on UnFreedom Day because, for the poor, the only thing liberalism has given them the right to vote for their oppressors.

If we are to have any chance of resolving the escalating crisis in our society, we are going to have to think beyond liberalism. To start, we need to talk about redistribution and put the social value of urban land above its commercial value.