Category Archives: transit camps

Abahlali to Approach the Durban High Court for a Spoliation Order

Monday, 18 June 2018

Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Abahlali to Approach the Durban High Court for a Spoliation Order

“We are all amaMpondo!”

Abahlali baseMjondolo will this morning approach the Durban High Court on an urgent basis to apply for a Spoliation Order against the eThekwini Municipality. On Friday at about 10am the notorious eThekwini municipal Anti Land Invasion Unit descended on the Barcelona 2 ‘transit camp’ (amatini or government shacks) in Lamontville and violently and unlawfully evicted the residents from the disgraceful ‘transit camps’ that there were forcefully imposed on them seven years ago for the FIFA World Cup. Continue reading

Violent and Illegal Eviction Underway at the Barcelona 2 Transit Camp, Lamontville

Friday, 15 June 2018

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

 

Violent and Illegal Eviction Underway at the Barcelona 2 Transit Camp, Lamontville

Mayor Zandile Gumede has started her ‘dealing’ with Abahlali

This morning at around 10:00 a.m. the Anti-Land Invasion Unit, accompanied by heavily armed security guards, attacked the Barcelona 2 ‘Transit Camp’ in Lamontville. It is a short walk from where Sibonelo Mpeku, our chairperson in the Sisonke Village land occupation, was kidnapped and murdered on 19 November last year. Continue reading

Evictions at gun point continue at the Kennedy Road settlement

14 July 2016
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement

Evictions at gun point continue at the Kennedy Road settlement

We have faced many evictions in the city of Durban since our movement was formed in 2005. Almost all these evictions have been violent, unlawful and criminal.

We have stopped almost all these evictions through organised resistance, mass protest and action in the courts. When the state has attempted to change the law to make it easier for them to evict us we have defeated them in court. In 2009 we won against the “Slums Act” at the Constitutional Court. Last year we also won against the “blanket order” sought by the KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Human Settlements. The “blanket order” was intended to authorise mass evictions and to prevent the occupation of at least 1 568 properties in KwaZulu-Natal. Continue reading

Transitory Citizens: Contentious Housing Practices in Contemporary South Africa

Kerry Chance, Social Analysis

This article examines the informal housing practices that the urban poor use to construct, transform, and access citizenship in contemporary South Africa. Following the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, the provision of formalized housing for the urban poor has become a key metric for ‘non-racial’ political inclusion and the desegregation of apartheid cities. Yet, shack settlements—commemorated in liberation histories as apartheid-era battlegrounds—have been reclassified as ‘slums’, zones that are earmarked for clearance or development. Evictions from shack settlements to government emergency camps have been justified under the liberal logic of expanding housing rights tied to citizenship. I argue that the informal housing practices make visible the methods of managing ‘slum’ populations, as well as an emerging living politics in South African cities.

Attachments


Transitory Citizens

The Transit Camp is a Form of Social Control

Published in The Mercury as ‘The Dynamics of Informal Housing’ on 12 December 2015.

The Transit Camp is a Form of Social Control

Richard Pithouse

Development is often held up as the answer to some of our most pressing social problems. Corruption is often seen as a key threat to attaining the efficient ‘delivery’ of developmental gains. But development and corruption are often – although of course not always – phenomena best understood as strategies for securing political containment. Continue reading