Category Archives: transit camps

Daily News: Isipingo residents sick of squalor

http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/isipingo-residents-sick-of-squalor-1.1600216#.UnY5WvnI3UU

by Aphiwe Ngwenya

Durban – Residents of the Isipingo transit camp say they are fed up with empty promises by municipal officials that they would be relocated to housing projects elsewhere in the city.

As the heavy rains continued to flood their homes this week, residents protested on the main road, burning tyres.

The camp is built in a flood plain and with little in the way of a drainage system, flooding is frequent occurrence.

Stagnant water lies in pools around the camp, a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Here and there rocks, planks and bricks have been placed to create stepping stones around the camp.

Unemployed mother-of-three, Meshi Kesram, 36, said her home had been flooded numerous times in the five years she had been at the transit camp. On the worst occasion the flood water was over one metre high.

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Road Blockade in Isipingo Yesterday

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Road Blockade in Isipingo Yesterday

The Isipingo transit camp was badly flooded during the recent rains. It is built in a dangerous area and there is no drainage. It is not fit for human habitation.

Yesterday a road blockade was organised in protest at:

–       The flood and the inhuman conditions in the transit camp

–       The failure to honour to the promise, made more than a week ago, to start moving people out of the transit camp within a week

–       The attempt to silence us with lies on one hand and repression on the other hand

One person was arrested on the blockade but she was later released without being charged.

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March on the Durban City Hall to Demand Land, Housing and Dignity

13 September 2013
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press statement

March on the Durban City Hall to Demand Land, Housing and Dignity

Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA together with Abahlali baseSipingo Transit Camp (eMathinini) will be marching to the Durban City Hall on Monday, 16 September 2013. We will be joined by Abahlali from around the province of KwaZulu-Natal including Howick and the South Coast. For a very long time there has been serious neglect of people in smaller towns.

This march comes at a very tough time for our movement. It comes at a time when we are not only beaten and repressed for raising our voices but also threatened with death and killed. Our crime has been to organize in shack settlements and to organize unorganized communities. Our crime has been to organize outside state control. Our crime has been to organize outside party control. Our crime has been to create a platform for people who are supposed to be spoken for and about to speak for ourselves. Our crime has been to speak truth to power. Our crime has been to speak out against the corruption that implicates top politicians in Cato Crest. Our crime has been to insist that everyone counts. Our crime has been to insist on our right to the cities. Our crime has been to take action to put the social value of land before its commercial value. And yes, our crime has been to insist that the state does not treat the poor as if we were beneath the rule of law and outside of our constitutional democracy.

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The Times: Service delivery protest flares up in Durban

There have been six arrests.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2013/06/13/service-delivery-protest-flares-up-in-durban

Service delivery protest flares up in Durban

About 200 people were protesting on Alpine Road in Durban on Thursday morning, eThekwini metro police said.

The protesters were burning rubbish and tyres, spokesman Eugene Msomi said.

It was believed the protest was about service delivery.

Nabantu Zulu, a resident of the Jadhu Place squatter camp which borders Alpine Road, said residents had been protesting since 3.30am.

Zulu said he had been a resident at the squatter camp since 1991.

Residents were demanding to speak to eThekwini mayor James Nxumalo and would not stop blocking Alpine Road until their demands had been addressed.

“We are living in tins. They [eThekwini metro] gave us these as temporary [accommodation], but how long must we wait?” asked Zulu.

He said residents were demanding land, housing, electricity, water, and speed humps in Alpine Road.

The Jadhu Place squatter camp is believed to have between 1000 and 2000 residents.

Alpine Road is a major road linking the suburb of Overport with the Springfield industrial area.

Protesters, carrying bottles and vuvuzelas, were singing, dancing, and chanting on a hill overlooking Alpine Road.

About three kilometres of Alpine Road was closed.

“We demand housing, electricity, and land,” stated a placard.

The protesters claim they were promised housing in 2007 by a former eThekwini mayor and they had been forgotten.

One of the protesters, a woman, was lying in the street waiting for paramedics after she collapsed during the protest.

The SA Police Service and the metro police were monitoring the protest.

Police had to use teargas at various stages to disperse the group.

Alpine Road was littered with debris, bricks, tyres, and a tree.

Residents of Overport were looking nervously at the protesters from their houses.

Employees of Durban Solid Waste were waiting to clear the road.

Housing ‘Delivery’ in Durban is Corrupt from the Top to the Bottom

Uganda Transit Camp, Durban: A report from the frontlines of the struggle for democracy

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-02-13-uganda-transit-camp-durban-a-report-from-the-frontlines-of-the-struggle-for-democracy/

Just two decades after the dawn of democracy, an old horror is revisiting the new South Africa. Transit camps are back, and they are back with a vengeance, writes JARED SACKS.

Close to midnight and you can still hear babies wailing, couples quarrelling and house music blaring through the razor-thin zinc sheets that the eThekwini Municipality calls “walls” in Uganda Transit Camp near Isipingo, Durban. Getting a decent night’s sleep is a struggle in and of itself. And yet, that’s only the beginning.

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