Newsletter from Cape Town Shack Settlements in Struggle

A Newsletter of Informal Settlements May 2007
In Struggle Number 2

(The PDF with pictures etc is attached below)

Mandy Jacobs (Zille-raine Heights)

I was born in Retreat, but we moved to Parkwood when I was 8. Now I’m 35. My kids are 15 and 12. When I got divorced I could not pay the rent in Grassy Park where I lived. I had no job. So I went back to live with my mommy in her council house in Parkwood nearby but it was overcrowded- there was my mom, myself, my two kids, her two daughters, and another wife and husband and two children and it was one room and a kitchen. I’ve been on a waiting list since 1996. Someone said people are going to invade land. So I went.

We feel the Constitution should mean the right to
housing, school, and health care. We thought our
Constitution says everyone is equal and that everyone is
entitled to dignity. Freedom should mean choice. Are we
not protected from being dumped in Happy Valley?
The legal system is being used as a weapon against the
poor. The actions of government is breaking the rights we
thought we had in the new South Africa by carrying out
forced relocations, making children homeless, calling our
communities slums and talking about ‘eliminating’ us as
is the case with the proposed KZN Elimination of Slums
Bill.

Zille-raine Heights

We occupied Civic Road on March 18 2006. By April
everyone moved to corner Acacia Road, Klip Road, aka
Zille-raine Heights- named after Lorraine who supported
them in Civic Road, and Mayor Zille who gave them a
place to stay and Council helped to relocate their shacks.
Yet by June, we were served notices and had gone
through a number or rounds of court. This is our third
time going to the high court: 30 may.

Khoisan Village

Our court case is still in Belville. On May 30th, we are all going to support Zille-raine Heights because we are next for the magistrate’s court (6 June). Almost 400 backyarders from the Belhar area occupied the local civic center in 2005. Their eviction case will be held on May 23rd. By early 2006 many had moved out of the center- as it was overcrowded with refugee-camp conditions and more space was needed for the community. Over 100 shacks were erected on open spaces known as Khoisan Heights. Since late 2006, this case has also been in and out of court, and their latest eviction deliberation has just been postponed to June 6th.

Happy Valley: why move from bad to worser?

Happy Valley is a great solution to the housing problem –
If all you want is for the poor to be out of sight, out of
mind. The site is adjacent to an industrial park: 45 minutes to Blackheath station by train from Cape Town – R11 return fare. Then you must still walk 20 minutes across
Blackeath Industria, unless you’ve got R3 more for a taxi –
but wouldn’t you rather the children eat something
today?

To walk to Happy Valley from east to west, is to walk from
established RDP houses to the sad site of the most recent
arrivals – dumped on a few square metres by the city with
no more than a few roofing sheets, a wooden frame and
black plastic sheeting… not unlike a refugee camp in
Sudan or Congo. A water tap every few stands, and
portable toilets at the end of the row.
Look – no use relocating people from one shack to
another – especially if the new site is in a remote area, so far from the schools our children know, from work
opportunities, clinics, shops – ie, from the real
necessities of life. Few will choose to be hidden away here and forgotten again.

Why people have nowhere else to go

Government is not building enough public housing.
The priority of government is not the needs of the
poor. Houses that are built are too expensive (eg, N2
Gateway or Zille’s pilot project in Pelican Park). The
subsidy is not adequate. There is lots of corruption and
nepotism in housing allocation.

Privatisation of land and the housing sector
Most housing is being built for a profit, so it’s too
expensive for poor and working people.
There is still no restitution for the effects apartheid.
This is made worse by the division between rich and
poor: the rich make all the decisions. And the poor
have no power. And the government’s priority seems to
be to make things easier for the rich’

Mandy Jacobs: If I get evicted I’ll go to the pavement
because I have nowhere else. If they tell me I have to
go to Happy Valley and I have no alternative, I wont go
because it is not a place for a human being to live. It’s
a dumping place. I didn’t see a school, a bus stop, a
taxi, a factory, or a clinic, a church. Nothing. I cant
raise my kids like that. My kids remind me: mommy
please we are not going to Happy Valley.
Come to the court and support us on
May 30th (Cape Town High Court) and
June 6th (Magistrate’s Court, Bellville).
We want to appeal to people in both informal
settlements and to those living in houses to hear
our children’s cries and stand by us. Tomorrow it
might be your sons and daughters. Or yourselves.
We have identified the causes of our problems in
this newsletter. Our problems are not the only ones
caused by these things – there are also the pink
letters where people are being taken to court and
legal proceedings are taken against them because
they cannot pay. Arrears, service cut-offs… these
are all caused by the same things.

These problems are caused by people. The same
people cause them all. If we challenge their
power we can make it better for everyone.
– Mandy Jacobs

I didn’t have material to make a shack. The police came
the next day and sacked our shacks in Civic Road. We
stayed there 2-3 weeks and Zille gave us permission to
ZRH, and the council took our properties from Civic Road
and transported us to ZRH. Rate payers were very against
it and sitting early in the morn, sitting on the field. And
the children harass our children. When that subsided,
winter came.”

Rashieda

I have three kids- 15, 12, 6. In the beginning it was hard
for the kids. And the oldest is starting high school and
didn’t want people to see him coming from the shacks
and didn’t want me to tell the principal. So he walks a
long way around to the school. But then he made friends
in his class who stay in the neighbourhood and they know
and its ok.

If we are evicted, I will go on the pavement with all my
kids. I’ve been on the waiting list since I got married in
1992. And a few years ago I went to council to ask, and
they don’t have our names on the list. So now i’m on the
list as of 2001.

I was looking for a place cus I was living in my mother-inlaw’s garage w no windows with 5 people. Before that I lived in my mother’s house. But when I got married I
moved to the garage. In Grassy Park. I lived my whole
married life in GP. Before that in Lotus River, next to GP.
So someone said, look people are putting up shacks. So I went to look for material. I asked my brother in law to
help and we put it up on the field by Civic Road. We slept
in the houses the Saturday. Then on Sunday the police
came with Council officials(but without a court order)
and said they’ll take it down if we don’t. Three weeks we
stayed there and then when the mayor said move to
Acacia Road, the council moved our stuff.

Contact
Zille-Raine Heights: Lorraine 083 431 9794
Elenore 072 449 0436
Khoisan Village: Janet 073 846 1160
ILRIG: 021 447 6375