Marikana Land Occupation Press Statement
27 May 2014
Marikana (Cape Town) heads to the Supreme Court of Appeals today
Today we, the Marikana community, have traveled for 12 hours in a cramped taxi to hear the appeal by the City of Cape Town on their illegal eviction of our members in January this year.
We believe we will win the case because we can't afford to rent and the landlords had chased us away so because of our poverty we have nowhere else to go. The "structures" they evicted us from where our homes as defined by the Cape High Court.
Right now we feel like we have already won the case because we now know our rights. When the City came to demolish our homes, we felt like we did not belong in South Africa. But now we know that we are not guilty and that we must fight for our rights. The poor must fight to be considered human in South Africa. We trust in God that we will win this case.
On the 28th of April 2013, the Anti Land Invasion unit came to illegally demolish our homes. For more than 8 months, we had been living in fear and often under the stars and in the cold rain. But our struggle continued and we rebuilt our homes each and every time they came to demolish them.
Again on the 7th and 8th of January 2014, the ALIU demolished our homes. They claimed these were just structures but they lied. They were our homes since we had nowhere else to go. The City of Cape Town has been defending the desires of private land owners but ignoring our basic needs, ignoring the Constitution and misusing millions of Rands in state resources.
Today we are in Bloemfontein and we can feel the spirit of the 34 mineworkers who were shot and killed by the police at Marikana in 2014.
The platinum mineworkers have now been on strike for almost 5 months, the longest in the history of this country. We have also been fighting in the courts for 5 months since we we were evicted in january.
We support the strike of the mineworkers in the Northwest. We demand justice for all the Marikanas I'm South Africa.
We want to thank the Botsabelo Unemployed Movement for their solidarity at the Supreme Court of Appeals today.
We also want to thank Abahlali baseMjondolo for joining us as a friend of the court in support of our struggle against the City of Cape Town.
Finally we want to thank the Legal Resource Centre, the DLF, TCOE and an anonymous donor for our trip up to Bloemfontein.
For more information, please contact:
Mambele @0710940005
Monde @0826462403
Tumi @0732182410
(Note: our phones will be off while in court today)