Early in 2007 hundreds of families living in shacks in Cape Town were moved into houses they had been waiting for since the end of apartheid. But soon they were told that the move had been illegal and they were kicked out of their new homes. They built shacks next to the road opposite the housing project and hundreds organised themselves into the Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign, vowing to stay on the road until the government gave them permanent housing. This book comes out of that occupation.
‘A beauty, extraordinary in every way.’
– Naomi Klein,
“An extraordinary collection of writings from the spirit of resilience and strength of the collective which lay bare the betrayal of the people in post-apartheid South Africa.”
– Sokari Ekine
“A magnificent and moving account of a long and hard-fought struggle . . . . a clarion call for basic human rights and for human dignity. A powerful insider’s view into the landscape of poverty in neoliberal South Africa.”
– Michael Watts
“This book carries not only the suffering of the Symphony Way communities but of the millions of poor people of the world. . . . It is through this courage that we can all hope for the real struggle that intends to put human beings at the center of our society.”
– S’bu Zikode
“A compelling testimony to the ingenuity of the people to organise themselves and invent ever-newer forms of struggle.”
– Issa Shivji
“All the tenacity, beauty, pain, desperation and contradictions that breathe their life into any popular struggle haunt the pages of this searing book.”
– Richard Pithouse