http://www.thetimes.co.za/news/article.aspx?id=555103

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Protestors have had enough of poor service delivery.

Service-delivery protests swept across Soweto and the Vaal yesterday, with at least one person being killed and dozens injured.

Two news photographers were injured when protestors pelted them and the police with stones at Protea South squatter camp.

More than 2000 residents of the camp blockaded roads with rocks and burning tyres. Eleven people were arrested during the protest and two were seriously injured in clashes with the police.

A 44-year-old protester was knocked down and killed by a van while fleeing from the police.

The Protea South squatters are demanding adequate housing, electricity, running water and sanitary facilities.

Maureen Mnisi, chairwoman of the Landless People’s Movement in Gauteng and one of those arrested, said the protest was not only about poor service delivery. She said the people of Protea South were not willing to be relocated to Doornkop, 8km away. The relocation would make it more difficult for them to reach schools, employment and public transport, she said.

Mnisi said: “We are sick and tired of the empty promises [of] the government.”

Local councillor Mapule Khumalo said it was essential that the squatters be moved because the land on which they were living was not suitable for housing. Khumalo said more than 4800 of the estimated 6400 people living at Protea South were willing to move to Doornkop.

She said: “It’s just few who do not want to relocate. We warned them about the dangers of staying in a dolomitic area.”

Mnisi said the government had failed to fulfil the promises it made about housing.

During the local-government elections, Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa and his housing MEC, Nomvula Mokonyane, promised to build 3200 houses in the area.

Victor Moreriane, spokesman for the department of housing, said there were plans to develop Protea South “but the area has [underlying] dolomite which could cause undesirable consequences”.

Marie Huchzermeyer, of the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, said: “There is dolomite [in the area] but not all of it [presents a] high risk.”

There were also service-delivery protests yesterday in Boiketlong, Kanana, Dunusa and Sonderwater, in the Vaal, and in Kliptown and Freedom Park, in the Greater Soweto area.

Virginia Magwaza-Setshedi, a monitor for the Freedom of Expression Network, said protests across the country had taken a new form: “They started as peaceful [ but] people have reached a stage where they say enough is enough.”