Joe Slovo residents will be at Cape High Court in large numbers tomorrow and protesting there on Wednesday
Monday 24 September 2007
5pm
The 6000 residents of Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa, Cape Town will be individually handing in their legal notice of their intention to oppose the state’s application to forcibly remove them from their land.
The residents will be doing this all day tomorrow at the Cape High Court, ahead of Wednesday’s hearing. The Ministry of Housing has applied for a court order which would allow them to forcibly remove 100 families per week for the next 45 weeks, and this will be heard by the court on Wednesday. Each and every resident vowed at community meetings this week that they would oppose this application in the High Court. The law allows for each and every resident to state why they feel they should not be forcibly removed and they intend to do just that.
On Wednesday 26th September 2007, the residents will hold a mass protest outside the High Court.
For comment call the Joe Slovo Task Team directly on these numbers:
Mzwanele Zulu – 076 3852369; Mr Sepaqa – 076 9192115; Mr Mapasa – 083 7371711
The Cape Town Anti-War Coalition was disgusted to hear that the State has tried to undermine the court’s ruling by apparently already selling off the land of Joe Slovo settlement to First National Bank, allegedly for a paltry R5 million. The community has heard that FNB has now tasked Thubelisha Homes (the BEE company which builds poor quality houses across the country) with removing the current residents from the land.
The Cape Town Anti-War Coalition also calls upon the media to refrain from referring to the Joe Slovo residents as “squatters” whereas in fact they have been living on the same land for more than ten years and have established a tightly knit community and resource centre, among other amenities. CTAWC also urges the media to check back on previous articles about the area, because this community was long promised RDP houses on the land where they are living, and thus their demands for these homes are entirely legitimate.
For pictures of the road blockade (and the police attack) that bought the Joe Slovo crisis to national attention, as well as a small archive of Joe Slovo task team press statements click here and here.