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Five Hundred People Blockaded Road in Grahamstown this Morning

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Tuesday, Tuesday, 17 May 2011

Five Hundred People Blockaded Road in Grahamstown this Morning

This morning five hundred people from eThembeni and Transit Camp in Grahamstown blockaded the N2. The eThembeni people were demanding housing, electricity and water. The Transit Camp people were demanding the completion of their houses. The project has stalled due to non-payment of the contractors.

The road was successfully occupied, fires were lit and posters declaring a refusal to vote were raised. The police, acting with their usual aggression and insults, managed to clear the blockade and put out the fires. When the television crews arrived the police behaviour became less aggressive and it was possible to reoccupy the road. But once they left the people were driven off the N2 and the road blockade moved into Joza where it was broken up again. The protest continued on the pavements until three in the afternoon. There were no arrests.

No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way

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http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/72304

No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way

Raj Patel

Before the Soccer World Cup last year, I was asked to write a foreword to an anthology of life stories told by South African pavement dwellers, living on Symphony Way, near Cape Town. The stories blew me away. It was very easy to write the short introduction below, just as it’s easy to encourage you to take a look at it now. The book is called No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way, and it’s available here.

Two Comrades Lost in a Shack Fire on the Night Before the UPM Vigil in Grahamstown

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13 March 2011

At 5:30 this morning the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) leadership received a call from the eThembeni shack settlement to say that the settlement was on fire. Two people, a couple, perished in that fire. The community could not successfully fight the fire on their own as the taps are very few and very far away. The fire brigade could not get into the settlement because there is no road leading in to it.

Our comrades living in shacks are constantly facing fires and exploding gas stoves. Last week one of our comrades was very badly injured by an exploding stove. She is now in hospital in P.E.

Daily News: Why Eskom will never beat the reconnectors

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This article was also published in The Star as ‘Private Profits from Public Utility’ on 3 February.

http://www.dailynews.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5334495

Why Eskom will never beat the reconnectors

February 01, 2010 Edition 1

Richard Pithouse

The fiasco at Eskom has been oscillating between tragedy and farce at such a rate that it’s become difficult to tell them apart.

No one in their right mind is likely to disagree that Eskom, an institution that should serve the public good, has been captured by an avaricious elite and turned into a vampiric excrescence on our society.

Experiences of Democracy in Africa: Reflections on Practices of Communalist Palaver as a Method of Resolving Contradictions

This article by Ernest Wamba dia Wamba originally appeared in Philosophy and Social Action XI (3) 1985, and has been edited for clarity. Discussions about democracy in Africa, the lack of it or the need for it, have become rather fashionable. Radical intellectuals (Marxist or not) are demanding democracy—often understood as a multi-party system, i.e., […]