Daily News: City defends move to purchase casspirs amid outcry

Bheki Mbanjwa, The Daily News

Shackdwellers movement Abahlali BaseMjondolo has slammed the purchase of casspirs by the eThekwini municipality saying this amounted to the militarisation of the metro police department.

The organisation was reacting today after The Mercury carried a story revealing that the city is in the process of purchasing four casspirs at a total cost of R19.9 million.

The casspirs, being purchased from state-owned arms manufacturer Denel, will be used for crowd control and to deal with riot situations. Last night the city provided more details, saying the casspirs will also be used in land invasions.

“These vehicles will assist the Metro Police to carry out their duties while ensuring effective policing for crowd management deployment to ensure the safety of police members in riotous situations when rocks or petrol bombs are thrown,” said eThekwini spokesperson Tozi Mthethwa in a statement.

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Some photographs from the march on Zandile Gumede

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Some of the newspaper articles from the march on Zandile Gumede

See the attached pdfs.

Attachments

Paper

Isolezwe front page

Daily News

Mercury

M&G: March on Durban city hall: ‘As shack dwellers we deserve some dignity’

Thousands of people marched to the Durban City Hall on Monday against alleged violent evictions of shack dwellers in different informal settlements around Durban. The protestors, marching in solidarity with the shack-dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) were joined by the Right2Know campaign. The Daily Vox asked some of the marchers why they were there.

Sphiwe Skhakhane, 31, unemployed, Cato Manor I will not be bullied by the municipality or anyone else. I won’t let anyone evict me from my own land. The municipality does not own any land, nor does the government. This land belongs to our forefathers and that makes it ours and the future generations’. Some of us are unemployed and have families to shelter and feed, yet the police and municipal security guards keep on victimising us. We are tired and the mayor must be held accountable for our suffering; she promised us houses. Continue reading →

News 24: eThekwini mayor snubs ‘angry’ Abahlali shack dwellers

Mxolisi Mngadi, News24

Abahlali baseMjondolo march to the Durban City Hall demanding an end to evictions. (Supplied)

Abahlali baseMjondolo march to the Durban City Hall demanding an end to evictions. Durban – eThekwini Mayor Zandile Gumede snubbed thousands of shack dwellers who had wanted to hand over their memorandum of grievances to her personally on Monday.

Abahlali baseMjondolo general secretary Thapelo Mohapi told News24 that their members became agitated when they realised that Gumede had snubbed them. Continue reading →

Memorandum of Demands to the Mayor of eThekwini, Her Worship Cllr Zandile Gumede, Monday, 26 June 2017, 12:00pm

Memorandum of Demands to the Mayor of eThekwini, Her Worship Cllr Zandile Gumede, Monday, 26 June 2017, 12:00pm

We, Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA, are democrats committed to the flourishing of this city, our province and our country. We speak for ourselves and direct our own struggle. We have been mobilized by suffering and our hope for a better future. It is time to take seriously the fact that, land is a serious problem in our country and in our city and that, land was stolen from our ancestors and that, this has impoverished us.

1. For too long the eThekwini Municipality and the current mayor have lied to us and treated us with disrespect and indignity. We demand truth, honesty and respect from the mayor. Continue reading →

Memorandum of Demands to the MEC For Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Honourable Nomusa Dube-Ncube, Monday, 26 June 2017, 12:00pm

Memorandum of Demands to the MEC For Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Honourable Nomusa Dube-Ncube, Monday, 26 June 2017, 12:00pm

We, Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement SA, are democrats committed to the flourishing of this city, our province and our country. We speak for ourselves and direct our own struggle.

We have been mobilized by our suffering and our hope for a better future. It is time to take seriously the fact that, land is a serious problem in our country and in our city and that land was stolen from our ancestors and that this has impoverished us. It is time to take seriously that our struggle for land, housing and dignity, which is a just and democratic struggle, is facing serious and often violent repression from the ruling party and the government. This repression has taken a number of lives. Continue reading →

The Times: Durban shack dwellers demand end to violent evictions

Un-Independence Day 2017: Congo still struggles for real Independence

26 June 2017

CONGOLESE SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN PRESS STATEMENT

Un-Independence Day 2017: Congo still struggles for real Independence

On the 29th June 2017, the Congolese Solidarity Campaign “CSC”, a grassroots human rights based social movement will once again hold its Un-Independence Day event in a form of panel discussion. It will take place at the Diakonia Centre – 20 Diakonia venue, Durban – South Africa.

While the rest of the country celebrates 57 years of “Independence”. We the impoverished, the marginalized and the oppressed will be mourning the absence of this that our mothers and fathers fought for so hard. We say that as long as the history of our country still characterized by civil wars, political instability, insecurity, conflict, gross human rights violation, corruption, democracy deficit and economic mismanagement. Continue reading →

Memoranda of demands from the branches for the march on 26 June 2016

Tomorrow we march in Bizana and in Durban. Our mass protest task team for the Durban march have been busy preparing, and today we were finalising and compiling all the memoranda from our branches into one main memorandum. Each branch has held its own discussions and developed its own memorandum and all these memoranda have been worked into a single document. We will also hand over each of the memoranda received from the branches.

Kusasa siyabangena!