Category Archives: ash road

The Witness: Jika Joe [Ash Road] residents force council’s hand

Leave a reply

Jika Joe residents force council’s hand
21 Sep 2008
Thamsanqa Magubane

The Msunduzi Municipality was yesterday forced to allocate the municipal
houses intended for flood victims at the Jika Joe settlement two weeks
earlier than expected. This came after furious flood victims forced
their way into the site, threatening to break the locks and move in.

The residents decided to invade the houses after the tents they had
inhabited for the past six months — since their shacks were washed away
by floods earlier this year — were flooded again this weekend.

Sixty families have been living in the tents set up near Ash Road since
the beginning of the year.

Prompted by the suffering they endured over the weekend, they decided to
force the municipality to allocate the houses to them. They said they
felt they had been living in tents for far too long, which they said was
not a conducive environment.

“All we want is a decent place to sleep as living in the tents is not
ideal” said Bonginkosi Khumalo, spokesman for the Enhlanganweni
organisation, which represents the people of the settlement, when The
Witness visited the area.

“We had been promised that we will move into the houses last month. That
was postponed without any valid reason and now we are being told we have
to wait another two weeks. However, we don’t have two weeks, as there
are people with small children living in the freezing tents.”

The residents also accused the municipality and the ward councillor of
ignoring their pleas and of “extortion”. They described the
municipality’s demand that they pay R50 in rent for the houses as
“extortionate”. The R50 has to be paid before the houses can be
occupied.

Peter Green, the councillor for Ward 33, confirmed that the houses were
allocated yesterday.

However, he denied that the council has ignored the community pleas.

Green added that the R50 rental is a legitimate charge levied to cover
expenses.

“These are municipal houses, not government ones. The R50 is a charge
for the use of municipal property,” said Green.

More flooding in Ash Road

Leave a reply

Once again the City authorities are seizing on flooding to justify forced removals and to give them a humane spin….

The Witness
Afternoon downpour wreaks havoc in PMB
12 Feb 2008

Yesterday’s late afternoon downpour is said to have resulted in the worst flooding in years in Pietermaritzburg.

A number of houses were washed away in the Jika Joe informal settlement on Ash Road after the Dorpspruit burst its banks and water began rushing into the settlement from Manning Avenue.

Msunduzi municipal manager Rob Haswell said more than a dozen homes were washed away and hundreds were damaged along both banks.

Disaster management chief John Gutridge said tents have been pitched on the Tatham soccer field on Manning Avenue for families whose homes were washed away.

Gutridge said last night that the total number of homes washed away was unknown. An assessment of the area will be carried out today.

Haswell said mattresses and blankets were being provided.

He said this is the second time Jika Joe has been hit by recent heavy rains.

“It is clear that we have to come up with a [relocation] plan, as it is inhumane and unacceptable for people to be continually exposed to the elements in this way,” said Haswell.

Other homes and businesses were also flooded by overflowing streams and drains.

The Witness was inundated with calls from people with dramatic stories.

One of the worst-hit areas was Cascades. Peter Walton said the Cascades stream was overflowing and flooding Oak Park properties.

Other badly affected areas included Chase Valley, Orient Heights, Prestbury, Hilton, Northdale, and Scottsville.

At Prestbury, the Dorpspruit burst its banks briefly, flooding gardens, and nearly 100 mm of rain was measured in an hour.

The KZN Health Department reported major damage to equipment and infrastructure on the 16th floor of the Natalia Building.

Despite traffic gridlock as rush hour drivers tried to move through flooded roads, Transport Department spokeswoman Zinhle Mngomezulu reported no accidents on provincial roads.

However, Msunduzi traffic spokesman Kenneth Chetty said that two minor accidents on Chatterton Road and at the corner of Alan Paton Drive and Alexandra Road occurred.

Chetty said streets across the city were waterlogged, resulting in very slow-moving traffic, with a major traffic backlog on the main-off ramp from Liberty Midlands Mall leading into Church Street.

A landslide occurred on Old Howick Road, but traffic could still get through. Hours after the downpour, motorists were still manoeuvring through the traffic trying to get home.

nerissag@witness.co.za

Ash Road Settlement flooded

Update: And again on 12 February 2008….

As in New Orleans a flood becomes the excuse to expel the poor from the city…see the article in the Witness, below.

http://www.witness.co.za/?showcontent&global[_id]=2369

Over 300 shack-dwellers homeless again
16 Jan 2008

The urgent need to once again relocate Jika Joe shack-dwellers was highlighted yesterday when the informal settlement was wrecked by floods on Monday night.

Some 40 shacks were washed down the Dorpspruit River, displacing about 300 people, including children.

Yesterday morning, hundreds were left homeless after a sleepless night during which they helplessly stood by and watched their homes and possessions being washed away in the deluge.

Most of them could not go to work yesterday due to the havoc caused by the flash flood. Some shacks had been badly battered and occupants were using the readily available mud to rebuild and repair the damage. Some were emptying out bucketfulls of ankle-deep water from their shacks.

Msunduzi Municipality will find alternative accommodation for the Jika Joe shack-dwellers, Msunduzi Municipality deputy mayor and chairman of the infrastructure, services and facilities committee, Mervyn Dirks said.

“We will start engaging seriously with the people and council about finding an alternative accommodation,” he said.

He said that deliberations on where the Jika Joe residents will be relocated to will start at the end of January.

Dirks said a decision on the relocation will be taken after consultation with residents and the ward councillor.

“We will consult with the people but the leadership have to make a decision in the end. We have to lead and take decisions in the interest of the people [and] they have to move.”

Some of the people are paying R100 and more for a shack, and yet they are under siege in all seasons.

On rainy days, shacks are flooded and washed down the Dorpspruit River and during winter, fires break out and can burn down many shacks. In the process, the inhabitants’ lives are endangered and their possessions damaged.

According to DA and Ward 33 councillor Peter Green, the shack-dwellers were previously relocated away from the settlement, but have slowly returned.

“People were relocated to France where they were given low-cost houses, but some returned and are renting their houses out. Most people here have informal businesses in town, others work in surrounding companies.”

Green said Jika Joe residents can afford to pay rent on subsidised rental houses. “I have a vision to relocate them to rental accommodation because they can afford it,” he said. He proposes that accommodation be found in the city to avoid relocating people far from the city.

Dirks and Green were at the informal settlement to assess the dire situation yesterday morning.

John Gutridge of the Msunduzi disaster management provided temporary shelter, mattresses and blankets for the destitute residents. Tents were erected at the nearby sports ground for the homeless.

Mission in an Urbanized Context. The Case of Ash Road Shack Dwellers’ Community

Leave a reply

The introduction is here in text but the rest of the thesis is attached below in word.

Introduction

Urbanization is an unavoidable reality. Various reports and data show that people are flocking into cities.

The UN Millennium Development Goals aim to improve the living conditions of 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020. However, the number of slum-dwellers is estimated to increase by nearly 500 million between now and then. In addition, over the next 3 decades, urban growth will bring a further 2 billion people into cities in the Global South, doubling their size to about 4 billion people. These cities are already growing at a rate of about 70 million people per year. Overall almost 180,000 people move into cities every day.

The questions that we should ask are: are cities prepared for such an invasion? What are the policies implemented in order to guarantee a dignified life to everybody? Unfortunately, most of the time, official politics do not have the will of finding reasonable solutions, therefore, new citizen are creating their own neighborhoods.

In 2005, an estimated total of 1 billion people were living in slums worldwide – about a third of the world’s total urban population. By 2030 this figure is predicted to grow by another billion .

According to “Statistics South Africa”, in South Africa urban citizens constitute 58% of the total population and, among them, 9% live in “informal houses” in “informal settlements” and this is a trend that will not stop. The mushrooming of “informal settlements” is a growing reality.

Nevertheless, beyond this data there are people, faces and stories. “Informal settlements” and “slums” are spaces where normal people live their life, find new way of organization and democracy and, above all, struggle in order to radically change a system that pushes people to the edge of society. That is why instead of terms such as “informal settlements” and “slums”, I will use “Shack Dwellers Communities”, which represents in a more realistic and dignified way the reality.

Beginning with my own experience, in this paper I will analyze the mission of the church among shack dwellers more specifically among the shack dwellers community of Ash Road. It is necessary to highlight that, in this particular historical moment, Ash Road Shack Dwellers Community is struggling against the threat of eviction by the municipality and to create real spaces of democracy within the community itself.

In the first chapter I will present a field research implemented and analyzed by the people themselves. This is done in order to understand the context and above all in order to understand what kind of representation the people have about their reality. We can also say that is a kind of political research because aims at two major goals: firstly, it aims at the creation of spaces where people can talk freely and, secondly, it intends to support people’s will to not be removed from Ash Road.

In the second chapter I will base theologically the struggle of the people. The starting principle is that the struggle of the people of Ash Road is not something extraneous to the mission. On the contrary, it has to be grounded theologically and understood as the coming of the Kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, when oppressed people struggle for their own liberation and dignity they are witnessing Kingdom’s values and opposing the values of anti-kingdom. It is therefore, of pivotal importance to understand where and how the struggle is grounded. The theological category of mission as missio Dei offers deep theological insights in this direction.

In the third chapter I will present Liberation Theology and Leonardo Boff’s understanding of Trinity in particular. Leonardo Boff’s idea of Trinity as a communion helps to contextualize mission as God’s activity and helps us to answer the question concerned with the why the model of mission in Ash Road is mission as missio Dei.

In the fourth chapter, I will describe in a critical way my journey with the people of Ash Road until the ground breaking realization of the importance of being a ‘listening Church’ (Orobator, 2005:211) with all the consequences that this attitude concerns.

In the final chapter I shall suggest seven ways of doing mission in the context of Ash Road.

Working with the people of Ash Road has been above all a gift. They have taught me that theology is a second act. Praxis, direct involvement with the people and their struggle is the starting point.