Category Archives: editorial

Sunday Tribune: Burning question

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http://www.sundaytribune.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5550352

Burning question

July 11, 2010 Edition 1

LIFE for the residents of Kennedy Road shack settlement, on the edge of a municipal dump in Durban, is miserable.

This week a fire whipped through the shanty town, killing two people and leaving 2 000 homeless. The blaze was caused by a candle or paraffin lamp. It was one of three fatal shack fires in the past seven days. In Khayelitsha nine people died in a fire, while in Soweto a toddler died.

Shack settlements mushroom in inappropriate places, but they are a fact of life and they are home to people streaming into our cities in search of work. Housing them safely is a huge challenge.

Surely it is time to intensify in situ upgrades of settlements to provide decent sanitation and electrification? There must be more creative ways to approach the housing problem. One more life lost to fires is one too many.

Cape Times: Heard mentality

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http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5277313

Heard mentality

December 08, 2009 Edition 1

POLISH-BORN revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg put it very well. “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all,” she wrote.

“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. ”

This most basic principle of democracy – respect for the views of those with whom one disagrees – is increasingly being ignored by political leaders and their supporters.

Freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion is protected in the bill of rights, which also states that every citizen “is free to make political choices, which include the right to form a political party, to participate in the activities of, or recruit members for, a political party, and to campaign for a political party or cause”.

But this week a meeting addressed by DA leader Helen Zille in Soshanguve was interrupted by political opponents who hurled bottles and stones at DA officials, wounding some, and set alight a tyre in front of the stage. Police intervened with rubber bullets.

The Soshanguve incident is part of an alarming trend.

Many political leaders have developed a habit of using ridicule, name-calling and, sometimes, even violence as substitutes for debate.

Instead of engaging in discussion with opponents it has become commonplace to label them as racist or to threaten them. Voters who did not vote for the “right” party are seen as needing “correction”; street protests which take place outside party political structures are swiftly quelled – like in Kennedy Road in KwaZulu-Natal – and personalities take the place of policies.

When leaders behave in this way it is not surprising that their supporters follow their example.

This sort of behaviour not only deprives the country of some very necessary debates; it also sets in motion a process which, if left unchecked, will lead straight back to the muzzling of political opponents and the end of free speech.

Cape Times: Blinkers dorp

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http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5256105

Blinkers dorp

November 23, 2009 Edition 1

CAPE TOWN mayor Dan Plato’s response to the angry residents of Blikkiesdorp does him no credit.

On a visit to the site last week, all the mayor could find to say to those complaining of conditions in Blikkiesdorp was that in fact the settlement was “among the best” of its kind in the city.

He described disgruntled residents as “ungrateful” and said those who were not happy with conditions in the camp were free to move.

Plato points out that Eskom is in the process of supplying electricity to Blikkiesdorp, that health officials inspect the site weekly, that a weekly refuse removal service and daily cleaning services are provided by the city and that there are two clinics within walking distance.

Blikkiesdorp, he says, compares favourably with other settlements with respect to services, shelter, environment and density. So much so, in fact, that the city is “inundated” with requests from the public for accommodation in the area.

Perhaps. But Blikkiesdorp is still a grim place where no one should have to live, a desolate settlement of one-room huts, where families share outside toilets and water taps, with little privacy, no trees and nowhere for children to play.

No one expects the mayor to come up with an overnight solution to the city’s housing crisis, and camps – or temporary relocation areas, as they are officially known – of some sort may be necessary in the short term. But to tell people living in cramped corrugated iron sheds in the middle of the sand, with nowhere to shelter from the summer sun, that they are better off than people in places like Masiphumelele or Happy Valley is absurd.

That there may be even worse places than Blikkiesdorp in this city is irrelevant. That the mayor may have had to wade knee-deep in water when he visited Mfuleni is irrelevant. If, as Plato says, people do indeed “thank” him for housing them in Blikkiesdorp, that is merely a reflection of even more appalling conditions elsewhere.

In view of the blinkered attitude of the mayor, it is hardly surprising that the police have warned that Blikkiesdorp is not safe for politicians.

Mercury: Civic Freedom

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Some good points. But will the demand for action against those who break the law ever be extended to people like Sutcliffe, Plato etc who send out the evictors to break the law with impunity>

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5145413

Civic Freedom

August 31, 2009 Edition 1

THERE is something a little ominous about the rumblings from the cabinet about clamping down on protests.

Chief government spokesman Themba Maseko said after last week’s cabinet meeting that there would be a clampdown on “all the types of protests that we’ve seen over the past few months, which are bordering on hooliganism”.

Maseko said the police would show a “stronger hand”.

He did not elaborate, saying only that the police would make operational decisions, the details of which had not yet been worked out.

Of course action must be taken against those who break the law, such as the protesting soldiers in Pretoria whose behaviour last week seems to have been excessive and totally unacceptable. The police must, as Maseko said, be “mandated to ensure strict compliance with the laws of the land”.

However, his message is worrying for two reasons. First, it is troubling to imagine that the police might be instructed to deal with violent protest with more severity than they showed last week, when the protesting soldiers were met by stun grenades and rubber bullets, which left several soldiers injured.

Second, it is troubling that the cabinet has not addressed with any seriousness the grievances of all of those who have been involved in the series of protests to which Maseko referred. Protesters who break ranks and engage in violent behaviour or looting must be dealt with, and firmly, through the law. But just as it is wrong of them to distract attention from the demands of the majority of demonstrators, so it is wrong of the authorities to allow their attention to be distracted.

Many of those who have recently come out on strike for higher wages or who have taken to the streets to protest about their situation will have voted for President Jacob Zuma.

As the recession fuels further protest action, it would be unjust, and dangerous, for the government to focus only on the violence and to underplay the hardship and disappointment that underlie the protests.

The right to protest, and to speak out forcefully, is an important social safety valve. It would be senseless and dangerous to close it to any degree.

Witness: Rising xenophobia

http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=25477

Rising xenophobia
23 July 2009

THIS country is awash with strikes or threatened strikes for higher wages, and with township protests about government failures in service delivery. It seems that the gloves are off in spite of, or perhaps because of, the exigencies of recessionary times.

A disturbing feature in some of the current protest has been the resurgence of xenophobia. This has been particularly noticeable on the Reef where last year’s xenophobic attacks first broke out. It is unfortunately to be expected that, in straitened times, people will turn on one another where there is perceived competition or threat. This can affect anyone deemed to be “the other”, whether the person concerned is a foreign national from elsewhere in Africa or a fellow South African of a different culture or background.  Continue reading →