Category Archives: Noelene Barbeau

Daily News: City destroys shacks

http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/city-destroys-shacks-1.1626284#.UrlGt_QW3Y4

December 24 2013 at 09:00am

By NOELENE BARBEAU

Durban – Just two days before Christmas, eThekwini has destroyed shacks at Cato Crest’s Marikana informal settlement, leaving at least 40 families struggling for shelter and fearing more evictions on Tuesday.

Among those from the 40 shacks were a family with a 2-week-old baby and a mother who feared for the safety of her young daughter as they slept in the bush on Monday night.

Shack dwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo has accused the municipality of being in contempt of a court order for the eighth time this year, and of planning the evictions to coincide with the Christmas period, when access to courts was more difficult.

Mayor James Nxumalo has hit back at Abahlali, saying it had built more illegal shacks in the past few days and was compounding the housing backlog.

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Daily News: Shack dwellers claim victory

Daily News: Shack dwellers claim victory

Submitted by Abahlali_3 on Wed, 2013-09-18 02:35. cato crest | court | Daily News | Noelene Barbeau
http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/shack-dwellers-claim-victory-1.1577265#.UjkQZtLTx34

Shack dwellers claim victory

September 13 2013 at 11:54am
By NOELENE BARBEAU

Just one day before the city was to have shown why it was not in contempt of a court order preventing the demolition of shacks at a Durban settlement, it tore down more.

Now the eThekwini Municipality, in the latest action against it by the shack dwellers’ movement, Abahlali BaseMjondolo, has been ordered to identify and mark the homes of 30 residents at the Cato Crest informal settlement to ensure they are not demolished again.

Abahlali is claiming the draft order granted by Durban High Court Judge Yvonne Mbatha on Thursday as another legal victory in its protracted fight with the city.

Last week, the movement and the 30 shack dwellers were in court asking that it hold the municipality, its Land Invasion Unit and city manager S’bu Sithole to be in contempt of an earlier order and for the officials to be jailed for 30 days.

They claimed shack dwellers were being evicted, in spite of a September 2 order that prevented the city from demolishing the 30 applicants’ homes and from evicting them.

Abahlali and the residents first went to court on August 22 after some Cato Crest shacks were demolished. An interdict was granted then preventing further demolition.

Last week, the court gave respondents until Thursday to show why it should not be held in contempt but before they could respond, Abahlali’s lawyer handed in a supplementary affidavit saying the city had “wilfully disregarded” the court order by demolishing 28 shacks on Tuesday. It said 15 of the shacks belonged to applicants.

In their answering affidavit filed on Thursday, the respondents said they were merely complying with a high court order secured by the MEC for Human Settlements and Public Works in March to prevent the illegal large-scale invasion of land in Cato Manor.

The municipality denied it was in contempt, saying that an undertaking made last month did not apply to any structures the applicants would have erected following the granting of the order.

It said 25 structures it had torn down last month were on land owned by the departments of Human Settlements and Public Works and the action was to prevent illegal invasion and occupation.

The municipality said its Land Invasion Unit had demolished eight fully built and 10 half-built structures on September 2, and 10 fully built and 13 half-built structures three days later.

It claimed the structures were not occupied and that it would not tear down shacks that were occupied.

The court on Thursday adjourned both the main application and contempt application without assigning a date.

In the meantime, the draft order states the municipality would have to meet the 30 shack dwellers on Tuesday, so that their homes could be marked to prevent demolition.

Those applicants whose homes were destroyed were allowed to rebuild them and those would also be marked.

Daily News: Advocates slam council demolitions

The Municipality is lying. They are evicting the people who went to court and the people that occupied this land are not new arrivals – they are people who have long lived in Cato Crest and were made homeless by illegal evictions.

Advocates slam council demolitions

http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/advocates-slam-council-demolitions-1.1583137#.UkQ709KnrQg

September 26 2013
By MPUME MADLALA and NOELENE BARBEAU

Durban – The ongoing demolition of shacks at the Cato Crest informal settlement in Durban, despite several court interdicts preventing it, has raised the concern of South Africa’s advocates’ body.

The General Council of the Bar of South Africa (GCB) has criticised the eThekwini Municipality for sending its Land Invasion Unit to destroy the shacks.

Advocates who are members of the GCB are competitive specialist advocates who are experts in trial, motion court, appellate and opinion advocacy.

Each province has a Bar association that is affiliated to the GCB.

Over the past two weeks, the affected residents had been evicted and left homeless three times, said council chairman, advocate Ishmael Semenya.

At least one shack dweller was wounded in skirmishes with the unit at the weekend.

“The residents have urgently approached the high court on no less than five occasions, claiming that their eviction was unlawful. They have obtained three interim court interdicts, restraining the Durban municipality from evicting them again without a court order, and have subsequently rebuilt their homes,” he said.

Despite this, the Land Invasion Unit had returned to the settlement and once again destroyed homes.

“The General Council of the Bar notes reports that the residents were driven to occupy land at Cato Crest earlier this year after they were excluded from a project intended to provide housing to them and others in a nearby informal settlement.”

Semenya said section 26 of the constitution entrenched the right of access to adequate housing and protection from arbitrary eviction.

“It is a matter of grave concern that, despite their repeated attempts to follow due process of law in enforcing their constitutional rights, the residents, including many women and children, have been left homeless and destitute,” he said.

Constitutional law expert, Professor Pierre de Vos, said the municipality was required to obtain an interdict to demolish the shacks if people were living in them.

“There was a similar situation in Cape Town until the municipality established a law that they had a right to demolish houses,” said De Vos, who is a lecturer at the University of Cape Town.

“The large problem here is that the (eThekwini) municipality is not respecting the law. This appears to be a systemic problem where the municipality does not seem to understand or recognise that there’s a legal framework and they can’t just demolish homes.”

De Vos suggested that the lawyers acting for the Cato Crest residents should try to get a “structural interdict” to prevent the municipality from demolishing any shacks.

The municipality would be required to justify its actions if it persisted in tearing down the shacks, he said.

The municipality’s spokesman, Thabo Mofokeng, said the Bar’s concerns were noted but suggested that a meeting be set with the Bar and the city to discuss the issue privately.

“We have respected the court process and have always complied with the court orders. We have never touched the court applicants’ homes,” Mofokeng said, referring to the 30 Cato Crest shack dwellers that had gone to court.

Mofokeng also hinted at the city’s holding a media conference on the issue, adding that it would not stop dealing with land invasions.

“We have done all the available remedies to deal with these land invasions,” he said. “We cannot allow invasions to continue.”

Sunday Tribune: No parties in these marquees

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http://www.sundaytribune.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4931848

No parties in these marquees

April 12, 2009 Edition 1

Noelene Barbeau

It is 4pm and the tent community in Joyce Road, Sea Cow Lake, is beginning to stir. Naked little boys are playing in the dirty sand while their mothers prepare supper on paraffin stoves in their cramped marquee.

The gas stove smell fills the air of the tiny living area. There are three marquees in total: two for the women and children and one for the men. The tents face the road, while across the open space, on council land in Joyce Road, some have built informal houses.

This land is across the freeway from the tent community’s previous home – private land in Peters Road in Springfield Industrial Park, from which they were evicted.

In November 2007, residents in the Bakerville Gardens and Sea Cow Lake area awoke to find a tent community on their doorstep in the once-open municipal space in Joyce Road. The ratepayers’ association complained to the ward councillor that they were not consulted on this move.

Ward councillor Preeth Ramchurran said the municipality stepped in to help the informal community out of a sense of morality. While consultation was important, it was a quick decision made in an emergency.

Robin Lalla, chairman of the Bakerville Ratepayers’ Association, has had enough after years of communication with the eThekwini Municipality. He said the municipality told them it would be a two-month temporary measure until homes were found for the informal settlement.

Nearly two years later, the situation has not changed. The tents have now become an eyesore. Clothes are hung on lines behind the tents facing the road, or on the fence across the road next to the freeway.

The land is shared with a private bus transport company.

A water pipe runs underneath the sand and one tap is shared by 98 families.

The tent residents complain of the unbearable heat in summer and the cold in winter. The women and children say they are afraid because snakes and rats sometimes invade their tents. Security at night is a concern. Simphiwe “Douglas” Mpiti, a member of the tent community committee that liaises with the municipality, said police had arrested men just outside the property recently.

Lalla said there had been meetings with the municipality and complaints sent to ANC chief whip Fawzia Peer about the constant unavailability of the ward councillor to discuss this particular problem.

“The council made promises, but this is now a waste of time. These are just talk shops. There is no upkeep of the area and the conditions are appaling. Waste is sometimes dumped in the stream alongside the municipal property,” he said.

Blame

The blame for this particular problem is passed on.

The Sea Cow Lake residents blame the municipality for lack of consultation, not speedily moving the tent community as promised, and not stepping in when people were illegally living on private property.

The tent community blames the municipality for not moving them to proper homes, as promised.

And the municipality blames the tent community for “shifting the goal posts” by refusing to move to the area ear-marked for them.

It appears the municipality was not caught unawares by this problem. According to DA councillor and member of the Housing, Cleansing and Solid Waste municipal committee, Dennis Colin Gaillard, the issue of the Peters Road informal settlement came before the committee in March and April 2007.

According to committee documents, one of the owners of the Peters Road property, Bridoon Trade and Invest, submitted a proposal to the council outlining its intention to develop its property for commercial and light industrial use.

The company pledged R50 000 towards temporary accommodation for the affected families on this property, saying it could be used for building materials for temporary shelter.

The company also said it had already contributed building materials valued at R35 000, which could be used in the first phase of the building project.

According to the committee documents, this informal settlement was ear-marked for relocation to the Housing Unit’s Informal Settlement Programme.

At a meeting, the municipality suggested moving the community to vacant land across the N2 freeway, along Centre Road in Sea Cow Lake.

“The relocation of the Peters Road settlement on to state land represents a consolidation strategy by the council to more effectively manage the huge number of informal settlements within the municipality,” read the municipal document.

Gaillard said both times the committee did not pass this proposal. Ward councillor Ramchurran said the building materials the company donated turned out to be inferior, but the residents accepted them.

The matter went to court and the informal residents were evicted. The Legal Resource Centre appealed this eviction, but lost the appeal and thereafter the council moved the residents to Joyce Road.

Ramchurran said the council was paying for the tents, water and toilets.

Faizel Seedat, speaking for the municipality, said the residents would be moved in two months’ time to a transit facility site in Avoca.

noelene.barbeau@inl.co.za