Category Archives: The Cape Times

Cape Times: We will rebuild shacks – residents

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This article fails to note that these demolition were unconstiutional, illegal and criminal acts on the part of the Anti-Land Invasions Unit.

http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/we-will-rebuild-shacks-residents-1.1509268#.UYJEIaIyZvJ

We will rebuild shacks – residents

Nombulelo Damba

West Cape News

FOR the third time in two weeks, the City of Cape Town’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit clashed with residents in the Marikana informal settlement next to Symphony Way in Philippi East, where 126 shacks were demolished yesterday.

Rubber bullets were fired and one person was arrested as Marikana residents opposed the demolition of their shacks, which they have since re-erected.

Anti-Land Invasion Unit spokesman Stephen Hayward said the city would continue to take down illegal structures in Marikana even though the residents had vowed not to leave the area until the city provided them with alternative accommodation.

The situation was tense yesterday when police arrested Mzwamadoda Fingo, 22, who wanted to take down his shack himself.

Then when resident Xolani Mswabi was seen being held down by police, residents started throwing stones at the police, resulting in the police firing rubber bullets.

Residents said they had nowhere else to go because they were unemployed and could not afford rent.

Fingo said police refused to let him take down his own shack, which he wanted to do to ensure his building materials were not damaged. When he insisted on doing so, two officers handcuffed him and took him to the Philippi police station. Mswabi said he was also trying to retrieve his building materials when a city official pushed him.

Mswabi fought back but police officers restrained him before letting him go.

Resident Zoe Zulu, 36, who is a mother of two children, said officials started demolishing her shack while she was still inside feeding her five-year-old daughter. She said the Anti-Land Invasion Unit officers first asked her for water, which she gave to them, before destroying her house.

When West Cape News arrived, Zulu was carrying her one-month-old son while the five-year-old was crying. She did not know where to go.

“This is very painful. I’ve been renting a shack in Lower Crossroads, paying more than R500 a month.

“Recently I lost my job, so I could not afford to pay rent, that’s why I decided to build my shack here. It’s not nice living here with a one-month-old child but I do not have a choice,” she said.

Zulu said she had not been able to save anything from her home.

Residents said they will simply rebuild their shacks again, while more than 100 residents marched to Philippi East police station looking for a place to sleep.

Yesterday afternoon Hayward said the situation was calm but the Anti-Land Invasion Unit would continue to monitor the situation.

Cape Times: Guards demolish shacks

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http://www.capetimes.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=nw20091126221515537C758842

Guards demolish shacks
26 November 2009, 22:47

By Nompumelelo Magwaza

Residents of Mpola informal settlement at Marrianridge, near Pinetown, spent Thursday rebuilding and repairing their shacks.

This was after a group of armed municipal security guards had ransacked and demolished more than 20 shacks, leaving about 100 people homeless.

The guards were acting on the orders of ward councillor Derrick Dimba.

The residents said that the evictions were illegal because the guards did not have an eviction court order.

One, Lindiwe Ndlovu, said the guards ordered people out of their shacks before breaking them down.

Sipho Hlambisa said he had to take time off from work to rebuild his shack.

“If they want to evict us, they must be prepared to take us somewhere else.

“They should not just remove our furniture and demolish our shacks.”

Dimba said he had sent the guards to demolish the shacks because the residents were occupying the land illegally.

“The people invaded that land.

“The area is not designed to be a residential area – the place is steep and it is near a stream.”

“The municipality has no plans to build houses or for any projects in that area.”

Dimba said eviction orders were necessary only where people had built proper houses.

Centre for Applied Legal Studies researcher Kate Tissington said, however, that an eviction without a court order was illegal, “and this most definitely is”.

“The occupiers of Mpola informal settlement are protected by the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act and if the municipality wants to evict those living there, it needs to go through the eviction application process and get an order of court.”

Tissington said the city had acted illegally by bypassing the act’s provisions.

The eThekwini council speaker, James Nxumalo, said he understood that the city had to obtain a court order to evict people. He said although councillors acted as the eyes of the municipality, they did not have the right to evict people.

Solidarity: Ruling on Joe Slovo move delayed

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The Cape High Court has reserved judgment on the application by government and its housing agency, Thubelisha Homes, to move thousands of Joe Slovo residents.

Judge President John Hlophe’s decision followed hours of argument by the opposing legal teams and was greeted with a mixed reaction.

“We are heading into the festive season and people are preparing for the holiday. If judgment were given today and it went against us, it would have meant a bleak Christmas for us,” said Mzwanele Zulu, a Joe Slovo community leader.

“In this sense, it is convenient for us that judgment was reserved.”

The Housing Department was confident the judgment would be in its favour. If it was, it would ensure people were moved to temporary accommodation in Delft with minimal disruption, housing director-general Itumeleng Kotsoane said.

“We are on the right track. A critical aspect of this case is that if the outcome is negative for us, it will relate to the state’s ability to intervene in situations where people live in unacceptable conditions and on floodplains or river banks.

“If we win, it will confirm the state’s right to intervene in such situations.”

Earlier, Hlophe ruled against the residents’ application challenging Thubelisha’s legal authority to evict them. He said he would provide reasons during judgment in the eviction case.

Geoff Budlender and Peter Hathorne, appearing for the residents, argued that the community should rightfully remain on the land because of an expectation the City of Cape Town had created.

The council had provided services such as electricity, water and sanitation and had numbered shacks. Red cards given to residents as proof of their applications for houses had strengthened the expectation created, the counsel argued.

They said the department had reneged on a promise to give Joe Slovo residents access to 70 percent of houses it was to build on the land as part of the government’s N2 Gateway housing project.

The balance was intended for people living in back yards in Bokmakierie, Gugulethu and other areas.

If the government and Thubelisha Homes wanted to evict residents, people living in Joe Slovo should be identified individually, not evicted as a group, Budlender and Hathorne said.

Michael Donen, for the department, and Steve Kirk-Cohen, for Thubelisha, said the government had a duty to provide services. The red cards were nothing but proof that residents had applied for formal homes, they said.

Donen said the government’s application was not for an eviction per se, but for Joe Slovo residents to be moved to Delft so the land they now occupied could be used to build houses.

Kirk-Cohen gave the court a schedule of the relocations envisaged and said these would be effected in stages.

Outside the court about 2 000 people from Joe Slovo danced and sang in the street for a second day. After a brief report from their leaders, they headed home peacefully.

· aziz.hartley@inl.co.za

o This article was originally published on page 3 of Cape Times on December 14, 2007

Cape Town: N2 Protest Ultimatum – I’ll remove you from waiting lists, says minister

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http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4027637

Front Page
I’ll remove you from waiting lists, says minister
N2 protest ultimatum

September 11, 2007 Edition 2

Quinton Mtyala and Sapa

HOUSING MINISTER Lindiwe Sisulu has issued a blunt warning to people whose actions led to the closure of the N2 near Langa yesterday: Continue the violent protest and be “removed completely from all housing waiting lists”.

She said residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement had to decide whether they wanted to co-operate with the government and qualify for housing. “If they choose not to co-operate, they will be removed completely from all housing waiting lists.”

Sisulu also said the government would not tolerate indiscriminate violence in which property was vandalised.

Earlier yesterday, the protesters set up a burning barricade just off the N2, stoned police and their vehicles, broke up dwellings under construction in the N2 Gateway project alongside Joe Slovo and set a bakery delivery van alight.

Police closed both lanes of the highway for a period which included the peak morning traffic hours.

The residents were apparently protesting against a proposal to move them to temporary housing at Delft, some distance away on the Cape Flats, to make room for further Gateway construction.

Sisulu said the Gateway project management had been interacting with residents, and the violence was “completely unjustified”.

The Anti-Eviction Campaign described the situation as “absolutely terrible”. It said police had opened fire on the protesters at close range with rubber bullets. “They shot women and children, and people are seriously injured …

“Dozens of residents have been arrested and the police are refusing to say where they have taken these residents, even though some are injured.”

Housing and Local Government MEC Qubudile Dyantyi condemned the protesters, describing their action as an “act of thuggery”. Dyantyi said it had become evident Joe Slovo was over-populated and that some of the people to be moved from there would be unable to return once the whole area was redeveloped.

ANC provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha said the blockade was unacceptable and that protesters were either uninformed or unreasonable in their demands.

Transport MEC Marius Fransman has called for anyone involved in protests on national roads to be arrested.

From about 4am, protesters had gathered on a vacant site earmarked for the second phase of the N2 Gateway housing development.

Their reasons for protesting varied, from a refusal to be moved to Delft, where temporary housing units had been built, to charges that residents of Joe Slovo were not consulted about planned new housing.

First National Bank and the housing ministry announced a partnership in June for 3 000 bonded housing units at sites in Joe Slovo and Delft. But residents, put off by the price tag of between R150 000 to R250 000 for the houses, are demanding free RDP homes.

One resident claimed that “no one from Joe Slovo was housed” at the first phase of the N2 Gateway project.

“Instead we have people living there from Khayelitsha, Gugulethu and other areas,” he said outside the vandalised shell of a show house.

Luthando Ndabantu, who addressed protesters, said people from Joe Slovo had been promised houses after a devastating fire in January 2005.

“They moved us to Delft to live in those shacks made of asbestos,” said Ndabantu.

Several community leaders addressed the crowd, urging them to remain calm while police stood along the outgoing lane of the N2, which had remained closed for much of the morning. The incoming lane of the N2 was reopened at 8am when police cleared burning tyres from the road.

Several journalists were threatened with arrest by police officers on the scene as they tried to interview leaders of the protest.

Just after 11.15am, police fired rubber bullets after a deadline for opening the outgoing lane of the N2 had passed.

Several people were hit as police fanned into the shacks, with some protesters responding with small rocks.

Within 10 minutes protesters had dispersed, some returning to show their rubber bullet wounds, vowing that they would be back, as police officers stood guard along the N2.

quinton.mtyala@inl.co.za