3rd August 2007
Joe Slovo Shack Dwellers march on Parliament
About 1500 residents of Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa marched on Parliament on Friday, 3rd August 2007, 10am from District Six (Keizergracht str) against their pending forced removal.
There are about 6000 residents living in shacks in Joe Slovo. They have been threatened by the N2 Gateway project with forced removal to Delft and told only that this will take place next month. There have been no negotiations with the community, who are being treated like animals by the government.
All the Joe Slovo children are at local schools in Langa, which also has clinics and employment projects.
“The vast majority of Joe Slovo residents are unemployed and only get piece work in the city centre from time to time. It will cost us R16 per day per child in taxi fare from Delft to Langa and back to send our children to school. There is no way we can afford this” said the Joe Slovo Committee. Schools in Delft are not at all equipped to handle an intake of hundreds more children.
“Besides which, we have put a lot of effort into community projects in Joe Slovo and are not at all willing or happy to be removed from a place relatively close to the city and dumped in Delft which is more than 30kms from the city centre and which does not even have a train station” added the Joe Slovo Committee.
The resistance movements and the people have long been striving for residence close to places of work. We have also been striving for adequate housing for all people. The government claim for an end to slums is opportunistic as they are shifting the residents from Joe Slovo to a slum called Delft. The only difference will be that the new slum will be further from work and the centre of the city (out of sight and out of mind). This is nothing else but a plan for social control of the working class. We refuse to be dumped at the outskirts of the city. The government claims it is there for the needs of the people. We say they must take responsibility to adequately house all those without homes and all who are living in the slums. We salute the residents of the N2 gateway for standing up against high rents and shoddy housing conditions.
We are also disgusted that Helen Zille, Mayor of Cape Town, has used the recent floods of shack areas in Cape Town to say that "people settled on low lying areas" and if they don't want to be flooded, they must submit to forced removal. This is nothing but a lie since people in Happy Valley (a place of forced removal) were also flooded.
asiyi e-Delft!
we demand adequate houses for all, close to our places of work!
for comment: Joe Slovo committee: Michael Zulu ph 0763852369; Mr Mapasa ph 0837371711
Anti-War Coalition: Gary Hartzenberg ph 0723925859
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