ANC and DA discover common ground

by Jared Sacks, Mail & Guardian

The ANC and the Democratic Alliance always bicker over the cause of land occupations and who promotes them for political gain. Yet looking at their actions more deeply, it becomes clear how similar the two parties really are.

Cape Town: During the first two weeks of August, thousands of backyard dwellers living in dire conditions occupied vacant land near the Marikana settlement in Philippi East. Over the following days, the City of Cape Town’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit (ALIU), with the support of hundreds of labourers and police officers, made illegal attempts to evict all the occupiers.

The Toilet Wars of Cape Town

By Sekoetlane Jacob Phamodi, Amandla Magazine

There is a big stink in Cape Town. Literally. For some years, now, the so-called ‘toilet wars’ have been a recurrent feature in the political battles waged in the Western Cape. The first of these was highlighted in 2010, when Khayelitsha residents took to the streets over undignified, uncovered toilet structures the City of Cape Town had erected along the N1 highway, supposedly to service their sanitation needs.

More recently, the serious and still unresolved complaints over toilets resurfaced when Khayelitsha residents, reportedly led by members of the ANC Youth League, emptied buckets of human waste on the steps of the Western Cape Legislature and flung buckets of human waste at Western Cape Premier, Helen Zille, and the City’s mayor, Patricia De Lille. The complaint underlying this protest action was the same: residents were unsatisfied with the unsuitable chemical, container and portable flush toilet (PFT) facilities that the City had provided them.

'Shock and awe tactics' used on shack dwellers

by Jared Sacks, Mail & Guardian

On April 27, while political parties were spending fortunes to celebrate freedom, the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo commemorated – or "mourned" – what it called UnFreedom Day in Sweet Home, the shack settlement in Philippi on the Cape Flats.

On the same day, a group of shack dwellers from the Philippi East area increased their occupation of a piece of land just off Symphony Way, between Stock and Govan Mbeki roads. But a day later, the City of Cape Town decided to show them exactly how unfree they still are.

Report on protest in the Sweet Home shack settlement in Cape Town

by Jared Sacks, Mail & Guardian

Over much of this past winter, communities in shack settlements across Cape Town took to the streets in some of South Africa's most active civil-disobedience protests since 1994.

The protests gave rise to a great deal of commentary and finger-pointing. I was disturbed by the double standard of the political rhetoric of politicians and some nongovernmental organisations in the way they expected the protesters to react in response to the violence the state and police subjects them to on a daily basis.

On the Politics of Protest in Cape Town

by Jared Sacks, The Amandla Blog (There is now a shorter version of this article on the Mail & Guardian site)

A few weeks ago the City of Cape Town was rocked by a spate of road blockades and other significant protests. Certain liberal NGOs have joined the DA in condemning the protests claiming that they are violent and motivated by political party agendas.

To be sure, this is nothing new. Protests in the form of marches, the burning of tyres, and road blockades, have been happening every week throughout the City for years. The significant majority go completely unreported in the mainstream media and unnoticed by government officials.

We “invaded” Rondebosch Common…but only the police destroyed the fynbos.

Click here and here to read reports on the protest by Benjamin Fogel and here to read a report by Jared Sacks.

 

Statement by those who occupied the common

Take Back the Commons Movement

28 January 2012

 

We did our best. We had everything stacked against us.

The might of the South African Police Force, the paranoia of some Rondebosch rate payers, and the arrogance of our protester turned mayor Patricia de Lille.

Twitter Wars

by Benjamin Fogel, African Socialist

Sometimes it seems almost universally accepted among my white peers that whites can dictate the terms and conditions of the black experience of racism. Take the counter-trend which emerged in response to the tweet story over Zille’s “professional blacks” comment, #capetownisawesome. The fact that you as a white South African have not personally witnessed racist incidents in Cape Town does not prove anything. It is revealing. The only time I really encountered blacks growing up deep in the Southern suburbs of Cape Town was in the form of domestic workers and gardeners. In my matric year at Reddam House Constantia there were only 5 students of colour out of 120 students.