Western Cape communities uniting against lack of service delivery and housing : IMC-SA

Today, Monday 12th September there were two protest demonstrations on the issue of housing in Cape Town. In Mitchells Plain Eastridge residents erected burning barricades in protest at shoddy housing built by the Cape Town Community Housing Company (CTCHC) and against eviction of people from their homes by the CTCHC. In Belhar residents who have been occupying a community hall since July to further their demand for housing marched. Meanwhile in Langa different groups of fire victims disputed claims to temporary housing. This is the latest in a series of housing and service delivery protests which have hit the Western Cape this year, as well as across the country, in the Free State, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Mpumalanga, Gauteng and elsewhere.

The Western Cape Provincial Government and the City Council face a crisis in their housing policy. There is a backlog of 360,000 units in the province and 260,000 in the city, and no transparent plan for house building or house allocation to solve the crisis. The mass rally on September 17th will involve those who protested today joining with more than twenty other communities, those with shoddily-built brick houses, those living in backyards, and those in shack settlements, coloureds and Africans, uniting against lack of service delivery and housing and demanding decent housing for all, now! The rally will be from 9am to 5pm in the O.R. Tambo Hall, Khayelitsha and will hear the voices of all the communities that have been in protest and struggle. Representatives from a multi-community housing protest march in Durban on 14th September will also speak.

Since the advent of democracy in 1994 communities nationally have hoped their livelihood would be better. They were promised housing, sanitation, clean water, jobs and the alleviation of poverty. But conditions have worsened, due to the economic policy of GEAR introduced by the ANC government (and supported by all other bourgeois parties).

The results have been bond-payers and rent-payers falling into arrears and being evicted, water and electricity being cut off, and the working class masses fighting against the policies of privatization. Social movements developed from 1999 and since then protest and demonstrations have erupted.

We as these social movements and communities in the Western Cape have been meeting in recent months discussing what actions and alternatives we need to address the lack of basic service delivery and lack of housing for shack dwellers, backyarders and those on the waiting list. On the 17th September we will have firm resolution on the question of service delivery and housing. We will also discuss our attitude to the local elections: whether to stand independent left candidates or not to vote, etc.

For more information contact Fonky Goboza: 073-9075945

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