When will each family get a house?
[caption id="attachment_34581" align="alignright" width="405"] LAND CLAIMS: Lapland, Uitenhage residents protest after being evicted from their shacks. Picture: FREDLIN ADRIAAN[/caption]
WHAT is so different? In 1960 we had the Sharpeville massacre. In August 2012 we had the Marikana carnage of 34 mineworkers.
From late 2012 onwards we had the farmworkers' revolt in the Western Cape. In the meanwhile service delivery protests are continuing unabated and people are being brutalised by members of the police force, with about 932 people dying in police custody in South Africa in 2011-12, a report by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) revealed.
We've now experienced callous evictions by police, apartheid-style in Lwandle in the Western Cape. The spin doctors are out playing the blame game while the poor are suffering.
The DA-run Cape Town metro council says it will provide short-term shelter, but only for a week as it doesn't want to "incentivise illegal land invasion by providing alternative accommodation". The DA says: "Don't blame us, the land belongs to Sanral, we didn't know. (Yes, and as we know, the apartheid apologists made similar assertions.)
Meanwhile Sanral sanctimoniously claims these evictions would never have occurred if the metro council had made alternate accommodation arrangements. But wait, they continue.
The council had withdrawn from "talks" after discussions had broken down on the e-toll issue. I'm gobsmacked by this logic!
Minister Dipuo Peters tries to play "Ms Nice" by calling a halt to the evictions, but reportedly adds: "This is not the right time to evict people". What she is in fact suggesting is that the dry summer months would be a better time to evict the poor.
Lindiwe Sisulu, now minister of human settlements, is reported as saying: "We are a caring government" and, that an inquiry would be established to "investigate all processes and procedures followed until the removal was authorised by the high court".
How uncaring can you get? The Nats taught them well – as colloquially stated, if you want to bury a hot potato until it gets cold refer it to a commission.
Refer to the Marikana, the arms deal and Helen Zille's Khayelitsha policing commissions.
After 20 years of democracy, I have to ask: when will housing be provided for every family? When is the state going to prioritise scientifically planned housing for all built to minimum standards of decency?
The National Development Plan (NDP) includes a section on "Transforming Human Settlement and the National Space Economy", but does not specify any definitive time frames. The normal excuses of "Rome was not built in a day" and "Our people must be patient" rings hollow when measured against the atrocities being committed in the Western Cape.
When do we eradicate rural and urban ghettoes, squatter camps and all other forms of temporary housing, such as backyard dwellings? Do we wait for another Uitenhage revolt?
The NDP also takes into account the poverty levels in the urban and rural areas, and states: "Many people still live in poverty traps, including the former homelands, where less than 30% of adults are employed (compared with 55% in the cities)". By its own admission the unemployment rate is thus much higher than allegedly reported by Statistics SA.
The right to decent housing and work must be entrenched in any democratic constitution. All progressive people and organisations should support a call that places the needs and interests of the mass of the people ahead of the narrow class interests of the rich elite.
Communities must turn their backs on the parliamentary system which shows that the representatives in the present government structures cannot be relied upon. Communities should empower themselves as in the '70s and '80s by forming their own democratic community-based organisations through which to pursue the struggle for basic rights – those rights that may well never be granted under the current system of capitalist oppression and exploitation.
Hamilton Petersen, Uitenhage
