A high court has dismissed an application by the police minister for an interdict against a commission of inquiry into Khayelitsha's policing.
On Monday the Western Cape High Court announced its dismissal of Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa's urgent interdict against the commission set up by Premier Helen Zille last year. The commission – headed by advocate Vusi Pikoli and retired Constitutional Court Judge Catherine O’Reagan – was tasked with investigating allegations of police inefficiency and the breakdown of the relationship of the police after public lobbying by organisations such as Equal Education, the Social Justice Coalition and the Treatment Action Campaign.
In response to arguments by advocates representing Zille, the Social Justice Coalition and the commission itself last year, Mthethwa's legal team argued Zille's decision to appoint the commission would have an impact on the independence of the South African Police Service. Advocate Peter Hawthorne, acting for the coalition, on Monday told the court Mthethwa's legal team failed to prove the commission would cause irreparable harm to the SAPS. The commission was meant to hold public hearings from November 12 to December 14, which was since suspended pending the outcome of Mthethwa's application.
Last year the M&G reported that there had been more than 18 vigilante killings in Khayelitsha in 2012 – which activists related to the community’s lack of trust in the police’s ability to maintain order – as well as a spate of gang violence in the area.
"The rationale behind the setting up of such a commission, which, at a strategic level, only focuses on the South African Police Service and not the Western Cape metro police, is suspicious if not questionable," Mthethwa said in November after the commission was set up.
"Despite the engagements we held with the premier over the past weeks, it is evident that she is determined to continue with the commission by hook or crook, which leaves us with no option but to challenge the matter through the legal framework," said Mthethwa when he challenged the validity of the commission.
Following Mthethwa’s urgent interdict in November, many residents of Khayelitsha and activists – including Social Justice Coalition founder Zackie Achmat and its workers – gathered outside the Western Cape High Court last year to protest against the police minister's attempt to stop the commission of inquiry.
Outside the court on Monday residents took part in the “people’s commission of inquiry into crime in Khayelitsha” where they shared stories about their experiences with the police in the township, and Achmat used a loudspeaker to call witnesses to the "stand".
Source: Mail & Guardian
Showing posts with label Khayelitsha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Khayelitsha. Show all posts
Monday, January 14, 2013
Friday, November 30, 2012
Bluster is no cover for state’s excess and drift
TO EVADE detailed explanations over gargantuan government spending on his rural hacienda, President Jacob Zuma and his acolytes have evoked everything from state secrecy and executive dignity to emotive claims about rural tradition and white prejudice. It’s a scatter-gun approach. Inconsistency seems to be developing into a defensive Cabinet habit. This succeeds only in tying the government into ever knottier complications.
When ministers begin to contradict each other, and sometimes even themselves, it betrays an increasing lack of central direction and conviction. Recently the government, despite a preoccupation with the "secrecy bill" and snooping foreign agents, has successfully exposed its own worst blunders. Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa resorted to court in an attempt to prevent an inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha, instituted by Western Cape premier Helen Zille at the request of community organisations. Mthethwa dismissed Zille’s commission as "politicking" and claimed there was no problem with vigilante murders in Khayelitsha.
Yet a report by national police commissioner Riah Phiyega, ironically lodged with Mthethwa’s own court papers, revealed there have been 78 vigilante killings in Khayelitsha in less than a year: an average of six a month. You don’t really need a vexatious official opposition when the government itself is quite capable of exposing its own "politicking" — and even provides the irrefutable evidence.
This was followed by a heated dispute about how many Gulfstream jet flights, at a cost of R200,000 a trip, Lindiwe Sisulu took when she was defence minister. Democratic Alliance MP David Maynier alleged she had taken 200 such flights between Cape Town and Pretoria. Sisulu, who is now the Minister of Public Service and Administration, replied that she used the luxury jet only 35 times and accused Maynier of having "a flea-infested body".
The question is: where did those irritating fleas come from? Maynier was never able to elicit particulars of Sisulu’s travel arrangements when she was in charge of defence, because she claimed such information was a state secret. Instead, he got his information from Sisulu’s Cabinet colleague. Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said her predecessor took 203 executive-jet flights. In other words, Sisulu blamed a mere oxpecker for ticks and fleas that originated from the ox itself: another sign of a government in disarray.
It is catching. Earlier this month, the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) issued a "stern warning" against civil society groups that have resorted to court action over the Limpopo textbook fiasco. Sadtu, claiming it could resolve this textbook issue, denounced the groups as "imperialist neoliberal forces … used as proxies to pursue certain political agendas". Two weeks later, Sadtu in Limpopo issued a statement expressing doubt that the Department of Basic Education could deliver school textbooks in time for next year.
The champion of this hydra-headed style is Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson. During the farm unrest in the Western Cape, she sounded like rivals furiously at odds with one another: Joemat the fiery revolutionary versus Pettersson the bungling government functionary.
The strikers had "won", she thundered, because they made the government listen. And the deafest culprit? As minister responsible, herself. So if farm protests reignite next week, will Comrade Joemat chuck rocks at Minister Pettersson?
Above all, no sooner was there a row over whether Zuma had taken a bond on his rural domain than his friend and former funder, Vivian Reddy, rashly declared that Zuma should be commended for choosing Nkandla when he could pick the plushest areas in the country. That boast neatly drew attention to the fact that, at a cost of more than R250m, the president’s homestead, per square metre, probably is the nation’s plushest area.
Along Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard, you can pick up an ocean-facing mansion with six bedrooms, staff quarters, infinity pool and similar status symbols for R20m. At the Nkandla rate, you could buy 10 of those in Bantry Bay, Camps Bay and any other bay — and still have enough left for a 1,119ha game farm in KwaZulu-Natal plus a brace of helicopters.
No amount of bluster about disrespect, foreign agents or covert agendas can make up for infighting, excess and drift.
It is no way to run a country. It is no way to end inequality.
Source: Business Day
When ministers begin to contradict each other, and sometimes even themselves, it betrays an increasing lack of central direction and conviction. Recently the government, despite a preoccupation with the "secrecy bill" and snooping foreign agents, has successfully exposed its own worst blunders. Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa resorted to court in an attempt to prevent an inquiry into policing in Khayelitsha, instituted by Western Cape premier Helen Zille at the request of community organisations. Mthethwa dismissed Zille’s commission as "politicking" and claimed there was no problem with vigilante murders in Khayelitsha.
Yet a report by national police commissioner Riah Phiyega, ironically lodged with Mthethwa’s own court papers, revealed there have been 78 vigilante killings in Khayelitsha in less than a year: an average of six a month. You don’t really need a vexatious official opposition when the government itself is quite capable of exposing its own "politicking" — and even provides the irrefutable evidence.
This was followed by a heated dispute about how many Gulfstream jet flights, at a cost of R200,000 a trip, Lindiwe Sisulu took when she was defence minister. Democratic Alliance MP David Maynier alleged she had taken 200 such flights between Cape Town and Pretoria. Sisulu, who is now the Minister of Public Service and Administration, replied that she used the luxury jet only 35 times and accused Maynier of having "a flea-infested body".
The question is: where did those irritating fleas come from? Maynier was never able to elicit particulars of Sisulu’s travel arrangements when she was in charge of defence, because she claimed such information was a state secret. Instead, he got his information from Sisulu’s Cabinet colleague. Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said her predecessor took 203 executive-jet flights. In other words, Sisulu blamed a mere oxpecker for ticks and fleas that originated from the ox itself: another sign of a government in disarray.
It is catching. Earlier this month, the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) issued a "stern warning" against civil society groups that have resorted to court action over the Limpopo textbook fiasco. Sadtu, claiming it could resolve this textbook issue, denounced the groups as "imperialist neoliberal forces … used as proxies to pursue certain political agendas". Two weeks later, Sadtu in Limpopo issued a statement expressing doubt that the Department of Basic Education could deliver school textbooks in time for next year.
The champion of this hydra-headed style is Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson. During the farm unrest in the Western Cape, she sounded like rivals furiously at odds with one another: Joemat the fiery revolutionary versus Pettersson the bungling government functionary.
The strikers had "won", she thundered, because they made the government listen. And the deafest culprit? As minister responsible, herself. So if farm protests reignite next week, will Comrade Joemat chuck rocks at Minister Pettersson?
Above all, no sooner was there a row over whether Zuma had taken a bond on his rural domain than his friend and former funder, Vivian Reddy, rashly declared that Zuma should be commended for choosing Nkandla when he could pick the plushest areas in the country. That boast neatly drew attention to the fact that, at a cost of more than R250m, the president’s homestead, per square metre, probably is the nation’s plushest area.
Along Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard, you can pick up an ocean-facing mansion with six bedrooms, staff quarters, infinity pool and similar status symbols for R20m. At the Nkandla rate, you could buy 10 of those in Bantry Bay, Camps Bay and any other bay — and still have enough left for a 1,119ha game farm in KwaZulu-Natal plus a brace of helicopters.
No amount of bluster about disrespect, foreign agents or covert agendas can make up for infighting, excess and drift.
It is no way to run a country. It is no way to end inequality.
Source: Business Day
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Failing to Protect the Poor against Crime
South Africa continues to be a hazardous place for the Black poor. You don’t have to be a Marikana mineworker to die a death that is undignified, if not brutal and terrifying. The daily security concerns of the majority have never been further from the minds of politicians, who are either gripped with Mangaung mania, or – in the case of the DA - feverishly plotting the jingles and publicity stunts that they think will win them another metro city in the 2014 elections. COPE’s only recent claim to fame is its elderly MP who tried to open an aeroplane door in mid-flight, later escaping with a slap on the wrist after successfully arguing (with the support of the DA) that the combination of one alcoholic drink and one sleeping tablet made him lose his senses.
You know you are living in the most unequal country in the world when the mayor of a major metropolitan city can issue a self-congratulatory press statement – as the DA’s Patricia de Lille did recently – about the installation of less than 30 high-mast lights to be spread across numerous unlit informal settlements.
It is well known that in Cape Town’s townships and informal settlements, street lighting is almost non-existent, and as a result, that crime is rife. The complaint has been raised by residents at nearly every community meeting for years, no matter who organized the meeting or what else the meeting was supposed to be about. The DA likes to claim that communities vandalise every street light that ever gets installed but the truth is that street lighting has hardly been installed in the informal settlements and light bulbs are never replaced in the townships street lights. In Cape Town’s white suburbs, on the other hand, the DA city administration will send technicians out at 10pm to fix a streetlight bulb that died the same evening.
It emerged in a recent City of Cape Town press statement that poor, Black areas are not set to receive proper street lighting anytime soon. The DA city is instead going to rely on national government’s urban settlement development grant to install four lights here and there over the next two years. While the cost of keeping the streetlights on in white suburbs is part of the city’s normal budget, lighting the Black areas depends on donations.
The DA has already claimed that it is powerless to protect poor people on the Cape Flats from being caught in the crossfire between warring gangs, and that only the army would be able to do this. But with the re-emergence of necklacing in Khayelitsha as a community response to crime, the recent killings of four Cape Town metro police in the townships and the increase in the number of young people involved in violent gangs, it is clear that the DA is powerless on many more fronts and that things are unravelling fast in the “mother city”.
The concentration of public funds on white suburbs means the different races live totally different lives. White Capetonians can expect to wake up on the weekend and buy some beers for the night without incident. But for the past two Christmases, Khayelitsha residents have reported that police of all the different forces set up ad-hoc roadblocks on the pavements and ask residents returning from the bottle stores to show receipts for the beer they have purchased. If the residents have failed to keep their slips, or never got one, they are knocked around a bit and their alcohol confiscated. This is nothing to do with drinking in public but happens to ordinary people walking home after shopping.
More disturbingly, Black township residents are increasingly being subjected to the sight of public group killings, which increase the fear and insecurity in those areas. Several Khayelitsha residents vented their shock on Facebook just this past weekend at seeing groups of 14 year old youths killing each other in Makhaza Park.
"The park is full...it's blood everywhere. These boys are carrying weapons I have never seen in (my) life. This is too painful to see. We have been calling the police over and over but they haven't come," wrote one person. She later posted an update that two police had arrived, watched for a while and then left. "These kids are continuing", her desperate update read. Less than two hours later, another update read: "Sad to say, we have lost two young boys and others are injured...am numb".
Such horrific practices would be unthinkable in one of Cape Town’s white suburban parks. But in the townships, the government has allowed these incidents to become part of "normal" life.
It was only last week that Cape Town’s largest shack area, the Enkanini informal settlement, was provided with 452 electricity points – for 11 000 homes. How 24 families are going to share one power point is a mystery. The DA says another 2000 electricity connections will be turned on before May 2013 but that the rest of the electricity will be installed in phases. It is still not clear whether every home will eventually have its own electricity point or not. This informal settlement is situated in a highly urbanised city, which recently won the title of “World Design Capital”, yet its high school only got electricity last week!
Townships in the rest of the country are equally under-developed and crime plagued. Rural areas are also experiencing a spike in crime. The situation will continue to worsen rapidly until the DA and ANC abandon their practice of maintaining the living areas set up by apartheid’s Group Areas Act.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen. The parties are two sides of the same coin. The ANC’s outdated neo-liberal economic policies were drawn up by the same international economists who wrote the policies of the DA. Successive ministers of Finance have focussed for 18 years now on pumping billions in public funds into tax breaks and incentives for overseas investors to set up factories that have never materialised.
Former president Thabo Mbeki said last week in a speech at Fort Hare university that South Africa was progressing “towards a costly disaster”, and was in a “dangerous and unacceptable situation of directionless and unguided national drift”.
This is rich coming from someone who, when he was in power, oversaw the arms deal; withheld anti-retroviral treatment from thousands of women living with HIV; set up the practice of wasting hundreds of millions of rands in public funds on hiring useless consultants for local and national government, and started the now defunct practice of paying retention bonuses to parastatal managers.
After 18 years, the DA and ANC have missed all opportunities to end apartheid in South Africa and improve the lives of the Black majority. The rapidly worsening situation, where more and more Black people are living without water, electricity, houses and schools as if in 17th century England, won’t be alleviated by either the DA or ANC. Their time has past.
Majavu is a writer concentrating on the rights of workers, oppressed people, the environment, anti-militarism and what makes a better world. She is currently studying for a Masters Degree in New Zealand.
Source: by Anna Majavu: SACSIS
You know you are living in the most unequal country in the world when the mayor of a major metropolitan city can issue a self-congratulatory press statement – as the DA’s Patricia de Lille did recently – about the installation of less than 30 high-mast lights to be spread across numerous unlit informal settlements.
It is well known that in Cape Town’s townships and informal settlements, street lighting is almost non-existent, and as a result, that crime is rife. The complaint has been raised by residents at nearly every community meeting for years, no matter who organized the meeting or what else the meeting was supposed to be about. The DA likes to claim that communities vandalise every street light that ever gets installed but the truth is that street lighting has hardly been installed in the informal settlements and light bulbs are never replaced in the townships street lights. In Cape Town’s white suburbs, on the other hand, the DA city administration will send technicians out at 10pm to fix a streetlight bulb that died the same evening.
It emerged in a recent City of Cape Town press statement that poor, Black areas are not set to receive proper street lighting anytime soon. The DA city is instead going to rely on national government’s urban settlement development grant to install four lights here and there over the next two years. While the cost of keeping the streetlights on in white suburbs is part of the city’s normal budget, lighting the Black areas depends on donations.
The DA has already claimed that it is powerless to protect poor people on the Cape Flats from being caught in the crossfire between warring gangs, and that only the army would be able to do this. But with the re-emergence of necklacing in Khayelitsha as a community response to crime, the recent killings of four Cape Town metro police in the townships and the increase in the number of young people involved in violent gangs, it is clear that the DA is powerless on many more fronts and that things are unravelling fast in the “mother city”.
The concentration of public funds on white suburbs means the different races live totally different lives. White Capetonians can expect to wake up on the weekend and buy some beers for the night without incident. But for the past two Christmases, Khayelitsha residents have reported that police of all the different forces set up ad-hoc roadblocks on the pavements and ask residents returning from the bottle stores to show receipts for the beer they have purchased. If the residents have failed to keep their slips, or never got one, they are knocked around a bit and their alcohol confiscated. This is nothing to do with drinking in public but happens to ordinary people walking home after shopping.
More disturbingly, Black township residents are increasingly being subjected to the sight of public group killings, which increase the fear and insecurity in those areas. Several Khayelitsha residents vented their shock on Facebook just this past weekend at seeing groups of 14 year old youths killing each other in Makhaza Park.
"The park is full...it's blood everywhere. These boys are carrying weapons I have never seen in (my) life. This is too painful to see. We have been calling the police over and over but they haven't come," wrote one person. She later posted an update that two police had arrived, watched for a while and then left. "These kids are continuing", her desperate update read. Less than two hours later, another update read: "Sad to say, we have lost two young boys and others are injured...am numb".
Such horrific practices would be unthinkable in one of Cape Town’s white suburban parks. But in the townships, the government has allowed these incidents to become part of "normal" life.
It was only last week that Cape Town’s largest shack area, the Enkanini informal settlement, was provided with 452 electricity points – for 11 000 homes. How 24 families are going to share one power point is a mystery. The DA says another 2000 electricity connections will be turned on before May 2013 but that the rest of the electricity will be installed in phases. It is still not clear whether every home will eventually have its own electricity point or not. This informal settlement is situated in a highly urbanised city, which recently won the title of “World Design Capital”, yet its high school only got electricity last week!
Townships in the rest of the country are equally under-developed and crime plagued. Rural areas are also experiencing a spike in crime. The situation will continue to worsen rapidly until the DA and ANC abandon their practice of maintaining the living areas set up by apartheid’s Group Areas Act.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen. The parties are two sides of the same coin. The ANC’s outdated neo-liberal economic policies were drawn up by the same international economists who wrote the policies of the DA. Successive ministers of Finance have focussed for 18 years now on pumping billions in public funds into tax breaks and incentives for overseas investors to set up factories that have never materialised.
Former president Thabo Mbeki said last week in a speech at Fort Hare university that South Africa was progressing “towards a costly disaster”, and was in a “dangerous and unacceptable situation of directionless and unguided national drift”.
This is rich coming from someone who, when he was in power, oversaw the arms deal; withheld anti-retroviral treatment from thousands of women living with HIV; set up the practice of wasting hundreds of millions of rands in public funds on hiring useless consultants for local and national government, and started the now defunct practice of paying retention bonuses to parastatal managers.
After 18 years, the DA and ANC have missed all opportunities to end apartheid in South Africa and improve the lives of the Black majority. The rapidly worsening situation, where more and more Black people are living without water, electricity, houses and schools as if in 17th century England, won’t be alleviated by either the DA or ANC. Their time has past.
Majavu is a writer concentrating on the rights of workers, oppressed people, the environment, anti-militarism and what makes a better world. She is currently studying for a Masters Degree in New Zealand.
Source: by Anna Majavu: SACSIS
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
'Secrecy bill' united many in defence of Freedom
On March 17 an extraordinary thing in our remarkable politics occurred in Khayelitsha, Western Cape: 11 opposition political parties took to the stage in a visible show of solidarity against the Protection of Information Bill. They did so because of the ANC government's refusal to include a most necessary public interest defence clause in the bill.
As momentous as this solidarity was, the real high point was the readiness of the people in the audience, from different political parties, to collectively own leaders such as Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Helen Zille, among others. Important living and deceased leaders, for once, became common property associated with the common good.
The trivialisation of politics through a territorial, factional or racial attitude was overcome by people seeing the larger canvas. How exhilarating it was to leave the confining boxes and for once be free in the greater expanse of open political space. Here, for the first time, South Africans were willing to accord the kind of reverence to all leaders of the kind that the PAC exclusively gives to Sobukwe, Azapo to Biko, the IFP to Buthelezi and the DA to Zille. All distinguished leaders committed to democracy, the existential struggle of the people and to unadulterated freedom were acknowledged and given recognition.
The forging of a national spirit and willingness of the assembled politicians and supporters to accept the great leaders of our democracy, not in the division of segmented parties where they exist or existed but in the unity of a common matrix of freedom, is a turning point in our glorious history and augurs well for the preservation of our democracy.
May the light of freedom never dim in our country and may moral courage glow bright to show us the way to a safe and secure future. What the leaders and their parties did in Khayelitsha will reverberate through history.
Source: Times Live
As momentous as this solidarity was, the real high point was the readiness of the people in the audience, from different political parties, to collectively own leaders such as Robert Sobukwe, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Helen Zille, among others. Important living and deceased leaders, for once, became common property associated with the common good.
The trivialisation of politics through a territorial, factional or racial attitude was overcome by people seeing the larger canvas. How exhilarating it was to leave the confining boxes and for once be free in the greater expanse of open political space. Here, for the first time, South Africans were willing to accord the kind of reverence to all leaders of the kind that the PAC exclusively gives to Sobukwe, Azapo to Biko, the IFP to Buthelezi and the DA to Zille. All distinguished leaders committed to democracy, the existential struggle of the people and to unadulterated freedom were acknowledged and given recognition.
The forging of a national spirit and willingness of the assembled politicians and supporters to accept the great leaders of our democracy, not in the division of segmented parties where they exist or existed but in the unity of a common matrix of freedom, is a turning point in our glorious history and augurs well for the preservation of our democracy.
May the light of freedom never dim in our country and may moral courage glow bright to show us the way to a safe and secure future. What the leaders and their parties did in Khayelitsha will reverberate through history.
Source: Times Live
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Zille is a ‘satanist’
ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has accused DA leader Hellen Zille of being a “satanist” bent on demolishing churches in black communities. “Helen Zille, who is suffering from satanism, has gone all out to demolish the churches in Western Cape,” Malema told students at the University of Johannesburg yesterday. “She is exposing herself ... people there will know they voted for a monster.”
Malema was reacting to an outcry by black religious leaders that the DA-led Cape Town municipality was demolishing township churches – while leaving shebeens standing. Angry religious leaders met a delegation of 21 ANC MPs to complain about the city’s anti-land invasion unit, which has demolished churches in Khayelitsha.
When the MPs, including ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga, and religious leaders visited the unit had just finished bulldozing a mosque.
Malema was reacting to an outcry by black religious leaders that the DA-led Cape Town municipality was demolishing township churches – while leaving shebeens standing. Angry religious leaders met a delegation of 21 ANC MPs to complain about the city’s anti-land invasion unit, which has demolished churches in Khayelitsha.
When the MPs, including ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga, and religious leaders visited the unit had just finished bulldozing a mosque.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Makhaza: Where Dignity Is A Luxury
People across the country have been appropriately outraged by revelations that toilets without walls or roofs were built in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, outside Cape Town, and that residents have been forced to choose between relieving themselves in full view of their neighbours or walking (at times long distances) to enclosed public toilets. A deluge of public outrage has since been directed at the governing DA following a complaint by the ANC Youth League. It is certainly not egregious or opportunistic to claim – as they and many others have – that such treatment is reminiscent of apartheid, and inherently contrary to the rights to dignity, health and safety enshrined in our Constitution.
What has been overlooked, however, is that these rights are denied to millions in South Africa on a daily basis. This incident has provided a stark example of the daily plight of people living in poor, working-class informal settlements, but an example that has come as a shock only to those who do not live there. The protracted absence of the basic services that many of us take for granted and the failure to acknowledge this deficit has resulted in the normalisation of suffering, and the routine violation of basic human rights.
It is worth pointing out that this particular section of Makhaza is not one of the worst informal areas in Khayelitsha – a sprawling and densely populated remnant of segregation where at least 57% of people live in shacks, 80% without access to water in their homes, 35% with no immediate access to flush/chemical toilets, and 24% without access to electricity. Despite being unquestionably impoverished, Makhaza has roads and is not as densely populated as other areas. These material conditions might seem relatively insignificant when confronted with the inhumanity of open toilets, but they form part of a broad range of infrastructural barriers that have direct bearing on the quality of life of residents.
You will not find the informal settlement of RR Section on a map, despite it being directly alongside the N2 highway wedged between Cape Town International Airport and Somerset West. On some maps it is marked as marshland, which is fairly accurate – apart from the fact that it is home to thousands. It is covered in shacks, no more than a metre apart in some areas, possesses no roads and very few lights. The absence of roads prevents fire response teams from extinguishing the frequent fires commonly caused by the use of gas and fuelled by an abundance of flammable material. Ambulances, too, are often unable to provide medical care to residents, and police unable to protect, as homes are inaccessible and poorly marked. This labyrinth of indignity and sorrow is the day-to-day reality of life for innumerable people not just in RR, but in poor informal settlements around the country.
One of the greatest community concerns – as illustrated by the Makhaza saga – is that of clean and safe sanitation. There are too few clean and functioning toilets and safe water sources, drainage is inadequate, and refuse collection irregular. As a result, waterborne diseases and parasites – including gastroenteritis, worms and diarrhoea – are rampant. Getting to and using toilets – one of the most unspoken of human rights – can be life threatening. Residents are often forced to walk long distances down unlit “pathways” that wind between shacks, through back yards and sometimes across busy roads; and are frequently robbed, hit by cars, beaten and raped. In many cases residents choose the alternative of relieving themselves on the outskirts of the community, increasing their vulnerability to crime and exposure to disease for both themselves and their communities.
There are two interlinked lessons we must learn from Makhaza. Firstly, we have a duty to hold the incumbent city and provincial government accountable in ensuring that norms and standards are maintained.
The Water Services Act (108 of 2007) notes how everyone has the right to “basic sanitation – the prescribed minimum standard of services necessary for the safe, hygienic, and adequate collection, removal, disposal or purification of human excreta, domestic waste-water and sewage, from households including informal households”. Moreover, it states that the municipality or local council is responsible for ensuring access to water services: that local government has failed to take responsibility for this incident must be strongly condemned.
We must, however, also acknowledge that this is not an isolated case and certainly not limited to the DA’s term of government. It should not be used as ammunition for mudslinging, but rather as an opportunity to initiate dialogue and action on an issue that has been neglected for too long.
We must call on the City of Cape Town to publicise and educate around its Water Services Development Plan as compelled by law, as well as other plans relating to the provision of other essential services. There is too much confusion surrounding the development of informal settlements.
The second lesson is that of the need for adequate communication and consultation around service delivery. Many people in Makhaza were not aware of the arrangement to build more toilets at the expense of walls and roofs. In fact one elderly woman had no idea she was even receiving a toilet, let alone that she would need to build her own walls around it.
It is not enough to communicate solely with community leaders, especially when it involves the provision of services as essential as toilets. Wide forums need to be established which include government, civil society, and the community. At the same time, the community and civil society have a duty to encourage participation.
We should never learn to accept the everyday indignities and inequalities faced by children, men and women in informal settlements.
Source: Writing Rights: Centre for Law and Social Justice
What has been overlooked, however, is that these rights are denied to millions in South Africa on a daily basis. This incident has provided a stark example of the daily plight of people living in poor, working-class informal settlements, but an example that has come as a shock only to those who do not live there. The protracted absence of the basic services that many of us take for granted and the failure to acknowledge this deficit has resulted in the normalisation of suffering, and the routine violation of basic human rights.
It is worth pointing out that this particular section of Makhaza is not one of the worst informal areas in Khayelitsha – a sprawling and densely populated remnant of segregation where at least 57% of people live in shacks, 80% without access to water in their homes, 35% with no immediate access to flush/chemical toilets, and 24% without access to electricity. Despite being unquestionably impoverished, Makhaza has roads and is not as densely populated as other areas. These material conditions might seem relatively insignificant when confronted with the inhumanity of open toilets, but they form part of a broad range of infrastructural barriers that have direct bearing on the quality of life of residents.
You will not find the informal settlement of RR Section on a map, despite it being directly alongside the N2 highway wedged between Cape Town International Airport and Somerset West. On some maps it is marked as marshland, which is fairly accurate – apart from the fact that it is home to thousands. It is covered in shacks, no more than a metre apart in some areas, possesses no roads and very few lights. The absence of roads prevents fire response teams from extinguishing the frequent fires commonly caused by the use of gas and fuelled by an abundance of flammable material. Ambulances, too, are often unable to provide medical care to residents, and police unable to protect, as homes are inaccessible and poorly marked. This labyrinth of indignity and sorrow is the day-to-day reality of life for innumerable people not just in RR, but in poor informal settlements around the country.
One of the greatest community concerns – as illustrated by the Makhaza saga – is that of clean and safe sanitation. There are too few clean and functioning toilets and safe water sources, drainage is inadequate, and refuse collection irregular. As a result, waterborne diseases and parasites – including gastroenteritis, worms and diarrhoea – are rampant. Getting to and using toilets – one of the most unspoken of human rights – can be life threatening. Residents are often forced to walk long distances down unlit “pathways” that wind between shacks, through back yards and sometimes across busy roads; and are frequently robbed, hit by cars, beaten and raped. In many cases residents choose the alternative of relieving themselves on the outskirts of the community, increasing their vulnerability to crime and exposure to disease for both themselves and their communities.
There are two interlinked lessons we must learn from Makhaza. Firstly, we have a duty to hold the incumbent city and provincial government accountable in ensuring that norms and standards are maintained.
The Water Services Act (108 of 2007) notes how everyone has the right to “basic sanitation – the prescribed minimum standard of services necessary for the safe, hygienic, and adequate collection, removal, disposal or purification of human excreta, domestic waste-water and sewage, from households including informal households”. Moreover, it states that the municipality or local council is responsible for ensuring access to water services: that local government has failed to take responsibility for this incident must be strongly condemned.
We must, however, also acknowledge that this is not an isolated case and certainly not limited to the DA’s term of government. It should not be used as ammunition for mudslinging, but rather as an opportunity to initiate dialogue and action on an issue that has been neglected for too long.
We must call on the City of Cape Town to publicise and educate around its Water Services Development Plan as compelled by law, as well as other plans relating to the provision of other essential services. There is too much confusion surrounding the development of informal settlements.
The second lesson is that of the need for adequate communication and consultation around service delivery. Many people in Makhaza were not aware of the arrangement to build more toilets at the expense of walls and roofs. In fact one elderly woman had no idea she was even receiving a toilet, let alone that she would need to build her own walls around it.
It is not enough to communicate solely with community leaders, especially when it involves the provision of services as essential as toilets. Wide forums need to be established which include government, civil society, and the community. At the same time, the community and civil society have a duty to encourage participation.
We should never learn to accept the everyday indignities and inequalities faced by children, men and women in informal settlements.
Source: Writing Rights: Centre for Law and Social Justice
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)