Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign: 30 August 2011
The poor communities and social movements in Cape Town are in solidarity with the poor landless people of Mitchell's
Plain who are being victimised by the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape Province.
The Democratic Alliance-led government has blood on its hands. The people of Hangberg and Imizamo Yetho were attacked by the government not a long time ago. Recently, the Mitchell's
Plain Backyarders have also born the brunt of DA-led state violence against the poor.
The rich and wealthy people who are mostly whites enjoy themselves in the most unequal city in the world at the expense
of the poor. This is why we rebel.
The issue of the Mitchell's Plain landless, like the rest of Cape Town's housing crisis, cannot be solved through state
violence. It must be solved politically.
The government of the Western Cape ahs stolen the land from the poor and they sell it to wealthy white South Africans
and wealthy Europeans. Both the DA and the ruling party have failed the indigenous African people.
This is no longer an issue of service delivery. We are not being criminalised because we want our roads or our RDP
houses to be built faster so they may just fall apart. The issue is about taking back the land – everywhere – so that
the poor of this country no longer live waiting for their next eviction.
We, as the social movements and poor communities of South Africa say that the 21st Century is the century of the poor
Africans and their rebellion. We demand control of our own land and resources. We want to build our own houses free from
repression by the government. The poor are the majority in this country and we also have a right to decide on our own
future.
The rich are sucking the blood out of the poor each and every day in this country. This, while the media are playing
games with the poor because they only come when we burn tyres but ignore us when the majority of the quiet repression
against us is deemed 'low profile'. From 1994 up until 2011, many journalists have been roped into the payroll of
political parties.
The poor in South Africa are a step ladder for the few to get rich very quick. We as the majority know that freedom
shall come our way eventually.
Forward to the struggle of the poor! Forward!
Our new book: No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way (2011). You can pre-order it direct from the publisher or on Amazon.
When they evicted us, I just lost it. Those same policemen couldn’t arrest my child’s murderer, but they can kick us
poor people out of the only houses we have… - Symphony Way resident
For more, please visit the website of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign at:
www.antieviction.org.za and follow us on www.twitter.com/antieviction
Visit Abahlali baseMjondolo at www.abahlali.org and www.khayelitshastruggles.com
The Poor People's Alliance: Abahlali baseMjondolo, together with with Landless People's Movement (Gauteng), the Rural
Network (KwaZulu-Natal) and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, is part of the Poor People's Alliance - a unfunded
national network of democratic membership based poor people's movements.
ENDS