Symphony Way Informal Settlement was a small community of pavement dwellers (shack dwellers who live on the pavement) that lived on Symphony Way, a main road in Delft, South Africa, from February 2008 until late 2009. They were a group of families that were evicted in February 2008 from the N2 Gateway Houses.
In December 2007, Frank Martin, a Democratic Alliance Councillor and City of Cape Town mayoral committee member, issued letters to an estimated 300 families in Delft, which granted them permission to move into the houses, and stated that he would accept full responsibility for the consequences. Backyard-dwellers then occupied over 1,500 houses in the N2 Gateway. [1] [2] [3]
In February, over 1,500 families were evicted from the N2 Gateway houses. This was a violent eviction which included the use of rubber bullets. Over 20 people were injured including many women and children. Pictures and videos have circulated taking account of the violence including the shooting of a three-year-old child who was shot three times. [4] [5] [6]
In February 2008, residents set up an informal settlement on Symphony Way despite efforts by the City of Cape Town to evict them and move them into a nearby Temporary Relocation Area (TRA) nicknamed Blikkiesdorp. [7] Residents remained occupying the road for 21 months claiming that the TRAs like Blikkiesdorp are created to dump people. [8]
On 19 October 2009 a Western Cape High Court judge granted an order for the eviction of 103 families to Blikkiesdorp. The majority of residents reluctantly moved off Symphony Way (where they felt safer) and into Blikkiesdorp (which is notorious for crime) in November 2009. [9] [10] In Blikkiesdorp, they have continued to organise under the banner of Symphony Way and have continued their struggle for land and housing. [11]
The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers, also known as the Delft-Symphony Anti-Eviction Campaign, were organised through elected committees that dealt with issues important to the community. The committees were part of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign umbrella structure and include an executive committee, a children's committee and a night-time crime patrol committee. [12] Their primary focus is housing but the committees also deal with other internal and external issues that are important to the community. Residents resort to the following strategies in their attempts to get issues solved: direct action, legal challenges, popular education, media press statements, actions of solidarity.
In August 2008, a number of Symphony Way residents received publicity when they accompanied over 100 Joe Slovo residents to protest outside the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg. [13]
The Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers have written an anthology of their struggle for housing and human rights entitled No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way (2011). The foreword is by activist and author Raj Patel and the Introduction is by Former UN Special Rapporteur for housing Miloon Kothari. The book includes factual stories relating to both public and domestic violence, violations of justice, xenophobia, their struggle for land and housing and their assertion of dignity. [14] [15]
The community made an effort to take care of its children. It set up a creche on the pavement as well as starting their own netball and soccer teams and hosting photography exhibitions by the children. [16] [17] [18]
Amandla in IsiZulu and IsiXhosa means "power". The word was a popular rallying cry in the days of resistance against apartheid, used by the African National Congress and its allies. The leader of a group would call out "Amandla!" and the crowd would respond with "Awethu" or "Ngawethu!", completing the South African version of the rallying cry "power to the people!". The word is still associated with struggles against oppression.
Abahlali baseMjondolo is a shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which organises land occupations, builds communes and campaigns against evictions and xenophobia and for public housing. It has been described as "certainly the largest, most independent, militant and progressive social movement in post-apartheid South Africa".
Pavement dwellers refers to informal housing built on the footpaths/pavements of city streets. The structures use the walls or fences which separate properties from the pavement and street outside. Materials include cloth, corrugated iron, cardboard, wood, plastic, and sometimes also bricks or cement.
The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign was a non-racial popular movement made up of poor and oppressed communities in Cape Town, South Africa. It was formed in November 2000 with the aim of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality.
Lindiwe Nonceba Sisulu is a South African politician, member of parliament since 1994, and member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress currently serving as Minister of Tourism since August 2021. She previously served as Minister of Housing, Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Minister of Public Service and Administration from 2012 to 2014. and Minister of Human Settlements, Water & Sanitation from 2014 to 2021.
Joe Slovo is an informal settlement in Langa, Cape Town. Like many other informal settlements, it was named after former housing minister and anti-Apartheid activist, Joe Slovo. With over 20,000 residents, Joe Slovo is one of the largest informal settlements in South Africa.
Delft is a township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. It is situated next to the Cape Town International Airport, Belhar, Blue Downs, Ikwezi Park, Mandalay,Luzuko, Phillipi East and Site C, Khayelitsha. It is known for its recreational events, youth empowerment organizations such as Enkosi Foundation and the community has establish a motherbody organisation, the Delft Community Development Forum. Delft is a community that consists of numerous government built housing projects such as the N2 Gateway.
UnFreedom Day is an unofficial annual event that is marked every year on or around 27 April. UnFreedom Day is planned to coincide with the official South African holiday called Freedom Day, an annual celebration of South Africa's first non-racial democratic elections of 1994.
The Poor People's Alliance is a network of radical grassroots movements in South Africa. It was formed in 2008 after the Action Alliance, formed in December 2006, was expanded to include two more organisations.
The N2 Gateway Housing Pilot Project is a large housebuilding project under construction in Cape Town, South Africa. It has been labelled by the national government's former Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu as "the biggest housing project ever undertaken by any Government." Even though it is a joint endeavour by the National Department of Housing, the provincial government of the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town, a private company, Thubelisha, has been outsourced to find contractors, manage, and implement the entire project. Thubelisha estimates that some 25,000 units will be constructed, about 70% of which will be allocated to shack-dwellers, and 30% to backyard dwellers on the municipal housing waiting lists. Delft, 40 km outside of Cape Town, is the main site of the Project.
The N2 Gateway Occupations saw large numbers of government-built houses occupied illegally by local residents of Delft in the Western Cape during December, 2007. The houses in question were the new Breaking New Ground (BNG) houses in the Symphony section of Delft near the main road Symphony Way. This was the largest occupation of houses in South Africa's history.
Frank Martin is a former Democratic Alliance councillor for the 19th Ward in Cape Town which includes Blue Downs, Kuilsriver, Wesbank and a small eastern section of Delft.
No Land! No House! No Vote! is the name of a campaign by a number of poor people's movements in South Africa that calls for the boycotting of the vote and a general rejection of party politics and vote banking. The name is meant to imply that if government does not deliver on issues important to affected communities these movements will not vote.
The squatter's movement Abahlali baseMjondolo occupied a piece of vacant state owned land in Macassar Village, near Somerset West outside of Cape Town on 18 May 2009. The occupation was later destroyed by the city's anti-land invasion unit.
Mzonke Poni is an activist in Cape Town. He is the former chairperson of Abahlali baseMjondolo of the Western Cape and was previously a leader of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. The Sunday Times has described him as "the face of an ANC nightmare - an angry activist mobilising the township masses to protest at what he calls the government's failure to create a better life for the poor."
The KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, 2007 was a provincial law dealing with land tenure and evictions in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.
Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Area in Delft, Cape Town, better known by its nickname Blikkiesdorp, is a relocation camp made-up of corrugated iron shacks. Blikkiesdorp, which is Afrikaans for "Tin Can Town", was given its name by residents because of the row-upon-row of tin-like one room structures throughout the settlement.
The 2010 FIFA World Cup is the 19th FIFA World Cup, the premier international association football tournament, being held in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July. It is the first time the finals of the tournament have been staged in an African host nation as South Africa were selected as hosts following a bidding in 2004. The impact of the event itself transcend those bound by its athletic aspect and appeal, and the socioeconomic aspects of the tournament are far reaching.
QQ Section also known as Tambo Park, was founded in 1989 and is an Informal Settlement in the Site B sub-division of Khayelitsha in South Africa.
No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way is an anthology published in 2011 of 45 factual tales written and edited by the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers.
Coordinates: 33°58′11.6296″S18°37′31.0631″E / 33.969897111°S 18.625295306°E
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