Official logo of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign
The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign was a non-racial[1] popular movement[2] made up of poor and oppressed communities in Cape Town, South Africa.[3][4] It was formed in November 2000[5] with the aim of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality.[6][7][8][9]
The movement was the first of the first generation of so-called 'new social movements' to spring up after the end of apartheid and was known for its direct action style militancy, its refusal of all forms of vanguardism, including NGO (Non-Governmental Organisations) authoritarianism.[4][10][11][12] The movement sought to retain its autonomy from NGOs[13] and publicly refused to work with some local NGOs[14] and insisted that the middle class left respect the autonomy of grassroots movements.
The AEC was a founding member of the Poor People's Alliance and, along with the other members of the alliance, refused all electoral politics and encouraged the development of popular power rather than voting for political parties.[12][15][16][17]
The AEC mobilised against the 2008 xenophobic attacks in the areas where it was strong.[18][19][20]
The AEC is currently an umbrella body for over 10 community organisations,[22] crisis committees, and concerned residents movements who have come together to organise and demand their rights to basic services.[23] The organisations that make up the AEC include but are not limited to:
Gatesville Informal Traders Association (Athlone)[22]
Coordinators
The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign is an umbrella structure with an executive committee of a chairperson, a vice chairperson, a secretary, a vice secretary, a treasurer, and five regional coordinators.[26][27]
Activities
The AEC opposes evictions and water and electricity cut-offs[28] on many different levels.[4] Activities range from legal actions that challenge the constitutionality of evictions,[29] to mass mobilisation and popular education initiatives, to organisation and capacity building programs.[8][12] The movement has also confronted local gangs and in July 2012 one of its leading activists, Soraya Nordien, was murdered following threats from gang members.[30]
Campaigns
Since its inception, the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) has called for an end to all evictions and cut-offs of basic services in the Western Cape.[4][31] In 2001, the AEC achieved a 6-month moratorium on all evictions in the Cape Town Unicity.[32][33] Even though the DA had declared the moratorium, illegal evictions continued.[34]
The movement strongly supported the struggle for the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers to resist forced removal to the notorious Blikkiesdorp transit camp and to demand access to decent housing.[35]
No Land! No House! No Vote! is the name of a campaign by autonomous grassroots movements to boycott elections and reject party politics and vote banking in South Africa. In 2009, the Poor People's Alliance voted to boycott the national elections under the No Land! No House! No Vote! Banner.[4][36][37]
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was connected to a large number of evictions in South Africa which many claimed were meant to 'beautify the city'.[38][39][40] The WC-AEC campaigned against all evictions caused by the event. The campaign's hotspots included the anti-gentrification issues in Gympie Street and other parts of Woodstock,[41][42] the national N2 Gateway housing project and its evictions in Joe Slovo and Delft,[43] Sea Point evictions, and evictions in Q-Town next to Athlone Stadium.
The movement is committed to opposing xenophobia and has been particularly active in this regard in Gugulethu[44] where it has set up a forum[45] for these issues to be discussed. According to both the media[46] and the local police[47] the forum has had considerable success in reducing xenophobic hostility. However the movement's anti-xenophobic work has cost it some popular support and resulted in an arson attack on one of the movement's leaders.[48]
In September 2008 the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, together with Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Landless People's Movement and the Rural Network (Abahlali baseplasini) formed the Poor People's Alliance.[50][51] The poor people's alliance refused electoral politics under the banner 'No Land! No House! No Vote!'.[12][52] It has been reported that "Nearly 75% of South Africans aged 20-29 did not vote in the 2011 [local government] elections" and that "South Africans in that age group were more likely to have taken part in (sic) violent street protests against the local ANC than to have voted for the ruling party".[53]
Influence
Take Back the Land[54] in Miami and the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign[55][56][57][58] have both stated that their work is inspired by that of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. The Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign has used the slogan 'No House No Vote'.[59]
↑ Social Movement Media in Post-Apartheid South Africa, by Wendy Willems,Encyclopaedia of Social Movement Media (Ed. John D. H. Downing, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 2011)
Kleider, Alexander (Director) and Michel, Daniela (Director). (2009). When the Mountain Meets its Shadow [Documentary]. Germany: DOK-WERK film cooperative.
Amandla in the Nguni languages Xhosa and Zulu 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.
South Africa has a long history of alternative media. During the 1980s there was a host of community and grassroots newspapers that supplied content that ran counter to the prevailing attitudes of the times. In addition, a thriving small press and underground press carried voices that would not have been heard in the mainstream, corporate media. Pirate radio projects operated by Caset were the forerunners of the country's community radio and small pamphlets and samizdat were included in the mix.
Crossroads is a high-density township in the Western Cape, South Africa.
Abahlali baseMjondolo is a socialist shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which primarily campaigns for land, housing and dignity, to democratise society from below and against xenophobia.
Manenberg is a township of Cape Town, South Africa, that was created by the apartheid government for low-income Coloured families in the Cape Flats in 1966 as a result of the forced removal campaign by the National Party. It has an estimated population of 52,000 residents. The area consists of rows of semi-detached houses and project-like flats, known as "korre". The township is located about 20 km away from the city centre of Cape Town. It is separated from neighbouring Nyanga and Gugulethu townships by a railway line to the east and from Hanover Park by the Sand Industria industrial park to the west and Heideveld to the north. The northern part of Manenberg has wealthy people that are mostly Muslims. The rest of Manenberg has poor people that are mostly associated with Christianity.
The Landless People's Movement is an independent social movement in South Africa. It consisted of rural people and people living in shack settlements in cities. The Landless People's Movement boycotted parliamentary elections and had a history of conflict with the African National Congress. The Landless People's Movement was affiliated to Via Campesina internationally and its Johannesburg branches to the Poor People's Alliance in South Africa.
Symphony Way Informal Settlement was a small community of pavement dwellers 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.
The Poor People's Alliance was 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. It become defunct following the collapse of two of its affiliated movements, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign and the Landless People's Movement.
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.
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."
South Africa has been dubbed "the protest capital of the world", with one of the highest rates of public protests in the world.
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.
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.
The Constitution of South Africa protects all basic political freedoms. However, there have been many incidents of political repression, dating back to at least 2002, as well as threats of future repression in violation of this constitution leading some analysts, civil society organisations and popular movements to conclude that there is a new climate of political repression or a decline in political tolerance.
The May 2008 South African riots was a wave of xenophobic riots starting in Alexandra, Gauteng on 12 May 2008 and then spreading to other locations across South Africa. The violence started when South African residents of Alexandra attacked migrants from Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, killing two people and injuring 40 others. Some attackers were reported to have been singing Jacob Zuma's campaign song Umshini Wami.
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