Adding to the thousands of poor people displaced by violence, the government plans to evict 2,000 families in Delft in the Western Cape
Winter can’t be bleak enough for the South African government. With electricity vaulting towards a 53% increase, petrol to R10 a litre and beyond, and while one meal a day is the growing norm, the season’s not ever been quite as bleak as this one. Violence against migrants has raised bloody welts in poor communities. And to deal with these crises, the government holds summits and opens refugee camps with the emergency assistance of the United Nations, the Red Cross, faith-based relief agencies and Medecins Sans Frontiers. The Anti Privatisation Forum condemns the state’s callous plans to add 8,000 evictees in Delft to the 100,000 poor people displaced nationally from their homes. It would seem to be the business of government to displace poor people from their homes, if not indirectly through its impoverishing policies then by bringing the security forces in to force the removals.
The government should listen to the public service announcements its own SABC has been broadcasting. The APF calls for the suspension of the evictions in Delft. Or ubuntu is a concept foreign to this government as another crisis in humanity is created. This is a constitutional matter and Judge Deon van Zyl himself said he was “incredibly sympathetic, but the court can never sanction someone taking the law into their own hands.” The law the backyard dwellers were taking into their hands was indeed their claim of the right to housing. Not to have occupied the houses would have denied themselves the right.
Call the eviction off! The right to housing is for all, not ordered by priority!
In solidarity with the Anti Eviction Campaign
From the Anti Privatisation Forum (Johannesburg)
Please visit the Anti Eviction Campaign website for recent developments on the situation in Delft.
Ahmed
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