Land and housing activists: “We will take the land because it belongs to us”

30th August 2017 Mzi Velapi 0

There has been an increasing number of land and housing activists that have been murdered lately. Mthunzi “Ras Moziah” Zuma was shot and killed during a road blockade next to the land they were occupying near Khayelitsha Mall. Less than a month later another land and housing activist in Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay 41 kilometres west of Khayelitsha was shot by the police during a housing protest and later died in hospital.

Land and housing activists have pledged to continue taking and occupying vacant land despite brutal repression by the state and the killing of those who fight for land. The commitment was made at seminar in Khayelitsha Monday night where different groups of organisations representing activists from Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town met to share their experiences of state and police brutality.

Evictions in central Joburg leave families stranded

18th August 2017 Ramatamo Sehoai 0

The gentrification that is taking place in central Johannesburg has left families evicted from Fattis Mansions last month, stranded in tents set up in a stadium south of the city. In what is effectively a refugee camp, the living conditions are bad. The Mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba from the Democratic Alliance, is an advocate for gentrification of the inner city, not the rights of the people living there.