"We have no land. Most of us have no jobs. We are just rotting here. When the police come they make fools of us. We can't control the people - they get angry. They burnt tyres and mattresses in the road. They say we have committed public violence but against which public? If we are not the public then who is the public and who are we? (City manager Mike) Sutcliffe talks to the Tribune about us but he doesn't speak to us. All they do is send the police every time we ask to talk. It is a war. They are attacking us.

Last Saturday 14 people were arrested on charges of public violence after 750 people from the Kennedy Road Informal Settlement in Claire Estate blockaded Umgeni Road with burning tyres for four hours. On the following Monday, Human Rights Day, 1 200 people tried to march to the Sydenham police station to demand that that either the Kennedy Road 14 be released or else the entire community be arrested because "If they are criminal then we are all criminal". The march was dispersed with dogs and tear gas.


Since 1999, the Bayview Flats Residents' Association has struggled against neoliberal power and water cut-offs and evictions. Recently, the ANC has developed a new tactic, trying to replace the BFRA and its leaders with a fake civic...

Like neoliberal governments around the world, the African National Congress isn’t fond of democracy - it's too difficult, dangerous, and unguaranteed. Governments prefer to have a tamed version of dissent, a civil society it can control, a snivel society that bows and scrapes, but never raises its voice. Here's a story from Durban, involving the Bayview Flats Residents’ Association - one of the organisations celebrated in Ashwin Desai's brilliant 2002 book, "We Are The Poors". Three years on, the ANC is still criminalizing the poors, and targeting the community leaders whom they elect.

Last Thursday, the 17th March, the Ethekwini (formerly Durban) municipal council came to Bayview, one of the city’s poorest areas. They came with guns and electricians. The electricians disconnected the electricity to four blocks of flats, cutting off 14 families. The security detail from the council provided cover as the electricians worked – neoliberal policies never work without force.

Removing the meters was an admission by the municipality that, as one Durban activist put it, “people can't, and are not ever expected to be able, to pay for electricity.” But poverty isn’t grounds for the denial of rights, and Bayview, like any other community, has the right to basic services.

more:  http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/7840.php

Kennedy Road 14 released (March 29, 2005):  http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/7849.php


University of Kwa-Zulu Natal protests:  http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/7556.php


Is a storm brewing in SA?
Christelle Terreblanche
February 27 2005 at 03:10PM

It has crept into the daily news bulletins - about a thousand Phomolong residents at Hennenman blocking access roads; the situation in Bronkhorstspruit; the Westville campus closing after a heated protest; and students threatening to render Tshwane University ungovernable after talks with management over fees fell through.

A growing number of isolated riots have turned into what appears to be a current of protests across the country. Just a decade after the streets were burning, analysts are seeing evidence of a new season of symptoms of exclusion and frustration.

This week the People's Budget Campaign warned that the frustrations of the poor were mounting and the government should not be surprised by more violent protests.


The campaign's Molefe Tsele, also the secretary general of the SA Council of Churches, said the "basic services which are guaranteed constitutionally are not being met. What has been happening in the townships in the Free State is not a surprise to us.

"The municipalities are collapsing and that is going to happen from one township to the other - there is no proper targeting of resources for that."

A week before, President Thabo Mbeki had warned in his state of the nation speech that such violent demonstrations "will be met with the full force of the law".

His warning did not deter thousands of students who went on the rampage on campuses throughout the country this week, citing high fees and lack of bursaries, exclusion and problems caused by the amalgamation of higher education institutions.

On Wednesday the budget made provision for more student financial aid and a more than 13 percent increase in grants to local government.

But analysts agreed that the government's responses might not be enough and that a deeper rethink of the problem was vital.

Sociologist Ashwin Desai said the reactions to and explanations for the unrest given by the government and ANC "border on the ridiculous, with much of the language borrowed from apartheid.

"It is always the right-wing agents provocateurs, the same things (former prime minister John) Vorster said before the Soweto uprising. There is also a tendency to use force in the first instance," Desai said. He was reacting to claims by ANC members in the Free State that the right-wing Boeremag was behind the unrest.

Desai said that while the Free State riots might be a result of leadership divisions, there were also real issues involved, relating to pit latrines and a lack of water and housing - combined with expectations, of free basic services and housing for all, created by election posters.

"The government never says, maybe we need to rethink our policies," he said. "But they put the blame on either lazy civil servants or a hidden agenda, which is rich coming from a government which imposed Gear, which was a hidden agenda. If you privatise services, you will always hurt those who can't pay."

He said the local level was where people vented their anger "over decisions made elsewhere" because MPs had become "distant figures".

"Unless there is a Damascus turn in the way the government responds to these issues, and it creates not only policed imbizos, but also a climate for listening, and develops the capacity to say that it may have to change certain policies, then of course there will be these constant upsurges, albeit isolated."

Dale McKinley, an academic, sees an emerging pattern that links the different protests.

"And I think the source of the pattern is the government, which has been lessening subsidies and grants and forcing municipalities to do it for themselves," he said.

"In the Free State you see the result of that - lack of delivery, not enough resources or capacity - all because of macro policies. You are seeing the same in education, the pulling back from large-scale subsidies, where the institutions have to do cost recovery by putting fees up and adopting strict enrollment policies."

McKinley said he believed the government did understand the urgency, but mistakenly thought it was "just hiccups" that could be mitigated by capacity building and presidential projects.

"They blame it mostly on administrators and capacity, but they are missing the main point: that as long as there is no public money to close the gap, it will not be solved. The education system and municipalities are being privatised through the backdoor by shifting burden of fees to parents and local government," he said.

Institute for a Democratic South Africa analyst Judith February agreed that the student and municipal riots seemed to reflect a "lack of involvement" by people or a belief that the processes such as the local government ward committees are not working for them.

"If you look at the fabric of our society, it is about who's in and who's out, and who is excluded from the economy," February said.

"(The violence) is a red flag, people feel almost as though they are ignored and cannot participate. It raises its head in many ways but only a percentage of people rebel such as in the Free State."

She said she believed, however, that the government was taking these issues seriously and therefore pouring in more resources.

"And then the question is, how do we get back to the participatory decision-making that so marked the process pre-1994," February said.

"This is where the government's talk about research into social cohesion and our moral fabric and the adoption of an official poverty line becomes crucial. Then we will understand who is poor and how poor they are and what holds people together when they have very little and why some behave violently."

 http://www.iol.co.za/