13 January 2014, Cape Town
Our constitution guarantees every South African the right to have access to adequate housing. The constitution compels the State to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources to ensure the realisation of this right. Furthermore, it provides legislative protection from evictions and demolition of homes without a court order. And such a court order may only be granted after thorough consideration of the surrounding circumstances.
While this legislative tool justifies evictions as the last resort, public servants have a moral obligation to shield the citizenry from social ills in our society. Any caring administration with a moral standing, appreciates the right to human dignity through the provision of adequate housing.
As the South African Communist Party in the Western Cape we are disappointed, but not surprised by the unconstitutional removal of the inhabitants of Marikana informal settlement near Phillipi by the DA administration.
Whilst we recognize the plight of the landless, as a direct outcome of forced removals by a white, elitist and racist regime through the use of unjust state mechanisms and pseudo-fascist promulgations purveyed as legislation, such as the Land and Group Areas Act, we will never support an illegal occupation of land without following our legislative infrastructure.
Equally, we will not celebrate an act of hounding the docile Western Cape homeless people by the DA government. The issue of landlessness is a highly sensitive and fragile matter in our young country. Ingrained emotionally, spatially and legislatively through years of colonialism and apartheid with a dominate juxtaposition of monopoly capital, this issue needs to be handled with due care and proactive leadership. The SACP in the province therefore condemns in the highest terms that under a democratic dispensation, the Provincial and city administration is maintaining the past practices of forced and illegal removals mirroring the actions of the apartheid regime.
The demolishing of Marikana informal settlement without any court order and provision of alternative accommodation is an act of sheer antiquated brutality which signifies a total disregard to the legislative infrastructure of our country.
This act of state orchestrated savagery directly reduces the conscience of black and coloured working class communities to sub-human stature in society belongs to a bygone era. By eradicating a basic human right in a manner befitting an administration that advocated race stratification, the DA has once again publically displayed its aberrance to build a progressive and equal society.
While national government allocates an annual budget and the provincial Department of Housing set targets based on the indicative budget figures, the Department has proven that it is incapable of achieving its targets. This result has therefore increased the housing backlog in the province and thus further stoking the ground swell of landless community members` frustrations.
We further note that this injustice comes shortly after the DA has announced a R1 billion budget for the refurbishment of houses and hostels in the province. According to the MEC of housing, Bonginkosi Madikizela, this money was already allocated but locked with a certain administrator to accrue interest. The DA administration thus decided to engineer a profit maximizing scheme, while shack dwellers continue to perish in shack fires and continue to be victims of natural catastrophes. After ignoring the pleas of working class communities for many years, the DA has added insult to injury and death, by accumulating individual prosperity to the detriment of the masses
It is within this disclosure that we are now convinced that the DA deliberately deprived the working class society for political expediency and voter endorsement. Taking cognizance of the above and understanding the DA`s public acclamation of designating a R1 Billion budget to apparently improve the lives and the working class and poor, hesitancy and caution must be heeded as a matter of urgency considering the fact that we are on the eve of elections.
This is a testament of what we have been saying over the past four years that "the DA is not committed to reverse the legacy of apartheid through decent human settlements but it will always be at the epicenter of white supremacy which was the corner stone of the apartheid".
As the SACP in the Western Cape, we have been leading as a vanguard on issues pertaining to, but not limited to decent human settlements for the workers and the poor. Our mass demonstrations and protests aimed at the provincial legislature have been perpetually ignored by the ideological inept and anti-majoritarian DA.
We have in numerous occasions argued that the provincial Department of Human Settlements is not capable to deliver according to the needs of the many, but instead caters for the needs of the minority monopoly capitalists, the puppet masters of the Provincial government. We have always provided our analysis without any challenge or repudiation from this incompetent provincial department. The fact remains, the provincial Department of Human Settlements has constantly failed in meeting targets, instead of redressing the housing backlog and eliminating the spatial legacy of the past, it has chosen to prioritize the demands of the governor-generals of colonial and apartheid outposts
We have argued and continue to argue that while the housing backlog is estimated at 500 000, the DA government is capable of producing less than 8000 houses annually. We continue to pride ourselves that the delivery record of the ANC is unmatched, a true reflection of the ANC`s policy biasness to the poor and the DA`s policy biasness to the wealthy. It is a documented fact that while the DA has only produced 42000 houses since 2009, the ANC produced 84000 during the period 2004 and 2009. Therefore based on the overarching paradoxes of the DA`s policy it is quite clear that this state of denial has directly expedited the housing crisis in the Western Cape.
The new discovery of this crisis and their immediate u-turn in realizing that the situation is dire in the province is not unexpected, particularly as we enter an elective season. We are however extremely disturbed by the fact that money was available all these years, but was gathering dust somewhere while the province was regressing in its housing delivery.
We are not impressed by the use of this money to refurbish already existing houses and hostels. The people of the Western Cape need adequate and decent human settlements to fulfill the basic rights enshrined in our Constitution.
This will not make any dent in the housing backlog and landlessness that is rife in the province. It is also important to note that our government has moved away from the housing regime to a sustainable human settlement regime. Refurbishing hostels will not deliver sustainable human settlement.
As the SACP we would like to be on record in stating unambiguously that City and Provincial administration must conduct an immediate land audit and publically clarify land ownership in the province. This is particularly due to our conviction that the delivery of human settlements will not be realized while the City continues to sell itself itself to its capitalist puppet masters and flog land that could be used for human settlements.
It is well known that the City continues to sell land to the private capital in areas like Phillipi agricultural area for housing development for the rich elite.
As the SACP, we also reiterate our call on the National Human Settlement Ministry to strip both the City of Cape and the Western Cape department of their housing license and to take direct control over the delivery of human settlements to our communities. The SACP also calls upon the National Department of Human Settlement to intervene in assisting the people of Valhalla Park and Western Cape in general.
Issued By SACP Western Cape
Enquiries
Masonwabe Sokoyi -Provincial Spokesperson
0741772068/ 021 762 9719
Sacpwc.media@gmail.com