23 January 2015
It is with complete disgust that the SACP in the Western Cape heard and witnessed a first-hand account of the brutal treatment of a Chatsworth community by heartless land owners and the Democratic Alliance (DA) controlled Swartland Municipality in the Che Guevara District (West Coast).
With the struggle for decent sanitation and accommodation stemming from 2007, a group of shack and back-yard dwellers from Cape Town organised themselves into a savings group with the eventual aim of purchasing land to accommodate themselves and their families. Over the years this organised group were able to identify a piece of land that was for sale in Chatsworth, West Coast.
Approaching the owners of the land, the group were dismayed that their hard-earned savings were not enough to purchase the whole plot of land. Through the assistance and guidance however of the South African Homeless People`s Organization, the group negotiated a deal with the owners for the purchase of a portion of land. From 12 October 2009 to 20 January 2010 the savings group made substantial payments towards the eventual ownership of this land.
What follows is a systematic scheme of manipulating working class families, bullying tactics and a DA Municipality that has displayed its racist and segregationist policy of divide and rule. The savings group from Cape Town, yearning to take ownership of the plot of land they had paid large amounts of money for and commence constructing their homes, learnt with utter dismay that the owners (who, through investigations, where actually only minority shareholders of the farm on which the land is situated) had disappeared! Additionally, it was subsequently found that the deed of sale that the savings group was in possession-of, was fraudulent.
In 2013 the DA Swartland Municipality became involved in this oppressive tragedy. Through intimidation by the Municipality, the majority shareholder of the farm on which the piece of land is situated approached the courts in an attempt to evict the community, who had decided to occupy the land in which they had worked so hard to save for, and, who had commenced payment from 2009 onwards.
To-date an initial eviction team was deployed, sixty-nine shacks were demolished with the material of the structures still in possession of authorities. The five hundred or-so community members residing on the portion of land have been painted as criminals, not only by the DA Swartland Municipality but by the judicial official who has overlooked this brazen exploitation of a progressive and organised community and instead opted for setting a pompous precedent.
The South African Communist Party in the Western Cape has committed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the community in Chatsworth facing eviction on 02 February 2015. The SACP will also mobilise its members to assist in solidarity towards the run-up to any and every court hearing, we will further be organising a mass demonstration against the DA Swartland Municipality`s open segregationist and brutal attitude towards communities in the area.
Issued by SACP Western Cape
Contact:
Masonwabe Sokoyi - SACP Western Cape Provincial Spokesperson
Cell: 0765243242
Office: 021 696 2522
Fax: 086 558 2481
Twitter: @SACPWC
Facebook: SACP Western Cape
Email: sacpwc.media@gmail.com