[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Report on yesterday's Dbn housing summit protest

[Patrick Bond]

(And also, if you think people deserve shelter, don't miss Fazel Khan's 
snaps of the event Richard Calland covered so well in Friday's M&G: 
http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?3,43,10,2732)

The Mercury
Townships ‘sidelined’ at housing talks
•Tue, 12 Sep 2006

By Sne Makhanya

MORE than 80 unhappy residents of Durban townships were sidelined by
officials at the KZN Housing Summit and were made to wait for hours in
the underground parking of the International Convention Centre in Durban
yesterday.

One of those residents, Linda Zulu of the Lamontville Township Dwellers
Association, said the residents were “suffering from exclusion” as they
had reserved seats “immediately” on seeing an invitation to the summit
in newspapers, but were told yesterday that there were no more seats
available for them.

Zulu said that as residents of townships such as Umlazi, kwaMashu,
Inanda, Ntuzuma and Lamotville, they felt that there have been no
developments in their areas in the past 12 years. He added that they
wanted to attend the summit “to understand what to expect in the coming
years”.

Less that a kilometre away from the ICC on a patch of grass, Abahlali
base Mjondolo shack-dwellers were picketing against the demolition of
shacks in the Crossmore area, Chatsworth, on Sunday afternoon,
“regardless of a court interdict against such an act”.

However, Titus Malaza of the Ethekwini Land Invasion Unit (LIU) said
that people are building more shacks than the number reported in the
interdict, and “it was those shacks we … destroyed because people are
invading council-owned land”.

He said that the LIU had not gone against the interdict.

A small group from Acacia Park in Pietermaritzburg’s Oribi were also
part of the protest “crying out” against the “privatisation of housing”.

Sbongile Cebindevu of Pietermaritzburg added that it is time that
government heard their voices. “It should be us in there [the summit],
not them,” she said.

The summit resumes today and demonstrations continue.

sne at witness.co.za