Two NGOs working with the poor and working classes demonstrated on Thursday against their eviction by the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) from a building in Newtown, Johannesburg.
Approximately 50 people from Khanya College and the Workers’ Library demonstrated outside the old municipal compound against the JDA’s order to vacate the premises by the end of June.
Following negotiations between Khanya College, the Workers’ Library and the JDA, the parties could not agree on the future use of the properties.
The two organisations have leased the premises from the Johannesburg city council since 1993.
Khanya College and Workers’ Library are independent NGOs, which have worked with working-class organisations and the poor since the 1980s. The two have since merged.
Khanya College coordinator Oupa Lehulere told reporters it is prepared to negotiate other terms to the lease ”since the eviction notice is unlawful”.
He said it has an option to renew the lease for two years, and has exercised that right.
”We have acted appropriately, procedurally and substantively in terms of the law,” said Lehulere.
He said it has received offers to upgrade the facilities and wants to negotiate capital investment in the project. But Lehulere maintained Khanya ”can’t pour in money while security of their tenure is unclear”.
Workers’ Library spokesperson Modiegi Khuele said it is a historical site and the ”JDA’s initiative is killing the history of the working class”.
”We are concerned with the preservation of working-class history because the place was used by migrant labourers,” said Khuele.
The protest was supported by the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF).
APF spokesperson Bricks Mokolo said the JDA has a ”political motive” and wants to make profit by selling the place to the highest bidder.
”This political motive needs a political defence in the form of political campaigns,” said Mokolo, adding that the APF will carry out further protests.
JDA chief executive Graham Reid admitted the site is unique to Johannesburg and to South Africa as it offers a view of Johannesburg’s history from the perspective of workers.
”It was always intended to be a museum accessible to the public,” he said, adding that it has not been operating as such.
Reid said the current tenants’ leases expired at the end of March and following negotiations they will not be renewed.
”The city believes it should be managed as a museum … It has the potential to be a really important cultural asset,” Reid said.
The facilities in the building, which the organisations said are used by communities and businesses to hold conferences, exhibitions, CD launches and meetings, include a 10-computer internet centre and a library housing mainly socialist publications.
At the time of going to press the centre had just received books from India and Gauteng’s library services.
The museum commemorates the history of the African migrant workers, and includes a reconstruction of the conditions in the single-sex hostels in which black municipal workers lived. — Sapa