Johannesburg inner-city dwellers and hawkers on Thursday vowed to resist reported city council plans to evict them.
The crowd of about 100, who had gathered at the Beyers Naude Square, were told that the city council planned to evict them as part of clean-up operations in preparations for football’s 2010 World Cup, to be staged in South Africa.
”We say no to evictions for 2010. If they want to build a world -class city we want to be there,” Shereze Sibanda of the Inner-City Resource Centre told the protesters.
Clean-up operations should not include the eviction of inner-city residents, she said. ”They evict people and say they are cleaning the city. We are not rubbish”.
Sibanda said about 215 court orders had been granted to evict people from inner-city buildings.
There were people who had rented units in the city buildings for 15 years and those people deserved to be granted ownership of those flats, she said.
”People cannot rent for life — give them these flats.”
If the city council wanted to provide social housing in the inner city, city residents should not be excluded in the process.
”We want to know where those houses are going to be built. Is it not far from schools?”
She said the council should stop evicting people until proper housing had been provided.
The municipality also had an obligation to supply free water and lights to city dwellers.
”We want the municipality to stop cutting water and City Power to stop cutting electricity. How do you live in a building without water?”
Johannesburg metro police also came under attack when accused of intimidating hawkers.
Hawkers were told to stop bribing metro police officers who wanted to confiscate their goods and fight the city council.
”Our fate is in our hands, we should stand up against the intimidation from metro police,” Father Jo Ndhlela of the South African Council of Churches said.
Ndhlela said all civil societies should unite and serve the people.
Attendants of the gathering, organised by a number of civil societies, were urged to attend the Johannesburg Inner-City Summit called by Mayor Amos Masondo on Saturday.
”People do not have to send a delegation, they should be there so that they can table their grievances,” Sibanda said.
She said the affected people had not been invited to the summit and a few people had received ‘fancy’ invitation cards.
”We want a decision from the poor to be included in those discussions.”
She told protesters to bring the city to a standstill if their demands were not met.
”We are going nowhere. We will close our doors,” she said. — Sapa