A three year old boy, naked from the navel down, squats and defecates outside the ramshackle crèche at Jadu Place, a shack settlement housing more than 3 000 people near the suburb of Puntans Hill in eThekwini (Durban). His is a tiny contribution to the malodorous thickness where the pit latrines are found and around which snotty-nosed kids run.

The relentless heat is made more unbearable by the strong smell of dried fish hanging on the fence at the KwaPuza border post between northern KwaZulu-Natal and Mozambique. A handful of soldiers and policemen on the South African side watch without interest from the shade as people move through a gap in the fence at “Gate Six”.

An unresolved 1999 appeal to the KwaZulu-Natal premier’s office by a local council opposed to the re-zoning of its land will further stall construction starting on the proposed R2,5-billion King Shaka International Airport at La Mercy, north of Durban. This could jeopardise its completion in time for the 2010 World Cup.

Niren Tolsi’s “On the far side of left” (December 8) fails to delve into the events that culminated in the “invasion” of the national meeting of the Social Movements Indaba (SMI) by some members of Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC), writes the SMI national coordinating committee.

Mass Action 101 User’s Manual: Chanting ”Down Babylon!” is to be encouraged — but not when directed at fellow far-left activists. Chanting members of the KwaZulu-Natal shack-dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape’s Anti-Eviction Campaign raised major hackles when they invaded the Social Movement Indaba’s five-day annual pow-wow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The failure of former housing minister, Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele and her successor, Lindiwe Sisulu, to improve policies affecting poor and vulnerable tenants since the promulgation of the 1999 Rental Housing Act is currently under scrutiny in the Durban High Court.

A KwaZulu-Natal minister, a member of the African National Congress national executive committee and a regional secretary — all fervent Jacob Zuma supporters — are said to have orchestrated the ploy to embarrass President Thabo Mbeki and the nation during Mbeki’s address at the funeral of anti-apartheid struggle hero Moses Mabhida.