November 6, 2002
By Bongani Majola
THE much-vaunted march to the Gauteng Legislature in the city centre by Thembelihle informal settlers, under the auspices of the Landless People's Movement (LPM), turned out to be a damp squib.
Scheduled for the morning, and amid assurances to the media by LPM that "protesters would demand an end to apartheid-style forced removals and march against government public lies that removals were no longer happening", the march had still not taken place after lunch on Wednesday.
A group of about 100 people eventually made the trek from the Library Gardens to the office of Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa in the city centre, where they delivered a memorandum of demands.
There were moments of drama as the marchers initially refused to deliver the memorandum to Gauteng MEC for Local Government, Development and Planning Trevor Fowler, branding him "one of the Indians using Shilowa to further their oppression of landless black people".
March leader and Thembelihle LPM chair Mzwandile Mdingi demanded that a black person receive the memorandum. "Shilowa is being used by Indians," he shouted through a loudspeaker "Why send an Indian to receive the memorandum? We want a black person to receive it!"
Fowler then prevailed on the marchers, warning them that there was "no room for racially discriminatory remarks in the new South Africa that was fought for on the principle of non-racialism. If you don't withdraw your remarks, I will not receive this memorandum on behalf of the Premier," Fowler said.
Marchers then read the memorandum to Fowler, demanding, among other things, "the immediate withdrawal of a court application to evict the Thembelihle residents; an undertaking by Shilowa that no further removals will happen; an immediate moratorium on all removals in Gauteng; an urgent Land Summit to address fundamental issues in the allocation of land rights to urban landless people; an immediate withdrawal of all security forces in Gauteng informal settlements; an urgent investigation by the South African Human Rights Commission into police brutality and torture of informal settlement residents and an immediate response to previous demands by our communities to the government".
A group of marchers toyi-toyis through central Johannesburg to deliver a list of demands to the Gauteng provincial government
During the march, the LPM disputed the Council's argument that the area of the informal settlement was dolomitic. They questioned the "motivations behind their removal" and called Vlakfontein, the proposed resettlement site, "a barren dusty piece of land with no services or amenities".
Along with the memorandum was a document signed by a geologist, Dr Stefan Cramer, casting doubt on a study conducted by the City in 1998 which found that Thembelihle was a high-risk dolomitic area at grave risk of sink-holes and other types of soil instability.
"There are no signs or reports of active sink-hole formation in Thembelihle at all. Actual incidents of sink-hole formation have been observed in Lenasia," the one-page document states.
"Less than 15% of the entire Thembelihle area is considered a high-risk area. Recreational spaces of parking lots could be envisaged for these areas. The medium and high-risk areas extend well into the proposed resettlement site at Vlakfontein. This puts into question the original motives of the relocation of the Thembelihle population," reads the document.
In July this year, the City of Johannesburg appealed to Thembelihle residents, who live a few kilometres away from Lenasia in Johannesburg South, to allow authorities to relocate them to Vlakfontein, five kilometres away, as the area was a high-risk dolomitic piece of land.
Commenting after the march, Fowler said the Gauteng provincial government has set aside "R1,4-billion to ensure that all Gauteng people, including informal settlers, have water and sanitation and the government is addressing precisely these grievances."
Brenda Sume, one of the leaders, said if the premier's office did not respond within a week, the LPM would take action, but she did not disclose what kind of action. She is confident though that she will receive a call from the premier's office on Thursday with a response.
Sume has been living in Thembelihle for the past 15 years, and she refuses to leave. "We refuse to move from shack to shack and we are not satisfied with Vlakfontein. There are no clinics there, no schools and no facilities," she said. "People in South Africa are jobless and landless. The ANC, who we fought for, promised us a better life but I'm asking you where is this better life?"
"I am happy with the turnout of the marchers, although I note sadly that people and landless organisations that live in informal settlements do not support each other the way that they should."
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