Cape Town protesters call on Zille to return the land
Nomthandazo Nokubeke (45) once lived in a small room with Cape Town’s famed Lion’s Head mountain towering behind. Her home was in a Sea Point building, in the “maids’ quarters”.
Quarters, a legacy of apartheid, still exist for domestic workers in many buildings in the area. The rooms are barely big enough for a single bed but they have been the only place where poor people can afford to live in the touristy seaside suburb.
Nokubeke has been tired of her room for two decades. “I’m so fed up and tired to stay in a small room for 20 years. I’m looking for a place. The government must provide a place for us,” she says.
Last year, she was evicted from her room by the owners of the property. Although housing activists were challenging these evictions in court, Nokubeke says she was “too fed up” to fight. Instead, she joined activists who occupied a public building, the Helen Bowden Nurses’ Home, near the V&A Waterfront shopping mall. She and her fellow occupants, part of a housing pressure group called Reclaim the City, renamed it Ahmed Kathrada House.
“We want our lands back. Come on, government; what’s wrong with you, Helen Zille?” Nokubeke asks, her eyebrows raised.
On Human Rights Day, Nokubeke joined thousands of people from Sea Point, Khayelitsha, Woodstock, District Six and other areas to demand land justice. They marched from District Six to the Cape Town Civic Centre. She carried a banner that read “Stop selling our public land”.
Her message was a reference to the Western Cape government’s decision last year to sell Tafelberg, provinceowned land, to private buyers. The building, a school in the heart of Sea Point, had been earmarked for social housing by the province. The sale caused an uproar and applications opposing the decision have been filed in court. But the process is taking a long time and tensions remain high about affordable housing in the inner city.
At the weekend, Zamuxolo Patrick Dolophini, who took part in the Ahmed Kathrada House occupation, died after allegedly being stabbed by a member of the building’s security team. The man, known as Rasta by the occupants, has been arrested by police. Reclaim the City has raised the alarm about how fights have broken out between security officials and occupants. An eviction notice has also been handed to the occupants by the provincial government, accusing them of vandalising property and being unlawful occupants.
“When the Western Cape government says that we must vacate and move on elsewhere, we say we are like most poor and working-class, black and coloured people in this city, who have nowhere to go when evicted and displaced,” Reclaim the City responded.
On Wednesday, members of the organisation marched alongside the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), a nongovernmental organisation based in Khayelitsha, and the District Six Working Committee, which supports land claimants from the area. In September 2016, there were 3000 claimants still on the land restitution waiting list.
In the afternoon, the marchers arrived at the Civic Centre, where protesters had a disagreement over language. Shaheen Ajam, head of the District Six Working Committee, tried to address the crowd in English but the majority isiXhosa-speaking protesters wanted a speaker who could talk in isiXhosa. Eventually SJC general secretary Axolile Notywala addressed protesters in their home language.
Mayoral committee member for transport and urban development Brett Herron received and signed the memorandum of demands, which included a commitment from the government to a plan for inner city, affordable housing within 21 days, the release of underused public land for affordable and social housing, a stop to the Tafelberg sale and restitution for District Six claimants.
“Black lives must be valued over property and money,” the demands read.
Herron said he has committed, on behalf of the City of Cape Town, to fast-track restitution and address spatial planning.
“I have made a commitment on behalf of this government that we will do everything we can to address spatial imbalance,” he said. “We are working on identifying city-owned land [for housing],” he said.
At the end of the day, after the speeches and toyi-toying, Nokubeke will go home to Ahmed Kathrada House, where she is once again facing eviction. Like many others, she will try to find a place to live near the inner city but her only option may be a shack 30km away from where she has spent the past 20 years of her life.