more murambatsvina

Targeting the poor in Zimbabwe. The Independent reports.

See also this Reuters report on people who are still homeless after the government-sponsored demolition drive that uprooted 700,000 from Zimbabwe's cities last year. Sadly, the article shows that the political opposition is feckless. Consider this comment: "We are not against the clean-up exercise per se, but what we are saying is that the government should have built new houses first, before demolishing the old ones. The whole thing was done in reverse," said Innocent Gonese, an opposition legislator who sits on a parliamentary committee on housing.

Well, yes. But even building new housing must be done in concert with squatters, who have often lived in their illegal homes for decades.

Irving Berlin in Delhi

There's an old Irving Berlin song about slum tourism (It's from the 1937 musical On The Avenue). It could be reprehensible, but the punchline is: "Let's go slumming, nose thumbing, on Park Avenue." The song turns the phenomenon on its head and suggests that average folk go prowling around the richest neighborhood of New York the same way the rich look at the poor--like animals in a social zoo ("Let's go smelling where they're dwelling, sniffing ev'rything the way they do.....Come let's eye them, pass right by them, looking down our noses as they do.") But the rich still persist in peeping at the poor. This Observer article (thanks Edesio for the link) covers the bizarre phenomenon in Delhi, with snippets about slum tourism to the Bronx to Rio and Rotterdam.

when in doubt, blame the squatters

Yeah, right: the lawyer for a landlord of a warehouse complex in Brooklyn implies that squatters might have caused the city's biggest fire in a decade, Newsday reports. The fire, just a few blocks from my home, essentially destroyed the seven-building complex, which was rezoned a few months back to allow fancy residential towers.

Meanwhile, the Mayor says the spread and pattern of the fire suggests that an accelerant might have been used.

What's a little arson among friends?

Unity!

Good advice from squatters in Malaysia: stay united. Squatters from four Kuala Lumpur communities--many of whom have lived there for a generation--have heard that the city wants to force them out to make way for a highway. Their only option: unite to fight for their rights. Looks like they had an excellent turnout at their recent meeting.

horribly unhealthy

Reuters reports on the impact of the drought in East Africa on sewage run-off in Kibera.

removal or renewal

KwaZulu Natal Province in South Africa is hot to punish squatters. This dispatch from the Sunday Tribune of 30 April (subscription only, thanks to Richard for emailing the text) asserts that the local housing minister is seeking to create a special security force to demolish illegal constructions. Similar units--known as 'red ants' because of the red coveralls they wear--are much maligned and feared in other provinces of South Africa. It seems like the new South Africa is embarking on a war on the poor.

******

KZN push for an end to slums
April 22, 2006

By Xolani Mbanjwa

The KwaZulu-Natal government is pushing for legislation that will give
local authorities the power to eradicate the proliferation of slums.

MEC for Housing and Local Government Mike Mabuyakhulu this week tabled
the Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act which, if passed, will be
the first of its kind in the country. Its aim is to eradicate shack
settlements by 2010, ahead of the 2020 target set under the Millennium
Development Goals.

Mabuyakhulu said he wanted the law to be passed before the end of the
current financial year. He wants municipalities to employ special units
similar to the so-called Red Ants - the shack settlement-clearing
security guards in Gauteng which are used to demolish illegal settlements.

The MEC said it had become clear over the past 12 years that housing
needs were evolving, bringing new challenges.

His visit to the Housing Conference in Kenya, involving all housing
ministers in Africa, prompted the department to "vigorously maximise
housing options if slums and informal settlements are to be eradicated".

"Our diplomatic approach is not working. We are now taking a stronger
approach," he said.

More than R500 million had been budgeted for slums clearance programmes
in 2005 and this year and a portion of the money had been used to clear
illegal shacks in areas such as Clare Estate in Durban.

"There is a huge need for housing in KwaZulu-Natal, and in Durban, in
particular, which has the biggest number of slums.

Trends all over the world show that the biggest cities attract slums.
The problem with housing is that when we relocate people to low-cost
houses, almost immediately new slums are erected elsewhere," said
Mabuyakhulu.

Development experts, however, have reacted to the proposed legislation
with apprehension.

Dr Richard Ballard, researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal
School of Development Studies, said, "Similar proposals have been kicked
around, but it is the first time that attempts have been made at enacting
such a law.


"It worries me, because with this legislation you're not addressing the
actual housing problem, but addressing it at the wrong end." Ballard
said people wanted to access economic opportunities closer to the city
because of jobs.

"I am not likening the ANC government to the apartheid government, but
this is what the apartheid government used to do to deal with similar
problems.

Why are we going back to those methods? It would seem that
policy-makers are more worried about the image of the city than the poor. It seems
as if they are punishing the victims of the system that brought them
there in the first place."

In his budget speech last year, Mabuyakhulu said an audit undertaken by
his department had identified about 250 000 slums and informal
settlements, about 80 000 of which were found in the greater Durban area.

Last year the department was able to complete about 40 000 low-cost
houses in the province and now aimed to build 250 000 by 2010, with 49 000
units under construction.

Since 1996 the KwaZulu-Natal government has built more than 500 000
houses.

Appealing for parliamentarians to support the proposed legislation,
Mabuyakhulu said, "It is my honour to announce that the department has
conducted an audit and compiled a schedule of existing slums.

This schedule has guided the department in its drive to eradicate slums
and existing informal settlements with a balanced focus on urban and
rural slums . . . We are convinced that without such an intervention, our
slum clearance programme will be an exercise of futility."

Mabuyakhulu also announced an increase in the housing subsidy this year
from R31 929 to R36 538.

Lennox Mabaso, spokesman for Mabuyakhulu, said the new Act would be
piloted and "it is likely to have an impact on other existing legislation.
People will no longer erect shacks and claim ownership of property
within 24 hours. It will put an end to 'Shark Farming'."

'death of freedom'

Five thousand people attended Durban's 'death of freedom' rally. The Mercury reports. Here's a quote all South Africans should remember, from S'bu Zikode, one of the leaders of the squatter organizing group Abahlali baseMjondolo:

"How can we celebrate freedom when we only hear tales of freedom or see people's lives changed for the better in other parts of the country, but never in our communities? We cannot celebrate, we have nothing to be cheerful about. We are the forgotten people who are expected to be content with sharing five toilets among 5 000 people. How can a community of 5 000 people celebrate when it is expected to make do with six [water] taps?"

In the past, Abahlali members have been brutally punished by police when they have attempted to exercise their right to public protest. This time, thankfully, everything apparently went off without a hitch.

housing projects for squatters

The administration in India's capital, says it will build 10,000 apartments in the next two years to replace the city's burgeoning shantytowns, Express India reports. Of course, this will not come close to keeping up with the city's projected population growth.

the human rights of corporations

Back in November, I blogged about a European Court of Human Rights decision that a successful adverse possession claim over some property had violated a corporation's 'human' rights. Now the case is being appealed to Europe's top rights panel. The Financial Times has a brief report.

at it again

Zimbabwe's still going after squatters, this time burning down a 200-family settlement in Masvingo city. ZWNEWS.com reports.

police state tactics against squatters

A politician in the South African Province of KwaZulu Natal is proposing a new law that has apartheid-era resonance: the "Prevention of the Re-emergence of Slums Act." It would make it a crime for squatters to seize unused land--and, undoubtedly, would require a new police force to patrol the areas where squatters might invade.

Such an act is based on a fundamental misconception of why shantytowns form. People don't live in crude shacks because they want to. They don't come to the city thinking, "Here's the future I'm looking forward to: I'll go to Durban and live in a mud or tin hut without water and electricity. That sounds great." They come to the city hoping desperately to find a job. And they move into shantytowns because there are no other options. No one builds housing they can afford.

Of course, some of the rhetoric about the proposal attempts to make it sound well-intentioned: The Act "would recognise the existing slums for upgrading and outlaw the erection of new slums," said Local Government, Traditional Affairs and Housing MEC Mike Mabuyakhulu. "We will never win the war on the eradication of slums if we do not vigorously maximise our housing options and prevent the erection of new slums....The envisaged act seeks to achieve this. We are convinced that without such an intervention our slum clearance programme will be an exercise in futility."

The bottom line, however, is this: criminalizing the erection of new squatter communities is a police-state ordinance not a housing policy.

Dharavi Deal Moves Forward

The math seems a bit skewed: the Mumbai government has knocked down 169,184 huts in Dharavi for redevelopment out of which 25,591 tenements have already been constructed." DNA (Daily News & Analysis) reports.

Water most expensive for city's poorest

"In one month I pay just about as a family that has access to tap water pays in a year," a Mexico City squatter tells El Universal. The profit that goes to the water dealers, so the article reports, amounts to 20 times the average minimum wage.

Shack blaze leaves 250 homeless

In South Africa: a fire in a Durban squatter community. What the article doesn't say: that the government's policy of preventing squatters from getting electrical hookups was what really caused the blaze. Squatters with electricity wouldn't be using candles.

squatters come up with own rehab plan

A visionary approach, led by squatters, to demolish their huts which were getting uncomfortably close to the runways of Mumbai's airport and create a new community right nearby. Many of the squatters work at the airport and feel commuting would be a great harm to their lives. Interestingly, the squatters are being advised by P.K. Das, an architect who is also a leader of Nivarra Hakk Suraksha Samiti, an aggressive pro-squatter agitating group. Mumbai Newsline reports.

unFreedom day

A dozen years on, it's time for irony, not celebration: April 27th in Durban, South Africa.

Abahlali BaseMjondolo, a terrific new squatter community organization, has joined with several tenant groups to lead a day of mourning for the new South Africa. As the groups explain in their press release:

The first democratic elections were held in South Africa on 27 April 1994. The promise of that day was equality, a vision that all South Africans might be able to share the country’s wealth, that all would be equal under the law, that all would have inalienable rights. That day is commemorated as "Freedom Day", and its memory celebrated in a national holiday each April 27th. As years have gone by, the hope has turned to bitter irony. Twelve years after the first democratic elections, the gap has increased between the rich and the poor!

What are we fighting for?
Decent Houses for All in the City
Free Basic Services
Basic Income Grant for All
Unconditional access to all resources of this land
Rights for All informal workers
A health, clean environment
Equality for All, including all vulnerable groups (women, children, sick/disabled).

What are we against?
Forced Relocations
Evictions
Water and Electricity Cut offs
Lying Politicians
Pollution
State Repression, police brutality and impunity
Land Theft

The unFreedom day festivities will begin at 12 noon at St. John’s church on Rippon Road in Claire Estate in Durban, S.A.

the demolition fascists

Nangla Machi, a self-built settlement of 40,000, was destroyed by the Delhi authorites a few weeks back. MidDay offers this moving response.

Probably over a third, perhaps more, of urban India is composed of slums, but they are everywhere regarded as non-city, an illegitimate, invalid parasite onto what a city should be, a stigma on our image.

Why are slums, so integral, so important and so economically useful to the city in its entirety always, everywhere regarded as being so not-city.

Are our conceptions of cities too idealised to accommodate its greatest reality? Do we view cities as being so non-village or non-poor that we don’t like the very idea, let alone the reality of how its poorest live?
...
They are in fact what our cities should be — hospitable, inventive, resilient and full of survivors and entrepreneurs. In order to save our cities we need to save our jhuggis. This is the slogan that greeted all visitors to Nangla Machi, the city that is no more.

The real estate deal called Dharavi

This says it all: "International players will start bidding for Dharavi." It's from an article in the Financial Express, which notes that 535 acres of land in Dharavi, Mumbai's largest squatter community, will be auctioned for a likely price of Rs 4,000 and Rs 7,000 per sq ft. (between $90 and $150 per square foot) Says one developer: "The land at Dharavi is flat and horizontal. Whenever such land is redeveloped, a lot of area is released for development of skyscrapers."

Sound like a squatter's worst nightmare.

Erdogan shows hypocrisy on gecekondu issue

Turkey's Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdogan, who is presiding over massive squatter demolition in Ankara, was himself a land invader in an Istanbul squatter community. That's the word from Mustafa Mutlu, a columnist for the newspaper Vatan, as translated by the Turkish Daily News.

Vatan's Mutlu examines Erdogan's latest condemnation of those who build and dwell in illegal gecekondus (shanties) this week. Speaking at the 6th Congress on Housing, Erdogan was quoted as saying: "And to those who try and raise sympathy for these people by saying, 'Those poor and miserable people had a house, and now it's been taken away from them,' I say how are these people poor and miserable by your account? This [gecekondus] is a racket. We are providing homes for YTL 200 monthly payments. Let them go and use these apartments." Mutlu notes that this is by no means Erdogan's first tongue-lashing of gecekondu owners and builders. He recalls words from Erdogan in October of 2004, when the premier announced that gecekondus in Ankara were to be razed to the ground.

Noting that he will stand by the veracity of these words by Erdogan, Mutlu goes on to highlight the particular hypocrisy contained in this stance, asking: "Who was the politician who built a gecekondu on forestland in Sultanbeyli? Does anyone remember? Yes, it was the prime minister himself." Mutlu then recalls a court case against Erdogan for illegally constructing a villa in Sultanbeyli in 1986. He also reminds readers about how Erdogan received a 10-month prison sentence for violating the Forest Law in 1990 but that the sentence was converted into a fine and in 1998 the entire episode was expunged from the record.

How the squatters won

It's a story bound to warm Hernando de Soto's heart: The Jamaica Gleaner reports on a Jamaican squatter community that resisted government-led eviction efforts and whose residents now have the title deeds to their lots.

But before you can say "the blessings of private property be upon you," note this: most residents are improving their homes with loans from the government's National Housing Trust, not with mortgages from private banks. This is not liberating dead capital, a la de Soto; it's a subsidy program. The same money could have been given to the same people when they were squatters--and their homes would have been improved sooner.