Mario Wanza

Much is being said about the Jobs, Land and Housing Summit planned for Rondebosch Common from January 27-29, 2012. It is unfortunate that what the summit intended to achieve is not being talked about.

The summit has been in the making since October 2011. It has been organised by Communities for Social Change (a co-ordinating structure of civic organisations operating in predominantly coloured communities), Cosatu, Irasa (Institute for the Restoration of the Aborigines in South Africa), Women on Farms, Sangoco, Occupy Cape Town, Passop and the Struggle Veterans Action Committee, among others.

Invitations were sent as widely as possible including the Muslim Judicial Council, the SACC, Kairos South Africa and other civil society formations.

A meeting was also held with the Jewish Board of Deputies to sensitise them on the purpose and intention of the summit. The meeting was cordial and we agreed to keep talking to each other.

Invitations were sent to the premier and the provincial government, the mayor and the City of Cape Town. Both the premier and the mayor declined to participate and wished us well.

Notwithstanding them declining the invitation, we requested that the government officials attend. We also requested a meeting with the mayor to look at the logistics in preparations for the summit but received no response.

An invitation was also sent to the national Department of Human Settlements, to which no response was received.

The need for the summit arose because we have realised that the gap between the rich and poor is tearing us apart, our city is still racially divided and greed and violence is the order of the day.

Our primary objective is to see the integration of rich and poor and to deal with the apartheid legacy which continues to plague us.

We have also come to the realisation that government has failed the people and that it is only through creating space for people to talk to one another that we can bring about change.

Communities like Manenberg, Hanover Park, Mitchells Plain, Elsies River are facing the brunt of the onslaught of greed instilled by the rich.

The situation is exacerbated by the DA administration evicting our people from their homes instead of building houses.

We need relief from this attack on the poor as people go hungry every day.

We are calling for the following:

l A stop to evictions

l Scrapping of all arrears

l The council flats to be handed over to the people as we have been paying rent for the last 40 years.

l The return of our land, which was taken from us under apartheid.

l The building of a caring police service.

These are some of the pressing issues facing our communities.

Rondebosch Common is a piece of land strategically located in that it reflects the divide between the haves and the have not. It is also a piece of land which we are earmarking for development for the poor.

As the organisers of the summit we have held meetings weekly from January 7 to ensure all logistics and programme for the weekend were in place.

The plan was for people to march from their communities, in the case of Mitchells Plain, myself and 10 other comrades started marching from 8am.

The marches would meet up at Athlone stadium at 2pm; giving a break to Muslim marchers to first attend Friday mosque. It was our intention to march together at 3pm from Athlone Stadium and reach Rondebosch Common at 5pm with cultural activities planned for the evening with a vigil throughout the night.

The summit would proceed on January 28 and 29 and we had worked out commissions which would focus on the following themes: Jobs and economic development, land restitution, housing, education, health, the environment and a new governance model.

The summit would come out with a programme of action on January 29 which would be taken back to the people through the various organisations. It was our intention to leave the Common around 4pm on January 29.

The mayor now attempts to plead innocence for the fiasco which took place on January 27. We have the documentary evidence to show that the mayor and, by extension the DA, was going to ensure that the poor did not gather on the Common.

All attempts to meet with the mayor were ignored and we were sent on a wild goose chase. We do not wish to go into the substance of the abuse of power by the DA, suffice to say that we have approached the Human Rights Commission to set up a public enquiry into the behaviour of the City of Cape Town, so that the citizens of the city can decide for themselves whether a human rights violation had taken place.

The mayor denies authorising the use of force, denying us our right to protest and denies ignoring the poor. All we can say is – let the public enquiry speak for itself.

Our intention to occupy and take over Rondebosch Common for three days was also to raise awareness, there is nothing subversive or illegal about that.

It is time that we start a conversation, black and white, rich and poor, about the state our country is in. As stated before we cannot expect the government to get us out of this mess.

The irony of all of this is that we should be thanking the DA for its kragdadigheid on January 27 as it has opened the space for dialogue. More and more people are talking about what happened at the Common and different views, for and against, are being expressed which is what the summit intended.

While the summit proper could not proceed on January 28 and 29, participants gathered at the Manenberg waterfront on January 28 and discussed and agreed on how to move forward.

These discussions were further enhanced on January 30 and 31 when the Communities for Social Change met and agreed to participate in the planned protest by Cosatu on February 4.

This protest we turned into a celebration which was followed by the renaming of the Common by the KhoiSan on February 5 to Tsui//Goab, a name we hope will grow on the people of Cape Town.

A meeting of all organisations participating in the Jobs, Land and Housing Summit will be held on February 15 to discuss how to move forward given the disruptions of January 27.

Organisations like the Communities for Social Change will be meeting on February 11 to reflect on what has happened to date, review what worked and what failed and how we can improve on what we do.

This way of organising is born out of our experience when we organised under the UDF. It is the self-same spirit of the UDF which is bringing us together again as we aim to build unity among and across organisations.

The current system of governance has failed the people, and specifically the poor, miserably.

We believe that through building people’s power and implementing the Freedom Charter we can unite our very fractured society.

We invite all spheres of government to join us on this journey instead of trying to marginalise us.

l Wanza is Organiser: Communities for Social Change