By David Matsena
Residents of the Thembelihle informal settlement, south of Johannesburg, may just be wasting their time marching to the Gauteng premier's office complaining about removals.
For the third time this year about 300 residents of Thembelihle, dressed in the red T-shirts of their organisation, the Landless People's Movement, marched to Mbhazima Shilowa's office in Johannesburg on Wednesday to hand in a memorandum in which called for an immediate moratorium on all removals in Gauteng.
Shilowa's spokesperson Thabo Masebe said the provincial government would continue with the removal of squatters despite protests by the residents.
Masebe said geologists had discovered that the Thembelihle area was dolomitic, and therefore unfit for human habitation.
In their memorandum the residents called on the premier to call an urgent land summit to address fundamental issues in the location of land rights to urban landless people.
The marchers sang passionately, stating that they would die for their land.
The memorandum was accepted by MEC for Local Government Trevor Fowler on the premier's behalf.
The residents said they expected the premier to respond to their grievances within a week.