SACP Kimberly District Statement On The Evictions At Soul City

2 August 2007

The South African Communist Party, Kimberley District, would like to condemn in the strongest possible terms the manner in which the eviction of the so-called “illegal” residents of Soul City was conducted. We would like to raise a number of matters that we believe should have been dealt with before these evictions were carried out. These matters we are not raising because it is opportune but because we believe there is more to what meets the eye in this whole fracas.

1. The community members of Soul City have, on numerous occasions, interacted with the Sol Plaatje Municipality with a view to getting a creative solution to this problem to no avail. This has been happening for the last 3 years with no solution.
2. There are persons in Soul City, who have not been evicted, who got access to houses as a result of their compradorial relationships to certain high ranking members of our movement whose business and political ambitions would be boosted by the continued political manipulation of the working class and poor of Soul City.
3. The evictions were carried out in a very inhumane and disrespectful manner to the vulnerable, elderly, sick and poor of our communities. These evictions were conducted with no due consideration as to where these people were going to get shelter. This, in our view flies in the face of our Kliptown Conference of the People that declared "there shall be houses, security and comfort for all". The fact that our people spend the night of Tuesday 31st July in an open veld is definitely not synonymous with that declaration. It is also probable that those who took the decision to evict our people do not know of that declaration or possibly are too comfortable in their houses in the affluent suburbs that they quite frankly do not care what happens to our people and treat them with the attitude "as long as they vote for us during election time". We cannot really treat the working class and poor with this kind of contempt.
4. We would also like to point out the disorderly manner with which the contracted red ants had conducted these apartheid style forced removals. They had bundled people`s belongings as if they are dealing with a monolithic group and element, in the process breaking and misplacing people`s possessions. We want the municipality, in particular the mayor, to take full responsibility for those persons who lost their identity documents and as a result of that will not be able to get their monthly social grants, those persons who are on anti retroviral drugs and cannot take their medication as a result of this displacement, school children who are in the process of writing examinations and were disturbed as early as 4 a.m. by the rat ants because the execution of the court order had to be done clandestinely without the community being able to mobilize themselves.
5. We are also disturbed by the deafening silence that is being shown by the ANC, which is supposed to be a working class biased organization having at the centre the working class and poor as it`s primary motive. We know that if it was a matter related to a tender/s that are issued in a compradorial and parasitic nature, indeed we could long have had a response or press statement. Should we believe the assertion that others want to make that indeed the ANC is in a state of paralysis.
6. we therefore demand that the following steps should be taken as an urgent step towards trying to temporarily alleviate the plight of the working class and poor of Soul City
   • immediate shelter should be found for the displaced people
   • ablution facilities should be made available to the distressed families
   • a mobile clinic should be put on site where these people were dumped
   • a thorough investigation should be conducted as to who and why were these people given access to the keys if they were not entitled to these houses and the perpetrators should be brought to book organizationally and criminally
   • the Premier and MEC: Housing and Local Government should intervene in order to find a speedy resolution to the endemic crisis
   • a soup kitchen be established on site to alleviate the plight of these people and that
   • any future evictions should be halted

It is our wish as the Communist Party in the Kimberley District to place on record that the situation as it relates to Soul City is a manifestation of other problems and the inability of the municipality to deal with endemic organizational challenges that confront it. We are not in the business of labeling people and or organizations but truth be told, the Sol Plaatje Municipality is in a state of paralysis and only a true revolutionary would be prepared to accept this state of affairs. We can no longer turn a blind eye to this reality and want to misdiagnose the current state of affairs. We hope that the Provincial leadership of the ANC will use the opportunity to reflect on these matters when the ANC President visits them this week-end.

We would also like to place on record that the Sol Plaatje Municipality is a flagship of the state of affairs generally in our municipalities, where resources in these municipalities are used to feed onto the insatiable love of money by those who masquerade as revolutionaries while their only interests are to milk our municipalities of scares resources and repay political favours.

Issued by:
Mr. Lerato wa Modise
District Secretary
SACP Kimberley District
082 810 1354