This Is No Way To Treat People
Two incidents this past week broke my heart and upset many South Africans. These were the evictions of Lwandle residents in the Western Cape and families who had occupied some abandoned factories near Alexandra in the North of Joburg.
Although the Western Cape evictions are the ones that grabbed the headlines both, in my book, were heartless. How does this country allow a situation where the poor are evicted from what they call 'home', in the middle of winter? The pictures I saw on television of poor families clutching their last possessions trying to protect them from being destroyed and women crying at the brutality they were being subjected to moved me close to tears. Is this what we mean by the rule of law?
In both instances we are told there were court orders. But what manner of a constitutional democracy is this where its courts seemingly allow the poor to be treated with such disdain? I am not a legal person and it might well be that court orders must be enforced but do they have to be carried out with such inhumanity and force on defenseless people? Is this the kind of society we want? I had thought we left such actions in the past where "influx control" was government policy.
We should hang our heads in shame when differences between state organs and/or institutions result in the poor being caught in the crossfire. The SA National Roads Agency Limited and the City of Cape Town may have their differences but these should not result in any citizen of this country, irrespective of his/her station in life, being a victim. The two institutions could have handled this matter differently and much better than what we saw. The finger pointing was not impressive at all.
We have just come out of an election and no doubt the people of Lwandle were part of those who cast their vote. Whether they voted the DA or ANC - or any other political party for that matter - an eviction on bitterly cold winter day is certainly not what they voted for. Their eviction was not only insensitive but was ill-timed. It may have unwittingly communicated a message to the Lwandle residents that says: your vote doesn't matter.
I commend the Minister of Transport Dipuo Peters and Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu for their swift intervention. Peters ordered her agency SANRAL to stop the eviction and find alternative land for the residents. She has shown the human face of government. Sisulu has ordered an inquiry into the matter and urged the city to make emergency relief available. The city has complied and is reportedly ready to give the evicted residents emergency housing kits.
Commendable as these interventions are, did it have to come to this? I need to caution those who wield power to be careful how they treat God's creation. The people they treat with such contempt are created in the image of God and have no other earth or planet to inhabit but this very one. Let us not treat them in a manner that suggests because they are poor they have no right to occupy any of piece of ground on this earth. In fact, I dare say when it comes to making a choice God chooses the side of the poor.
Then to the treatment of the people of Alexandra. Some of them were saying on television that they had lived there for 10 years. Where are they expected go? I am not an advocate of the illegal occupation or invasion of land but how we actually treat the poor and landless speaks louder about our democracy than the Constitution we are so rightly proud of.
Significantly, even in the Alexandra situation we have heard the Gauteng Human Settlement, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Jacob Mamabolo saying he wants an investigation. All this is welcome. But it does point to an underlying crisis when two Ministers want investigations into evictions that were purportedly carried out on the strength of court orders. Could it be that there is no alignment between policy and the law? Or is it simply a question of overzealous bureaucrats not understanding the ethos of our democracy and its human rights orientation? Whatever it is, what is clear is that a permanent solution is needed to avoid a repeat of what we saw last week.
These were not the first incidents of this nature to take place in post-apartheid South Africa. More (perhaps without the brute force) will still happen if we do not address the question of land ownership and increase our efforts to eliminate informal settlements in South Africa.
Ultimately, the forced evictions of Lwandle and Alexandra point to the effectiveness and pace of government's programme to eliminate informal settlements. Are we making sufficient progress?
