"There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort!
All people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed, and to bring up their families in comfort and security;
Unused housing space to be made available to the people;
Rent and prices shall be lowered, food plentiful and no-one shall go hungry;
A preventive health scheme shall be run by the state;
Free medical care and hospitalisation shall be provided for all, with special care for mothers and young children;
Slums shall be demolished, and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, creches and social centres;
The aged, the orphans, the disabled and the sick shall be cared for by the state;
Rest, leisure and recreation shall be the right of all:
Fenced locations and ghettoes shall be abolished, and laws which break up families shall be repealed."
(Freedom Charter, 1955)
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) strongly condemns the apartheid-style demolishing of houses in Lenasia by the ANC Gauteng government.
The actions of the Gauteng’s Department of Housing (DoH) to demolish houses and evict the poor of Lenasia Extension 13, is no different from the past malevolent evictions or forceful removals that were unleashed against the poor by the apartheid regime.
We strongly believe that action should be instead taken against those who sold the land illegally, as opposed to seeking court orders to evict and demolish the houses built with the poor’s hard earned money.
The right to shelter is a fundamental human right enshrined in the Freedom Charter, our 1996 Constitution and UN international human right laws which the ANC government has signed.
We at NUMSA are alarmed at the easy with which the law and the police are being resorted to, in defense of the rich, in total violation of the ethos of the Liberation Movement in general and the ANC in particular.
We demand that the demolitions must stop immediately and all those whose homes have been destroyed must be given alternative homes immediately.
This is a matter of extreme urgency for which we expect the real ANC in Gauteng to provide humane leadership.
Contact:
Castro Ngobese, National Spokesperson – 083 627 5197