SSJ Suggested Agenda; for Saturday 20 Aug 2011.

Please add omissions/correct mistakes...
1. Decide on chair & minute taker for the meeting?
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2. New meeting times (yes, again...).
Time:........................... --- put new time for facebook referendum prior to decision...
3. Task team structure: what do you think of 'bottom-liners' to ensure efficacy?
yes/no
4. Project & events updates:
a) Right 2 Know:
- who's on the task team? ......................................................................
- what, when (deadlines?), how?
b) Creche:
- task team: Mbali, Chantelle and Tai
- want to start in a month, CHOSA funding & criteria, our input, youth centre idea etc..
- Tania fill in on funding? who? org? contact? ................................................
c) Recruitment updates:
- Kayla Roux: Journ and Ecos… Tania helping with Journ..................................
- Michael Glover: English........................................................................
- Mbali Baduzaali : Enviros and Law............................................................
- Benjamin Glyn Fogel: Philosophy.............................................................
- Etai Even-Zahav: History.....................................................................
- Shameez Joubert: politics --- plus whoever did politics 1 with sally's class............
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- Anyone else want to join someone or tackle their own department? hard sciences? pub?
- is this method working? if not how do we make it work/new tactics?
More projects?
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events:
d) Neocosmos: Everyone who's keen to join event on ssj fb page. Chantelle: need help with anything? snacks? is this a collaboration with politics dept? anyone still need the paper?
e) Good: who’s keen to get involved?............................................................................
f) reminder: HIV/AIDS Week: Line-up? SSJ Statement, involvement etc.? ………………
More events?
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5. Articles, interviews other media: who's done what, and who's writing, speaking, publishing etc. in near future? fill everyone in... anyone need 'seconding'?
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6. Manifesto updates. Please, if you have time and energy, re-read (its available further down on the facebook page) and bring edited copy.
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7. Anything missed out?
........................................................................................................
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8. Open discussion

Israel's social revolution

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/marches-held-across-israel-as-social-protests-enter-fourth-week-1.378052

Voices from Symphony Way Press Release.

Press Release – 9 August 2011
Students for Social Justice
Unemployed People’s Movement
Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign

Event 1: Pavement Dwellers to speak at Rhodes University
Venue: Sociology 1, Rhodes University
Date/Time: Thursday 11 August @ 19h00 – 21h00

Event 2: Symphony Way authors meet the Unemployed People’s Movement
Venue: Duna Library in Joza Township
Date/Time: Friday 12 August @ 3pm

‘A beauty, extraordinary in every way.’
Naomi Klein, author of ‘The Shock Doctrine’ and ‘No Logo’

Students for Social Justice, the Sociology Department, and the Unemployed Peoples Movement in Grahamstown have organized two unique talks by four of the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers, authors of No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way. This extraordinary anthology of struggle it testimony and poetry written on the pavement of one of the longest running civil disobedience protests in South Africa’s history.

The authors will be speaking on Thursday at Rhodes where they will discuss their struggle for land, housing and dignity with progressive academics and the Students for Social Justice. On Saturday, the authors will be meeting with the Unemployed People’s Movement where they will be engaged in discussions about their respective struggles and ways of building solidarity between poor people throughout South Africa.

No Land! No House! No Vote! is a direct challenge to the publishing industry. We cannot humanise our world through a vanguard media. The right to a voice cannot be held only be elite academics, authors and politicians; it is a right that must be claimed by the poor as well.

Speakers:

• Florrie Langenhoven – Here I’ve learned to share: I don’t work, but if I’ve got dry bread I first look around if my neighbours have got something to eat before I can eat. It feels like a BIG FAMILY.
• Shakeera Samuels – I would never ever want to go back to peoples back yard again where my family will be treated like animals.
• Cynthia Twigg – Symphony Way has its little [vegetable] garden which I look after. I water it and even sew my own seeds. Tomatoes, gen-squash, sweet-melon, and other eatable vegs grew in my little garden which keep me going.
• Bonita Seconds – When they [my children] are going to grow up, they must be something. They are going to change something around in the world.

For more information on the book, please contact:

Bonita Seconds (Symphony Way author) @ 073-841-1111
Sarita Jacobs (Symphony Way secretary) @ 076-469-9843

For event info, directions and struggle info in Grahamstown contact:

Ayanda Kota (UPM) @ 078-625-6462
Ben Fogel (SSJ) @ 071-224-6524

Reviews:

Cape Argus – Street people book their place on library shelf

The New Age – Living in a world turned on its head

Amandla Magazine – Review by Professor Martin Legassick

Acclaim:

“A beautiful and heart-rending book that speaks a story so often undocumented.” – Nigel Gibson, author of Fanonian Practices: From Biko to Abahlali baseMjondolo.

“The Symphony Way occupation was a real attempt at an insurgent and tenacious solidarity against an increasingly exclusionary and brutal society…All the tenacity, beauty, pain, desperation, and contradictions that breathe their life into any popular struggle haunt the pages of this searing book.” —Richard Pithouse, department of politics and international studies, Rhodes University, South Africa

“A magnificent and moving account of a long and hard-fought struggle . . . . a clarion call for basic human rights and for human dignity. A powerful insider’s view into the landscape of poverty in neoliberal South Africa.” — Michael Watts, Class of 63 Professor of Geography and Development Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, author of Curse of the Black Gold.

“An extraordinary collection of writings from the spirit of resilience and strength of the collective which lay bare the betrayal of the people in post-apartheid South Africa.” —Sokari Ekine, author and award-winning blogger

“This book carries not only the suffering of the Symphony Way communities but of the millions of poor people of the world. . . . It is through this courage that we can all hope for the real struggle that intends to put human beings at the center of our society.” —S’bu Zikode, president, Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement, South Africa

“As middle-class African journalists and activists, we thought we were telling the tale of the poorest, but here we are surpassed. Their truths, spoken in their sharp vernacular tongue, fly straight to the heart of the matter.” —Michael Schmidt, journalist and author

A better Life for All.

A Better Life for All Remains a Dream for the Poor and the Unemployed

The eThembeni informal settlement was erected in 1992, before the dawn of our democracy. It was called eThembeni, “place of hope”, because the birth of a new nation, the birth of democracy was inevitable. But today people remain unemployed, living without income in mud houses.

Horizontal to the place of hope, 3km away, another informal settlement stands. It is called Phaphamani, a place of vigilant people. Phaphamani was erected in 1992. In both informal settlements there are no human basic services like electricity and sanitation.

The recent floods in Grahamstown left so many people, in particular in informal settlements homeless. The Unemployed People’s Movement were running up and down helping comrades during the flood. I was deployed in Phaphamani and eThembeni. As the rain was pouring I was with a senior citizen, an old woman who is at her late fifties. The house was just full of water. We were moving furniture to the other room, using buckets to evacuate the water that was threatening to form a swimming pool inside the house. It was so quiet, only sounds of water and our buckets. It was hectic, the whole community was just evacuating water non-stop.

As we were busy, the old woman stopped for a moment, looked at me, a smile crawling out of her mouth. Yet I could see the tears making the way through the corners of the eyelids. I then stopped and stared at her. She made a sound, trying to remove a lump in her throat and finally broke the silence. She said “Vote ANC, Vote for Better Life, Vote for Heaven and Vote for Jesus. Better life in heaven indeed not under ANC”.

I was so overwhelmed with emotions. I felt as if something heavy was placed on my shoulders, the muscles were just contracting and my neck became stiff instantly. I immediately thought of a woman, in her late 50’s as well, whom we buried recently. She was living on the foot of a hill and when the sewerage pipe burst at the hill shit would fill her house. It would take weeks before the pipe was fixed. She died because of TB related diseases. Her story was on SABC, in a report by Nomawethu Solwandle. The officials did nothing. A week after her story was on SABC, she died. How does one go to sleep?

One of our mentors, Professor Pedro Tabensky, a protagonist of Black Consciousness, came to my mind. He says that UPM must resurrect hope in our communities and collectivism. As things are at the moment people have lost hope. It is no wonder that there is such brokenness. Reclaiming hope is the first step to action. Another mentor by the name of Richard Pithouse would also quote Frantz Fanon: “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.” The time has come for our generation to invent our own politics and to take our own stand. People are struggling and thinking and discussing all over the country. These rivers of struggle will join soon. We are already getting a good sense of the new politics. It is a politics that is firmly in the hands of the people. A politics that begins from our daily lives.

I think hope is important. It was hope that brought the generation of 1976 together. They discovered their mission and they were determined to fulfil it at all costs. Just like the Tsietsi Mashinini generation, we will not betray our mission.

In Makana Municipality, there is a backlog of over 13 000 houses. The RDP house that have been built are crumbling down and people are deserting them. There is an unemployment rate of nearly 70%. This woman in eThembeni forms part of the backlog of 13 000 houses. She forms part of the 70% without work. Because of her age, she is at her late 50’s, she does not qualify for an old age income grant. All that she is, in her country of her birth, is statistics. She is like many South Africans. She matters the most during Statistics South Africa surveys and Elections. Her ID is also a constant reminder that she is a South African.

But a country so rich cannot afford her, being a senior citizen, a house nor a job. She watches helplessly as our municipality can not account for R19 million, the mayor who is indebted to the municipality an amount of not less that R60 000, for dining and wining with the girlfriend. Every time she turns on her radio all she is hearing is the plundering of our resources by the elite, the president who will be taking the next wife to be maintained by the tax payers and his friends with their tenders.

Yes, a country so rich, a country that could afford R70billion to purchase arms deal, not for the nation, for the benefit of the elite, and the nation is not even allowed to get the details of how their money was spent. Yes a country so rich, that it could spend R60billion on hosting a World Cup, when the majority of its senior citizens don’t have a shelter. A country so rich that it can only produce billionaires and millionaires, while the senior citizens are dying because of poverty related diseases. Rushing to take the water out of their shacks in the floods. Rushing for water when their shacks are burning.

There is a simple lack of care for us by those who rule us. To them we are just lazy buds who do want to do anything but expect government to do everything for us. Their perception changes during election time. We matter the most during elections time. After that we must go back to our shacks, to our life without an income.

The better life for all remains a dream. To Christians it is certain that they will enjoy such life in heaven. But we also deserve this life while on earth. God has blessed us with all the riches. However under the ANC this will forever be a dream deferred.

Our main task is to give people hope and to invent a politics that can express that hope. That is what Biko did for his generation. Once people have hope everything else follows. We have to care very carefully for every precious spark of hope that still shines in places like eThembeni and Phaphamani.

Ayanda Kota

Chairperson, Unemployed People’s Movement, Grahamstown

078 625 6462

R.I.P. Gill Scott-Heron

A great activist, poet and musician who inspired me personally and will surely missed.

UPM Letter to the Premier of the Eastern Cape

UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT (UPM)

“We call upon the right to work”

69 “C” Nompondo=Street, Grahamstown, 6139

Contacts: 072 299 5=53, 078 625 6462, 073 578 3661

xola.mali@yahoo.com, ayandakota@webmail.co.za





Tuesday, 24 May 2011

Statement of Demands to the Eastern Cape Premier the Honourable Ms. Noxolo Kiviet




Dear Ms. Kiviet




We have been informed that following the television screening of the episode of Cutting Edge that exposed some of the horror of the lives of the poor in Grahamstown President Zuma has instructed you to meet with us as soon as is possible to receive and to try to resolve our demands. We have also been informed that you would like copies of our collected memoranda in advance of this meeting.




We appreciate your willingness to meet with us and thought that it would be easier for us to simply summarise our demands in one document.




As with poor people’s organisations and movements across the country our demands take two forms. We have demands that take the form of asking promises made within the current system to be kept. Many of these demands are very urgent as people are living in very undignified and dangerous conditions. However we are not only demanding that the current system be operated efficiently. We are also demanding that the current system be replaced with a system in which the dignity of all people is recognised. We understand that while you can attend to our first kind of demand in a meeting addressing our second kind of demand will take a long struggle in which the poor and the working class are politically empowered against the elites. However we do insist that if the ANC wishes to call itself a progressive organisation it must respect the formations of the poor as we work to redistribute political power as a first step towards redistributing economic power.




Our immediate demands are as follows:




1. The immediate and permanent eradication of the bucket system throughout Grahamstown.

2. The immediate electrification of the eThembeni shack settlement. Other settlements in Grahamstown are being electrified following protests and this process must also include eThembeni.

3. That a clear, transparent and consultative process is immediately begun to overcome the backlog of 13 000 houses in Grahamstown.

4. That clear, transparent and serious steps are taken to eradicate the cancer of corruption that has been eating at the Makana Municipality for years.

5. That the R58 million that has been returned to the central government due to the failure of local government to spend it is handed over to a democratically run community co-operative that will allow us to design, build and manage our own houses in a democratic and non-commodified way. If the government has failed to spend this money then it is only logical that it should be handed over to the people directly.

6. That a series criminal investigation is instituted against the uBumbano sports training project following the corruption of R600 000.

7. That the unconstitutional and repressive bail conditions that ban our leaders from political activity be immediately withdrawn.

8. An immediate commitment to ban development by tender and to instead create state owned companies that can carry forward development such as housing etc on a non-profit basis.

9. An immediate expulsion of Nceba Faku from the ANC following his fascist attack on the media.

10. Setting up a genuinely independent investigative unit with power of arrest to deal with corruption in the province.




Our longer term demands are for:




1. Decent work or a decent guaranteed income for everyone over the age of 16 years.

2. A fair distribution of urban and rural land.

3. The socialisation and collectivisation of the means of production.

4. The decommodification of the provision of all basic needs like water, electricity, housing, sanitation, refuse removal, health care, transport, education, communication and so on.

5. Elected police officers and judges and trial by jury

6. State support for community controlled media.

7. Participatory democracy at all levels of society.




We are aware that these goals are only realisable in a new system and that we will only be able to move from this system to a better system via the political empowerment of the poor and the working class. However the formations of the poor are facing serious repression including regular arrests, the murder of at least seven protesters by the police already this year, torture (as in Ermelo) and armed state backed attacks on movements like Abahlali baseMjondolo in KwaZulu-Natal and the Landless People’s Movement in Gauteng. Therefore we demand an immediate end to all repression of the formations of the poor and a clear and public acknowledgment that all people in this so-called democracy have the right to organise themselves freely and in safety and, if they so wish, to do so independently of the ANC.




If these demands are not met we will, in alliance with our comrades across the country, have no choice but to continue struggling in support of this programme.





We are expecting to meet with you by Tuesday next week at the latest.





Yours sincerely

Ayanda Kota

Chairperson, Unemployed People’s Movement

Grahamstown, Eastern Cape

Chris McMichael campaign posters - Photographer: Tim Gabb