On March 24, 20 members of the Alexandra Vukuzenzele Crisis Committee (AVCC) were arrested after having re-occupied houses in Alexandra extension seven since March 20. They were released on free bail the next day, but were rearrested on March 28 for contempt of court.
Alexandra is a black township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, with about 480,000 residents. It has a large number — estimated at more than 20,000 — of informal dwellings or "shacks".
The new houses that were built in Extension 7 were earmarked for poor residents of the township, but bribery and corruption associated with the Alexandra Renewal Project (ARP) has denied them access to the houses that are legitimately theirs. They have been on the housing waiting list since 1996.
When the AVCC residents first occupied the houses in Extension 7 on September 3, 60 people were arrested for "trespassing" and "public violence" for occupying of the 661 completed houses at the construction site. The charges were dropped on February 28.
With thousands of residents of the 20,000-strong Joe Slovo informal settlement in Cape Town vowing last month to resist a High Court-ordered mass eviction from their "shacks" to enable new housing to be built for them, it is clear that many communities' patience with the immovable housing backlog in South Africa is exhausted.
As in Joe Slovo, in Alexandra township there are no clearly set out processes for determining who is going to be allocated the newly built houses. The housing department and the APR claim that the recognised structure in the community is the Alexandra Development Forum (ADF) where residents are supposed to air their views on Alexandra's redevelopment.
The AVCC has tried in vain to engage with the ADF on a regular basis, but it has become clear to the AVCC that the ADF is a political football field for ward councillors to dribble past issues and pass on information selectively to their constituents. The AVCC therefore resolved to engage directly with the housing crisis.
The construction of low-cost housing is not changing the lives of the poor in South Africa because the delivery of basic services by the African National Congress-led government is skewed toward the wealthy, a consequence of its free market, neoliberal policies.
[Frieda Dlamini is chairperson of the Alexandra Vukuzenzele Crisis Committee.]