When the Anti-Land Invasion Unity (ALIU) descended on 40-year-old Sophie Nqiba's shack they destroyed only half of it. Presumably, if the City of Cape Town's own criteria for the demolitions are used, it was the half which was “uncompleted” or “vacant”. For Nqiba, her partner and their five children it is a surreal and meaningless explanation.
Daneel Knoetze
Opinion | 15 August 2014
The City of Cape Town has invoked a series of court interdicts and orders to defend its role in the evictions of shackdwellers in Philippi East. The land occupation has grown since last week. City Law Enforcement resumed the demolition and removal of shacks on a plot off Symphony Way today, resulting in violent clashes.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 13 August 2014
The City of Cape Town's version of the evictions in Philippi East on 11 August has been contradicted by police and the SA Board of Sheriffs. The Board denies that any of its officials were involved in dozens of shack demolitions off Symphony Way in Philippi. The evictions were carried out by the City's Law Enforcement, police say.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 12 August 2014
Whether legal or illegal, evicting people from their makeshift homes is an ugly, violent and brutal business. GroundUp photographer and journalist, Masixole Feni and Daneel Knoetze, were at the Marikana settlement, Philippi East, Cape Town, on a calm morning on 11 August 2014, and then the eviction teams arrived. By midday there was chaos, stones were thrown and the police were firing back with rubber bullets.
Daneel Knoetze and Masixole Feni
News | 12 August 2014
Whether legal or illegal, evicting people from their makeshift homes is an ugly, violent and brutal business. GroundUp photographer and journalist, Masixole Feni and Daneel Knoetze, were at the Marikana settlement, Philippi East, Cape Town, on a calm morning on 11 August 2014, and then the eviction teams arrived. By midday there was chaos, stones were thrown and the police were firing back with rubber bullets.
Daneel Knoetze and Masixole Feni
News | 12 August 2014
In yet another crackdown on shackdwellers in Philippi East’s “Marikana” settlement, dozens of shacks were demolished by the City of Cape Town's Anti-Land Invasion Unit on 11 August. Police providing back-up and support, humiliated, assaulted and jeered at residents as they were evicted.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 11 August 2014
Lwandle inquiry chair Denzil Potgieter on 8 August slammed the police for withholding video footage and key documents relating to evictions at the informal settlement in June. He accused the police of giving the inquiry secretariat the “run around” during its numerous attempts to access the footage.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 8 August 2014
Tracts of private suburban land will have to be expropriated by the state at below market value if spatial apartheid in South African cities is to be reversed. The property clause in the Constitution can be interpreted in a revolutionary manner to allow for this. Expropriated land, subsidised by existing government property, should be used to provide housing for shackdwellers from the city fringe, so that informal settlements can be less dense and upgraded. These were the concluding opinions in a roundtable discussion on the Urban Land Question in the Cape Town CBD on 7 August.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 8 August 2014
On 6 August, shackdweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) marched on the the Austrian honourary consul in Durban to protest the eviction of squatting “comrades” under way in Vienna. This, in reciprocation of months of solidarity and support from people and organisations based in Europe and the United States for AbM.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 6 August 2014
In temperatures near freezing, the Joostenberg family were left with little option but to spend the night amongst their possessions on the side of the road. For a second time, they were evicted from their home by a sheriff of the court, their possessions carried out and transported off the farm where the family has lived for 50 years, and dumped next to the R318 outside Montagu.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 6 August 2014
Rubble dumping on the fringe of Siqalo informal settlement has forced hundreds of shackdwellers to evacuate their homes. Boulders have rolled into shacks; dumping has prevented winter rains from draining, leaving dozens of households flooded and abandoned. Yet the dumping carries on unchecked.
Daneel Knoetze
Feature | 5 August 2014
Around sixty of the CBD's parking marshals, who to have been "on strike" since October last year, marched on Western Cape Premier Helen Zille's offices at the provincial legislature yesterday.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 31 July 2014
The case of 39 Robertson Abattoir workers who say they were dismissed for complaining about 18-hour days was back in court today after a 20 month delay.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 29 July 2014
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) this morning confirmed that it is investigating claims of police officers dragging a gay Congolese man to a back room of Claremont police station and beating him with metal poles.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 28 July 2014
Darkness falls on the Koo valley. Andries Joostenberg, 63, and his son hang up their axes, stack the last logs of cut wood and trudge indoors. The temperature drops. In the farm cottage's kitchen a family huddles in semi-darkness around a wood stove. The electricity has been cut, so too the water: final instalments in a siege designed to drive Andries off the land.
Daneel Knoetze
Feature | 25 July 2014
The trial of 21 Social Justice Coalition (SJC) members continued in the Cape Town Magistrates' Court today. The group are charged with unlawfully attending and convening a protest in September last year.
Daneel Knoetze
News | 24 July 2014