Constitutional Hill

Housing

A (partial) victory for Joe Slovo residents

Jun 10th, 2009
by Pierre De Vos.
28 comments

The Constitutional Court today granted an order for the eviction of Joe Slovo residents to far off Delft to facilitate the building of houses as part of the N2 Gateway Project. The fact that the court ordered the removal of people from their homes where they have lived for the past 15 years, will rightly be harshly criticised. It has failed to display the kind of “grace and compassion”  one would expect of the self-styled champion of the vulnerable and dispossessed.

However, in a 220 page judgment (which I am still digesting) the court somewhat mitigated the hardship and trauma that the inhabitants of Joe Slovo will now endure, by ordering the respondents to allocate 70% of the Breaking New Ground houses (that is low-cost government housing available at low rentals) to be built at the site of Joe Slovo to the current residents of Joe Slovo; and those former residents of Joe Slovo who left Joe Slovo after the N2 Gateway Housing Project was launched after being requested to do so by the respondents or the City; and who apply for and qualify for this housing.

The Court therefore set aside the order originally granted by Judge President John Hlophe in the Cape High Court, which would have forced Joe Slovo residents to go and live 15 km outside the city with no guarantee of being accommodated in the new development. Seeing that the government had previously broken its promise that those removed from Joe Slovo would be accommodated in the newly built houses, this can be seen as at least a partial victory for the residents of Joe Slovo.

If the original order of Hlophe was followed, the vast majority of Joe Slovo residents would have permanently been removed from their homes close to the city and – apartheid style – would have been dumped in the bundoe where they would have been forced to live indefinitely. The land next to the N2 Highway along which dignitaries and visitors to the Soccer World Cup would have driven into the city to the 400 million Rand soccer stadium would have become home to middle class families while the poor residents of Joe Slovo would have been forgotten – unless until the next election.

Deputy Chief Justice Moseneke makes clear why the original order issued by Hlophe was so callous and unfair, stating:

I must emphasise that, on the facts of this case, I would have had great difficulty in holding that it is just and equitable to forcibly evict the residents of Joe Slovo and to relocate them far from their homes and modest comfort zones in order to give way to the construction of new subsidised homes in circumstances where the evicted residents would have had no reasonable prospects of satisfying their own dire need to access adequate housing. That eviction and relocation order [issued by Hlophe] would have made the residents of Joe Slovo sacrificial lambs to the grandiose national scheme to end informal settlements when the residents themselves stood to benefit nothing by way of permanent and adequate housing for themselves.

Today’s judgement remains perplexing though, because it condones a forced eviction of a large group of settled residents and endorses a government vanity project that seems to run counter to the government’s own housing policy which states that informal settlements should be eradicated through in situ upgrading where possible.

In this case the government has not shown why the informal settlement could not have been upgraded without removing the residents of Joe Slovo lock, stock and barrel. Some removals might have been necessary given the overcrowded conditions, but surely it would have been more humane to try and upgrade the settlement with the least disruption to the more than 4000 families involved?

I will have to study the judgment in more detail, but at first blush it seems to demonstrate how timid the court can sometimes be when it applies the reasonableness standard to evaluate the actions of the state. To my mind it does not seem reasonable, nor does it seem fair and just, to uproot a whole community for the sake of prettifying the major tourist access route to Cape Town.

At least the government will now be in contempt of court if it again breaks its promise to accommodate those removed in the newly built houses. Judging by its previous actions I suspect we have not heard the last of this matter.

What is going on with the Hlophe case?

Apr 1st, 2009
by Pierre De Vos.
24 comments

I am really worried about the health of Judge President John Hlophe. He seems to have contracted the same virus many of the weaker students fall prey to just before a test or an exam. It must be really serious if he cannot even get on a plane and attend a hearing that will decide whether he is guilty of gross misconduct and should be impeached. Maybe he is even at deaths door like Schabir Shaik. The Minister of Health should call an urgent meeting to deal with this health crisis because as I know all too well from my experiences as a lecturer, this virus is highly contagious and if not stopped it might wipe out a whole generation of shirkers and shysters – and who will then run the country?

But seriously, I am at a loss to understand the legal and political strategy employed by Hlophe and his legal team. Now that he has fired the previous bunch of pedestrian lawyers and hired a really good lawyer by the name of Vuyani Ngalwana – probably the sexiest advocate in South Africa – I would have thought that he would have jumped at the chance to expose those lying, conniving, counter-revolutionary judges who fabricated this whole case against him because they are in the pockets of the CIA, Thabo Mbeki, the Illuminati, the NPA, the Dark Lord Sauron, or perhaps, just perhaps, their conscience.

(By the way, I am not sarcastic about the qualities of Advocate Ngalwana – this guy was brilliant as the Pensions Fund Adjudicator and I had dinner with him once or twice where he displayed charm, a dizzying intellect and original mind of the first order. The fact that he is very pretty might have influenced my judgment slightly – but not that much.)

Not being privy to Hlophe’s legal and political strategy, it is difficult to understand why he is trying to avoid the JSC hearing at all cost. Today his lawyers threatened the JSC with an urgent interdict if it proceeded with the hearing and offered a litany of utterly spurious “complaints” about the hearing. For goodness sake, after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) has dispatched with his argument that the Constitutional Court judges should not have made the complaint against him public, they dredged this up again as one of the reasons for a postponement.

Surely, astute and clever lawyers like Hlophe and Ngalwana know that the SCA has now rejected this argument and that no appeal is possible to the Constitutional Court, so no matter how much they whine on about this, the law does not support them and now never will. Enough already! Stop flogging a dead horse!

They also complained that Hlophe had been selected as a witness before the JSC without being consulted. They are thus equating the hearing before the JSC with a criminal trial and are demanding the same kind of treatment as an accused in a criminal trial. But the JSC is not a court and the same rules applying to a criminal trial do not apply (and should not apply) to the JSC hearing.  The JSC process is aimed at getting at the truth (something Hlophe has shown a certain lack of respect for in the past) and Hlophe’s evidence is obviously crucial for getting to the bottom of this. In any case, even in a criminal case any lawyer would have advised Hlophe that given the overwhelming evidence against him, he would have no option but to testify. I am sure Hlophe and his lawyers know this very well.

So what’s up? Why make absurd and legally embarrassing claims about the “unfairness” of the process when they know they have no snowballs hope in hell of convincing any decent lawyer of their argument?

Dare I say that all these shenanigans suggest that Hlophe and his lawyers are getting desperate. In the light of the finding of the 9 judges of the SCA that an attempt to influence fellow judges on a case before them constituted a breach of the Constitution and the law, and given the fact that Hlophe had admitted that he discussed a pending case with two of the judges of the Constitutional Court and argued with them about the “correct” way to decide the case, this leaves Hlophe in an extremely vulnerable position. Remember, he had claimed that it was perfectly normal for a judge from a lower court to discuss a pending case with judges of a higher court and that there was nothing wrong with him telling them that “we depend on you” to rule in the “right” way in the pending case.

Legally, Hlophe is therefore teetering on the ropes and the referee is almost ready to declare a win for the CC on a technical knockout. It’s close to impossible to think of a scenario in which the JSC does not find that he was in breach of the judicial code of conduct. It is also more than likely that they will find that he is guilty of gross misconduct.

So, the absurd abuse of the process by Hlophe and his lawyers today was not aimed at a legal audience. They are obviously trying for a “political solution”. Hey, if it seemed to have worked for Jacob Zuma, why not for him?

One problem though: the SCA has already noted that Hlophe’s legal manoeuvrings had nothing to do with a concern with the judiciary and the administration of justice and everything to do with his own self-interest. Today’s sad turn of events will only reinforce the perception that Hlophe is a dangerous unguided missile who is only interested in one thing – saving himself at any cost, even if it meant destroying the judiciary. This line of defense will alienate many of the good people in the ANC, who will ultimately have to decide if they will vote for his impeachment in Parliament if the JSC recommends that he be impeached.

Tonight I will say a little prayer for Hlophe’s health in the hope that he recovers from his terrible ailment before Saturday. The sooner this case is dispensed with and the sooner we can rid our judiciary of this destructive behaviour, the better for all of us. If this happens, I might drive out to the Joe Slovo informal settlement with a crate or two of beer to celebrate with the men and women living in that informal settlement whose eviction was ordered by Hlophe in one of the most heartless and pro-rich judgments I have ever read in the new South Africa.

Like me, I am sure the honest and decent people living in Joe Slovo and now threatened with eviction to far off Delft because of Judge President Hlophe’s weirdly cold and dishonest judgment, will cheer the demise of a seemingly brilliant mind brought low by an inexplicable lust for money and power, a lack of empathy for others  less fortunate than himself and an ethical blind spot as large as the Grand Canyon.

Cheers.

Irene Grootboom died, homeless, forgotten, no C-class Mercedes in sight

Aug 11th, 2008
by Pierre De Vos.
40 comments

Irene Grootboom died last week, but we hardly noticed as we were all too busy obsessing about yet another court appearance of Mr. Jacob Zuma. She died homeless and penniless, not yet fifty years old, in the same week that robbers broke into the garage of ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s upmarket home in Sandton and stole stuff from his C-Class Mercedes.

The ANC Youth League did not have time to issue a press statement about the death of Mrs. Grootboom. They were too upset about the break-in at the fancy house of Mr. Malema. Breaking into a C-Class Mercedes is apparently not a revolutionary act – especially if that C-class belongs to Comrade kortbroek Malema. Thus the Youth League did have time to pontificate on this break-in: who cares about a poor and destitute woman who made legal history if there is a revolution to be fought and a man of dubious ethical standards to be defended. The Youth League statement reads in part:

We hold a firm view that this dastardly act of cowardice is the work of desperate forces who believe they can intimidate us into submission. It is a sad day in our country to realise that we still have apartheid-style tactics where one’s residence is ransacked with impunity. We dare these forces of darkness to confront us openly in broad daylight. The Youth League condemns this act of cowardice in the strongest possible terms. An attack on leaders of the ANCYL is an attack on the ANCYL itself.

For me this juxtaposition seems to sum up much of what is wrong in South Africa (and with the ANC and the debate about Jacob Zuma) in 2008. Mrs. Grootboom made legal history when the Constitutional Court (those pesky counter-revolutionaries!) delivered judgment in a groundbreaking case that carried her name, giving some content to the right of access to housing guaranteed in article 26 of the Constitution.

Eight years ago the Constitutional Court ruled in Grootboom’s favour, saying that she and others living in an informal settlement on Wallacedene sports ground near Kraaifontein had a right to demand from the state to act reasonably to provide access to housing to all South Africans by devising and implementing a housing policy that did not neglect the most poor and vulnerable members of society.

Because the state’s housing policy did not cater at all for homeless people – those in urgent need – the Court declared the state’s housing policy to be unreasonable and thus invalid. But because it was careful to respect the separation of powers and because it feared that it did not have the institutional competence to dictate to the state exactly how it had to act to progressively provide more and more South Africans with better and better access to housing, the Constitutional Court found that Mrs. Grootboom could not demand a house from the state. She could only demand that the state act reasonably to implement a housing policy.

Implicit in the Court’s judgment was an assumption that the state really cared about people like Mrs. Grootboom and that, given some guidance, the government would eventually address the needs of Mrs. Grootboom and others like her. It assumed that the members of government would not spend its time fighting about positions and power, but would really try to help people like Mrs. Grootboom who had placed their names on housing waiting lists many years before in the hope of accessing housing.

Eight years later this assumption seems rather optimistic, to say the least. As the disastrous anti-poor N2 Gateway project has shown, the government often seems more concerned about what Sep Blatter and rich overseas visitors might think as they drive from the airport to the new R300 million 2010 soccer stadium, than what is best for the poor and homeless citizens of South Africa.

And aided and abetted by “revolutionary” judges like Judge President John Hlophe, the state’s housing policy now often seems to consist of attempts at removing destitute citizens from prime land close to job opportunities near city centres to far-away townships in order to make way for middle income houses for people with  the necessary ANC connections to jump to the front of a housing queue.

Although many houses have been built by our government and many people provided with access to housing, the needs of the really poor and destitute – like Mrs. Irene Grootboom – still do not seem to be a priority for politicians who drive around in fancy cars and live in leafy suburbs among the despicable white racists they so enjoy to deride and whom they need to give legitimacy to their (mis)rule.

Mrs. Irene Grootboom was a true revolutionary. She put her trust in the law, our courts and in politicians to help her to get access to a house. But true revolutionaries hardly ever live happily ever after. Unlike the fake revolutionaries who steal our money and spew populist platitudes masquerading as concern for the people, true revolutionaries often die young, penniless and homeless.

Mrs. Grootboom’s death shames us all. Is it too much to ask that her death might galvanize us into re-focusing our attention on the real pressing problems facing South Africa – on poverty and the lack of opportunities facing many people like Mrs. Grootboom who do not know and could not care less about Jacob Zuma or Julius Malema or anyone else driving a Mercedes (or a Porsche)?

Naaah, I am obviously being naive. Who would care about a poor destitute woman when one has so much more important things to do – like getting into one’s C-Class Mercedes to go and give another revolutionary speech about how one would kill or die for a man who took more than R4 million in bribes from a convicted crook.

No compassion for people who do not drive a Porsche?

Mar 11th, 2008
by Pierre De Vos.
24 comments

One would think that it would have been hard for Judge President of the Cape, John Hlophe, to order the forced eviction of 20 000 poor, black people from the Joe Slovo informal settlement. After all, when he was in trouble for taking hundreds of thousands of Rand from the Oasis company and then lied about the reasons for these “out of pocket” expenses, he presented himself as a champion of transformation and a victim of racism.

But I suppose now that he is safely back in the saddle and he can enjoy his ownership of a wine farm while driving in a shiny new black Porsche, he has forgotten the values of the Constitution that requires him to consider the human dignity of the poor people whose forced eviction he has now ordered. Who cares that the order will destroy this community and that the people now living close to work opportunities will be dumped in the gramadoelas in Delft?

Yesterday the judge President handed down a judgment in Thubelisa Homes and Others v Various Occupants and Others that seems to me completely devoid of compassion and also legally misguided because it essentially ignores recent decisions by the Constitutional Court, while purporting to follow them. Thubelisa Homes applied for the eviction order so that it could bulldoze the shacks next the the N2 before erecting shiny new homes where only a few of the original occupants of the informal settlement will ever live.

The starting point of the judgment is that the residence of Joe Slovo – who have been living on the land since 1994 and have been given tacit approval for living there by the authorities – are unlawfully occupying the land needed for a vanity housing project (the N2 Gateway project) and that it would therefore be fine to remove them to Delft because it would actually “undoubtedly [be] for the benefit of the residents of the informal settlement and in line with the Constitutional values”. These pesky residence just do not want to know what is good for them. Obviously bureaucrats and a judge driving a Porsche knows much better what is good for them than they would know themselves. After all they are only poor and black.

The judgment refers to an earlier Constitutional Court judgment in the Port Elizabeth Municipality case where justice Albie Sachs stated that a court should be reluctant to grant an eviction order against relatively settled occupiers unless it is satisfied that a reasonable alternative is available. Thus, Justice Sachs continued, the legislation expressly requires:

the court to infuse elements of grace and compassion into the formal structures of the law. It is called upon to balance competing interests in a principled way and to promote the constitutional vision of a caring society based on good neighbourliness and shared concern. The Constitution and PIE confirm that we are not islands unto ourselves. The spirit of ubuntu, part of the deep cultural heritage of the majority of the population, suffuses the whole constitutional order. It combines individual rights with a communitarian philosophy.

But the judgment then approvingly quotes from the Supreme Court of Appeal judgment (handed down by that champion of transformation, Harms ADP) in City of Johannesburg v Rand Properties (since overtaken by the Constitutional Court judgment two weeks ago!) to the effect that the Constitution does not give a person a right to housing at State expense at a locality of that person’s choice and concludes that it is fair and reasonable to dump the 20 000 Joe Slovo residence in Delft – even though it is 15 kilometers from Joe Slovo, far away from the city center of Cape Town.

This line of reasoning is perplexing, to say the least, as the Constitutional Court in the City of Johannesburg case in effect overruled the SCA judgment by ordering the parties to negotiate with one another and by implicitly accepting that it would not be humane or in conformity with a respect for the human dignity of the inner city dwellers to dump them at alternative accommodation 35 km outside of town. In that judgment Justice Yacoob stressed that the human dignity of those affected by removal must be respected and that their views must be heard.

This seems to imply that high handed and unilateral action by officials or judges telling people what is good for them will not suffice. A real and meaningful engagement is required and merely telling the people of Joe Slovo that it was in their own interest to be dumped in godforsaken Delft would not be good enough. What is sorely lacking in the Hlophe judgment is the “grace and compassion” that Justice Sachs spoke about.

For me what permeates the judgment is a complete lack of compassion for the plight of the Joe Slovo residence. There might be a case to be made to upgrade the Joe Slovo informal settlement, but then it should surely be done within the confines of the Constitutional values of dignity and respect. By repeating over and over that the Joe Slovo residence are living unlawfully on the land, the judgment seems to suggest that they are criminals who are thus less deserving of concern, compassion and respect.

It accepts that the government policy that would force most Joe Slovo residence to permanently live far away from their places of work is completely reasonable because the government says that it is reasonable. It emphasises the need for the court to respect the separation of powers and thus suggests that the court should take at face value assurances by the government that it would be better for Joe Slovo residence to be moved. It completely ignores the fact that the Joe Slovo residence do not think it would be better for them to go and live in the veld.

It is hard to argue that “elements of grace and compassion” animate the conception of reasonableness in this case. It suggests that it is perfectly acceptable for the state to forcibly remove a large group of people who have been living on a piece of land for thirteen years merely because the government of the day has decided this is what needs to happen.

Maybe I am too harsh on the judgment, but it seems to me that given our history in which the apartheid government forcibly removed people at the drop of a hat, courts should be extremely sensitive to give eviction orders where such a large group of people will be moved and their lives disrupted for ever. In this case there is a complete absence of this historical perspective.

To my mind it once again shows the difficulties of judicial transformation and poses questions about what kind of judges we need on the bench. Surely real judicial transformation requires judges who are sensitive to the needs of the poor and destitute and at least an honest engagement with their fears and complaints. In this judgment there is a complete absence of such engagement and the Joe Slovo residence and their needs are completely ignored. They are treated as recalcitrant individuals standing in the way of the government housing programme and their needs and wishes are completely ignored.

Before the law they have once again become invisible. They are not treated as individual human beings with feelings and needs but merely as a problem to be dealt with. What we need are more judges who really wrestle with the very difficult issues presented by gentrification of informal settlements and the real hurt and pain of forced removals. This is what the Constitution – as interpreted by the Constitutional Court, not the SCA – requires.

Perhaps this is too much to ask of a judge who might experience this informal settlement on the N2 as an eyesore and a stumbling block to progress – even as he speeds to his wine farm in his shiny Porsche.

Constitutional Court cleverly “solves” evictions dilemma – or not?

Feb 20th, 2008
by Pierre De Vos.
6 comments

As I write this, men, woman and children are sitting next to their belongings in the midday sun after being evicted from partly completed houses built as part of the N2 Gateway Project in Cape Town. They have been evicted after the developers obtained an order from the Cape High Court.

The matter has been complicated by the fact that those evicted illegally occupied the houses late last year before they could be completed because they claimed that the houses were corruptly allocated to others who had not been on the housing list as long as they had. There also seems a possible racial element to the occupation as most of the occupiers are “coloured” while it is alleged that those for whom the houses have been earmarked are “African”.

The case of the Delft homeless provides a vivid illustration of how difficult it can be for judges to balance the constitutional right to human dignity and the prohibition against evictions without a court order on the one hand, against the need to uphold the law on the other. It is therefore of great interest and importance to note how the Constitutional Court has dealt with similar issues in a judgment handed down yesterday about evictions by the Johannesburg City Council of people living in the inner city of Joburg.

To my mind, at the heart of the judgment by Justice Zach Yacoob is an understanding that authorities cannot act in a bureaucratic and heartless fashion when they deal with human beings – even when they are called upon to enforce the law and even when those people they are dealing with have acted illegally.

In this case the Johannesburg City Council relied on section 12 of the National Building regulation and Building Standards Act passed in 1977 to justify the eviction of hundreds of people from dilapidated buildings in the inner city of Johannesburg without any regard for what would happen to those inner city dwellers once evicted.

Relying on sections 10 (human dignity) and 26 (right of access to housing) of the Constitution the Court said that the City council had a constitutional duty to act reasonably when it deals with homeless or potentially homeless people and this required them to engage meaningfully with people who would become homeless after eviction.

It also required both sides to act reasonably and in good faith during such negotiations to try and resolve the tensions that invariably exist between the need to enforce the law on the one hand and the need to respect people’s dignity and their right not to be arbitrary evicted on the other.

Significantly, the court stated that the City Council had a constitutional duty to put structures in place “with competent sensitive council workers skilled in engagement” to deal with evictions in a city and required city councils to act in a way that would honour the human dignity of those who would find themselves at the wrong end of an eviction.

As I read it, this judgment does not prevent authorities from evicting people, but emphasize that where such an eviction is required it should be done in a manner constistent with the Constitution. High-handed, secretive actions by the authorities that disrespect the rights of the people involved would not be reasonable.

So even where the health and safety of the inhabitants of a building is at stake (as it was in this case) or even where people have illegally invaded houses (as was the case in Delft) a mere heartless reliance on legal provisions would not suffice. The authorities would be constitutionally required to engage meaningfully with the potential evicted residents to try and arrange a humane solution.

It left open the question of what would be required in a case like that which arose in Delft, where people illegally invaded houses not yet completed and earmarked for other people in need of housing. Perhaps the facts of this case exposes some of the difficulties with the otherwise laudable judgment of the Constitutional Court.

I suspect that if one applies the general principle enunciated by the Constitutional Court yesterday, a court would be hard pressed to prohibit the eviction of the people in Delft. Nevertheless, this is not an easy case because both the invaders and the housing authority seemed to have acted in a way that might not be seen as reasonable.

The judgment is silent on what happens in such a situation where time might be of the essence, where people invade houses earmarked for others and where the housing authority then high handedly approach the courts for an eviction order without trying to resolve the matter through negotiations.

The housing authority could have tried to negotiate with the invaders. This would have then placed the ball in their court to engage with the process in a reasonable manner and not to make impossible or unreasonable demands (like staying in unfinished houses), which would have made it easier for the housing authority to get an eviction order that would comply with the Constitutional Court judgment.

What the Delft case shows is that many South Africans are desperate for access to housing and authorities – even those they are competent, skilled and sensitive as required by the Constitutional Court – will find it difficult to deal with the competing demands. Where authorities are neither competent, skilled or sensitive, it is almost inevitable that they will cause chaos and disaster.

Sisulu lost the plot

Sep 13th, 2007
by Pierre De Vos.
4 comments

I have always liked Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu. She seemed intelligent, hard-working and, for a cabinet minister, not without a modicum of wisdom and compassion. Her recent statements on the N2 Gateway fiasco have been so astoundingly stupid and arrogant that I have now changed my mind.

In Parliament on Monday she threatened to remove protesters from Joe Slovo informal settlement from the housing waiting list.

If they choose not to cooperate with government, they will be completely removed from all housing waiting lists.

There are so many things wrong with this statement that it is hard to know where to begin. Section 26 of the Constitution says that everyone in South Africa has a right of access to housing and that the state has a duty to realise this right progressively, given the available resources. Moreover section 33 of the Constitution states that “everyone has the right to administrative action that is lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair”.

This means that neither the Minister nor her officials can legally remove anyone from a housing list that is supposed to give people a shot of accessing housing, without a fair hearing. I can direct the “honourable” Minister to the judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal in Permanent Secretary, Department of Welfare, Eastern Cape, and Another v Ngxuza and Others.

When the Eastern Cape government unilaterally cancelled the disability grants of thousands of residence, the SCA in that case slammed the Eastern Cape government and declared their actions illegal. Writing for the Court, Justice Edwin Cameron commented that the province had:

Conducted the case as though it was at war with its own citizens, the more shamefully because those it were combating were the least in its sphere … The applicants formed part of a group of South Africans with the least chance of vindicating their rights through the legal process.

For the Minster to think that she has a right to unilaterally take away the rights of the very citizens who elected her into office is a shameful disgrace. What has happened to that much abused phrase “innocent until proven guilty”. I assume Mr Jacob Zum and his supporters are as we speak preparing statements of outrage about this abuse of power by the Minster.

But the statement of the Minister is shockingly disrespectful of the Constitution in another way. She seems to suggest that individuals will be punished and their rights expunged if they fail to cooperate with the government. But the Constitution guarantees for everyone the right to freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of conscience, which means we have a right, yes a right not to agree or cooperate with the government.

The Minister’s statement speaks of an arrogance that has sadly become all too pervasive among government officials. It reflects an attitude that government knows best and that ordinary people should just shut up and follow government orders – no matter how detrimental those orders may be for a particular individual.

The people of Joe Slovo are not stupid. They do not trust the government because the government has already lied to them regarding the first phase of the N2 Gateway Project. People were promised that they will be moved into the new houses, but this did not happen because they could not pay the high rents being charged.

The erstwhile neighbours of those poor unfortunate souls are now being promised that they will be returned to the permanent structures to be erected on the cleared land, but these structures, we know, will be showcase housing for the benefit of Fifa and the tourists driving from the airport, so they will cost a lot of money and will therefore not be affordable to most of the Joe Slovo residence.

The Minister knows this, her officials know this and the protesting residence know this too. No wonder they are protesting and no wonder they do not want to cooperate. Only people without any self respect agree to cooperate with a government hell bent on taking away your rights.

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