By a.k.a Mzamani, Wednesday, 15 September 2022
There will be a closing of one of the busiest roads in Maitland/Kensington. The resident of the informal settlement opposite the Maitland cemetery in Kensington wants to shut down the section of the Voortrekker Road. The informal settlement is called Gate 7. It is called this name because this informal settlement is directly opposite one of the gates entering the Maitland graveyard – across Voortrekker Road.
The committee of Gate 7 Informal Settlement has for many times been knocking on government – public and private offices seeking help for some recognition: to at least have access to water and toilets. Because water, sanitation, and food are fundamental human rights. Not only enshrined in Chapter 2 of the Bill of Rights in the constitution – but they are Universal.
The community meeting of Gate 7 Informal Settlement takes place at Wingfield 3 (Gate 7) Voortrekker Road Informal Settlement (VRIS) in Kensington, Cape Town on Wednesday, September 2022. The meeting is about living without basic services and how they are being forgotten and ignored by the ward councilor – the City of Cape Town (CCT) and the National government. Resulting in their lives being systematically subjected to unbearable and inhumane conditions.
They have been sent from pillar to post. The ward councilor is saying she can’t do anything because The owners of the land can’t give a straight answer. But they told the media the owners of the land are against basic service provision and wanted the residents removed, respectively. These responses and the government’s negligence are sheer human rights violations. Specifically, it is widely known and incontestable that irrespective of whether the land is privately owned or illegally occupied – water and sanitation must be provided. That denying people these simple basic needs like water and sanitation is nothing but a strategy by the ruling elite to strangulate the poor and working-class grassroots communities’ ability to breathe.
The City of Cape Town (CCT) government is at war against the poor communities everywhere. The CCT has indefinitely unleashed its law enforcement to guard, impound, arrest, shoot and kill black poor people. Whenever the women at Gate 7 Informal Settlement started to plough the land to feed their families. Within minutes the law enforcement and its notorious anti-land inversion unit pull up to stop the women from growing food – threatening them with arrest and the methods they use brings back the apartheid heavy memories – in real life.
Enthusiastically, Gate 7 Informal Settlement women decided to plough unused land next to their community to fight hunger, poverty, and unemployment at Wingfield 3 (Gate 7), Voortrekker Road Informal Settlement (VRIS) on Wednesday, July 20, 2022. But this honest and human dream with possibilities of weathering away hunger and starvation never saw the light under the sun. As law enforcement and its notorious anti-land inversion unit, are indefinitely lurking and brusquely pestering these life-loving women – threatening to arrest them.
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