Joburg+tenants+need+to+know,+Tweedie,+Letters,+Sindy

Letters, Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, August 7, 2005
=Tenants in Jo'burg need to know their rights=

Your front-page lead article "SA's 'Zimbabwe' evictions slated" (Sunday Independent, July 31) gives a good illustration of the limit of "human rights" as a means of dealing with social problems.

What the 20 000 affected families in Johannesburg's so-called "bad buildings" need is simple due process of law and proper representation in court. These are concrete rights, not abstract generalities.

But instead of an unequivocal statement along these lines, all Jody Kollapen, the Human Rights Commission head, can manage is to agonise over the "difficult conundrum" of hiring "private security forces" to throw people and their belongings into the streets.

Kollapen's liberal sentiments are not different in kind from those of Johannesburg metro spokesperson Roopa Singh. Both employ the rhetoric of compassionate concern to justify the hounding of poor people from building to building in Johannesburg. They both seem to believe that salaried intellectuals like themselves have a natural right to decide the fate of the poor.

The organised opponents of the arbitrary, bureaucratic, administrative process currently employed by the Johannesburg metro in relation to the buildings they call "bad" include the SA Communist Party's Johannesburg Central branch and the Black Sash, as well as the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions and the Wits Law Project. We are not all bland "human rights" activists; we are activists for statutory, constitutional, common-law and democratic rights.

Tenants need to know their rights and where to get representation in court. The Sunday Independent could assist by publishing, for example, the telephone numbers of the Law Clearing House (011-339-4054) and the Legal Resources Centre (011-836-9831). These organisations help people to find lawyers.

A widespread and consistent information campaign is needed. The council's 11 people's centres should be part of such a campaign. The council should be directing people towards the legal resolution of disputes, instead of giving a bad example of extra-legal force under cover of lip-service to "human rights".

Secretary, SACP Johannesburg Central Branch
 * Dominic Tweedie**


 * From: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2819797&fSectionId=1043&fSetId=**