Today we announce that we have embarked on a symbolic occupation of the Helen Bowden Nurses Home and the Woodstock Hospital to demand Urban Land Justice in Cape Town. We are Cape Town residents from across the race and class divide. We are residents of Woodstock, Sea Point, Marikana informal settlement, Blikkiesdorp and Khayelitsha. We are from communities at the forefront of the housing and segregation crisis in our city. We stand in solidarity with the struggles of all poor and working class people who still live homeless under bridges; in shacks and informal settlements at the edge of our city; in backyards and wendy houses on the Cape Flats; and in store rooms and domestic quarters in former white suburbs. The colonial and apartheid governments divided our city, controlled where we could live and forcefully removed our families from their homes. Our parents and grandparents resisted and overcame racial oppression. They fought for the rights to dignity, justice, equality, and adequate housing that our Constitution now guarantees. But we still experience the violence of apartheid spatial planning and segregation. A dignified life with access to good services and decent work is reserved for a few. We still experience violent evictions from our homes by private property owners and our government. This, while private landlords, developers and banks are making obscene profits. Land must be for people, not for profit. We are angry that our City, our Province and our National governments have failed to acknowledge our struggles for land and for affordable housing. They have failed to bring Black and Coloured people back into our city. We believe that symbolic and peaceful civil disobedience is now justified in the defence of our Constitution and our Constitutional rights. As we have now made our home here for over 48 hours, the law is clear that we may not be evicted without an order of court. We call on the Province and the South African Police Service to act lawfully and refrain from using violence or other tactics of state oppression against us.

We are deeply troubled by the continuous introduction of risky GMOs into our food and farming systems. Since its introduction into our food system in 1998, it has done nothing to address our nation’s hunger problems. Instead, we are left with polluted soil and water and loss of our superior, local farmer-bred varieties of maize. We are also extremely concerned about the political economy of seed control that Monsanto has imposed on our seed system, which utterly undermines our food sovereignty and breeds a dependency on Monsanto's industrial systems and technologies. Local land belonging to smallholder farmers in SA have already been contaminated. More GMOs will only exacerbate this situation and further erode farmers’ seed systems. We call on our government to reject Monsanto’s application and begin a real dialogue with South Africans to transition out of industrial and GM-based agriculture systems and work towards real climate resilient solutions that are ecologically sustainable, socially just and takes care of the nutritional needs of all South Africans

On 2 January 2017, a strong, beautiful and tenacious young woman, with a heart made only of gold, was taken from us. A bright light in the lives of all who knew her, this loving mother of three children, was brutally assaulted and killed by her husband in Westlake, Cape Town. This mother of three was allegedly stabbed in full view of the community by her husband and residents claim he had been abusive towards her. South Africa has a femicide rate five times higher than the global average. “Research proves that the chances of a woman being murdered by someone that she knows or is in an intimate relationship with are much higher than any other type of murder… Motives are often financial, adultery or a love-triangle, custody or a residential battle for children.” – Anni Hesselink. In the words of community leader Vusumzi Nelani “This is a very sad case. This is what happens to many women and if the court is lenient this abuse will continue so we want the court to take this case very serious.” (News24, 26/07/2017) Please take a few minutes to sign today if you can. There are witnesses and three vulnerable young children we need to protect!! If we want our voices against domestic violence to count, we need them to count in court too!! Please share this link for friends, family and colleagues to sign. Thank you very much.

Just recently, the body of 22-year-old LGBTQ activist Noluvo Swelindawo was found near the N2 highway in Driftsands, a community near Khayelitsha. She had been shot in an alleged hate crime. It is in this light this, and many other cases of ongoing hate crimes against the LGBTI community that we welcome Cabinet’s approval to publish the Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill for public comment. The Bill tackles a number of highly complex issues that require consultation with those most affected by the changes - if it is to achieve its stated aims to prevent and combat deaths like Noluvo's - and a proper consultation process takes time. We have waited for many years for the public release of the bill, and it is of utmost importance that the public consultation period allows civil society and the public in general to thoroughly and meaningfully engage with the bill and its potentially far-reaching provisions. After it has taken government nearly four years to draft the Bill, it is alarming that the public has been given a mere five weeks (until 1 December 2016) with a short extension over the holiday season (to 31 January 2017) to comment thereon. If the purpose is to craft an effective bill, the state needs to commit to coordinate robust public engagement and undertake in a process of deep reflection to ensure that the bill that is passed is the best bill possible. The current timeline does allow us to attempt to reach this ideal. As such, we are calling on the Department of Justice (DoJ) to extend the deadline for public comment to the 30 June 2017. We further request clear and detailed information on DoJ’s plan for convening extensive public consultations with representatives from civil society, non-governmental and community-based organisations and interested individuals on the draft bill.

On Monday the 2nd of January 2017, a number of areas including the Qweqwe, Payne, Zimbane, Maqhinebeni, VIdgiesville, Mqanduli and the surrounding areas were hit by a severe hailstorm which left many desitute and homeless [1]. Homes, schools and churches were severely damaged and a number of people were rushed to hospital with injuries. During this time of the year this kind of weather uis expected and it is deeply worrying that everytime our Municipality is caught off guard with no contingency plan. We know that it is norm for Disaster Management to delay responding to these disasters even though they have a set budget for such. This is evident even in this case, there has not been any statement issued to declare or any information to give guidance to the affected communities like a toll free number or contact offices/persons We however, commend the Department of Health for being visible and issuing a media statement going as far as offering assistance to those injured. [1] Lightining strikes Seven people in Mthatha, Jenni Evans, News24

We can improve service delivery and fight corruption in our Municipality by ensuring all Service Delivery Agreements (SDAs) are public and easily accessible to all. Some politicians, officials and businesses are scared about transparency, but if they aren't doing anything wrong, what have they got to hide. * This campaign by amandla.mobi is supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

We can improve service delivery and fight corruption in our Municipality by ensuring all Service Delivery Agreements (SDAs) are public and easily accessible to all. Some politicians, officials and businesses are scared about transparency, but if they aren't doing anything wrong, what have they got to hide.

We can improve service delivery and fight corruption in our Municipality by ensuring all Service Delivery Agreements (SDAs) are public and easily accessible to all. Some politicians, officials and businesses are scared about transparency, but if they aren't doing anything wrong, what have they got to hide.

Syferbult is a very impoverished community of over a 1000 people living in shacks. About a hundred of the adults get seasonal work, from two to four months of the year; the rest make do on whatever grants they can access. Despite a contractor putting in taps and pipes that function, fgor years the community has received slightly erratic tanker water. In September, they received nothing for three full weeks. Since then they have received approximately four tankers (enough for drinking water for four days) and the water has run in the taps twice for about 45 minutes (without any warning or notification). The councillor for Ward 36 claims this is because they owe Eskom R6000; I've also been told the water can't be pumped because of: cable theft; problems with the diesel generator; a circuit breaker malfunctioning; and the township has not been formalised (if so, why was infrastucture contracted and put in place?) On 18 October, the thirsty, dusty and dirty community finally exploded and marched in protest. They were met with rubber bullets and tear gas - one person was injured, thankfully not seriously. And still the children, the sick, the elderly are thirsty - so thirsty that when we arrive with bakkie-loads of water, they run and jump on the back of the moving vehicle, unable to hold back, desperate for the precious fluid. This is unconstitutional. "The right of access to sufficient water is accorded to everyone in s 27(1)(b) of the Constitution, which states that everyone has the right to have access to sufficient water. Section 27(2) requires the State to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of the right." Syferbult is not alone in this plight. I have heard of at least six other communities in Rustenburg area with the same problem. Yet phoning, emailing, attending meetings , buttonholing the councillor.... nothing works. Please spread this far and wide.

Although there may be wide and reasonable disagreements with respect to both the goals and tactics of the student movement for free, quality and decolonised education, as well as the goals and tactics of university managements, the securitisation of campuses can never be an effective way of resolving differences. Such securitisation can and has already has caused bodily harm and trauma to protestors, by-standers, academics, support staff and security personnel themselves, while further exacerbating fear and mistrust, thereby polarising positions and undermining academic freedom. It is unreasonable and unsafe to expect students, academic staff and support staff to continue the academic project under these conditions. Moreover, it is antithetical to the pursuit of a negotiated solution that will enable the completion of the academic year successfully. Academics and concerned persons, please sign the petition with your name and affiliation.

Community safety is compromised here and we can't keeping seeing the same result in the Crime Stats report. People are increasingly unsafe and our constitutional rights are surely in jeopardy here with the state failing to provide adequate security. Imagine this: a community where people don't have enough space due to overpopulation and informal settlements, a clear breeding ground for many social ills with this ignored problem of ever-increasing crime stats. All of this happening in a City with an impeccable tourism track record and is considered the go-to place around the world. This irony can no longer be ignored. It's in these small actions, i.e. building a much-needed police station that we can start to turn the tide and provide support to the communities that desperately need it. Clearly those in power in this province aren't interested.

The number of burn victims is raising because of faulty prima stoves that explode. My sister Khensani, was unfortunately one of the victims/survivors in October 2019. She was preparing Sunday lunch for her children when all of a sudden the primus stove that she was using exploded and her face and abdomen caught fire. She was in ICU for weeks and she's still in hospital three months later at Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital. Ever since this incidence we've discovered that she hasn't been the only one to experience this horror. We've met a number of other patients who have burned because of faulty primus stoves. This is a terrible ordeal that no one should ever have to experience, life has been very difficult for the whole family ever since. Khensani has 4 handsome sons who almost lost their mother because of this, Every South African citizen SHOULD have electricity! Primus stoves should be banned.