* January: Qadi people over Inanda dam land claim; Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) v KZN Slums Act; Durban Univ of Technology (DUT) staff and student strike * February: Cosatu v Israeli ship; UKZN and DUT students; Ntuzuma service delivery; Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) v Mugabe; Umlazi police violence * March: DUT students; bus commuters; South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) v SASOL * April: KwaMashu housing; Lamontville housing; Warwick Junction Early Morning Market (EMM) * May: Siyanda housing; Marianhill housing; Lamontville housing; SDCEA v Shell; Warwick EMM * June: Warwick EMM; electricity disconnections; Qadi land claim; AbM on shack fires; Umlazi hostel conflicts; MDC v Home Affairs; public sector doctors; Lindelani housing; National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) v Mabhida Stadium contractors; Durban bus drivers * July: Warwick EMM; doctors; NUM v Mabhida contractors; drivers and residents v City bus service; SA Unemployed People's Movement v shops; SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) v municipality * August: Warwick EMM; the Communications Workers Union v Post Office; Clairwood and Bluff residents v truckers; SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu) v Massmart; Telkom workers v Telkom; social workers v KZN Province; Lamontville housing; IFP youth * September: AbM attacked; Westcliff Flat Residents' participation; tow truck drivers v Joburg competition * October: AbM solidarity and Slums Act court win; Chatsworth v toxic dump; Mangosuthu University of Technology students; Ratepayers Associations v Eskom prices; Warwick EMM * November: Wentworth service delivery; Hammarsdale service delivery; AbM solidarity; Phoenix residents v Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital; Warwick EMM; Mayville service delivery; Marrianridge housing; UKZN workers v labour broking * December: AbM solidarity; Saccawu n v Pick n Pay *** Statement by O'Brien Gcabashe, spokesperson of the Qadi Families Evicted from Inanda Dam organisation 3:30pm on Saturday, 17 January The Qadi clan, who lost land during the impoundment of the Inanda Dam which supplies Durban with water, have suffered indignity again. I was shocked that this morning, our constitutional rights to expression were denied us by the Durban Metro Police and SA Police Service. Police repression against a small group of protesters followed the rejection of our application for a permit to hold a large rally at Inanda Dam, at the time the Dusi Canoe Marathan was passing through the area this morning. Permission was denied by the Durban City Manager, Michael Sutcliffe, on Wednesday. The reason given in the letter was as follows: "Credible information under oath has been brought to the attention of the Responsible Officer that there is a threat that the gathering in question will result in serious disruption of vehicular traffic, injury to participants in the gathering and/or other persons, and extensive damage to property and that the SAPS and DMPS will not be able to contain the threat." We dispute this, as it is ridiculous in every respect, and we challenge Sutcliffe and the police to prove these claims. Yesterday I wrote a letter to the Durban Metro Police (Officer Sewpersad), faxed (with confirmation), copied to a variety of other police stations. The letter stated that we would come to the dam site with fewer than 15 people, in accordance with the Gatherings Act, which permits such protests. We had no reply, written or oral, to tell us not to come. This morning at 7:30am, a group of us were 1 km from Inanda Dam, on the Hillcrest Road, when roughly 50 police officers in 15 vehicles stopped us. The police did not listen to us, and simply denied us our right to travel further, to demonstrate near the road, to show our signs, or to sing/dance. Had we done these things, which are permitted in our Constitution, the police said they would have arrested us. We had only 14 members of the Qadi Families Evicted from Inanda Dam organisation there to protest, and hence were not violating the Gatherings Act. After being detained at the side of the road, only at 10am were we allowed to proceed to the Inanda Dam, after the canoeists in the Dusi Marathan had left. Our intention was simply to show signs and visible bodies, to illustrate that the land below the water originally belonged to us. We wanted the canoeists and media and citizens to know of our plight. We also wanted to go the dam banks to pray for our ancestors. But we will certainly be back at our ancestral home, on the banks of the Inanda Dam. We intend to fight for our democratic rights of protest. And for the land that was stolen from us by an apartheid government. O'Brien Gcabashe 072 101 4238 email: [email protected] *** BACKGROUND PRESS INFORMATION A video about the plight of the Qadi people: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vox53e10Lg http://www.myvideo.co.za/video/inanda-flooded-forgotten-1-3 *** The Mercury Land threat to Dusi Tribes to 'claim what is ours' January 07, 2009 Edition 1 MPUME MADLALA THE people who had their land taken away from them in 1986 to make way for the Inanda Dam, are determined to disrupt the Hansa Powerade Dusi Marathon on January 17. [NOTE BY O'BRIEN GCABASHE: This is untrue, we never had any intention to disrupt the Dusi, simply to make our case known more widely.] Three tribes - the AmaQadi, the AmaNgcolosi and the AmaPhephethe - were forcibly removed from their homes so the Inanda Dam could be built. The 317 families were promised compensation for their land, but after 22 years they are still waiting. They now live in informal settlements in Ntuzuma and KwaMashu. O'Brien Gcabashe, a spokesman for the affected families, claimed that R5.6 million was paid to a headman in 1994 by the Department of Traditional Affairs, but the money was never passed on to the affected families. Gcabashe said there was also no accountability from government. "For 22 years we have been fighting this battle and no-one has come to our aid. All we have received are empty promises. "What has made us even more disappointed is that Ray de Vries, the organiser of the marathon, did not keep his promise to help us," he said. Denied At a meeting with the AmaQadi last year in November, De Vries had said he would help, claimed Gcabashe. De Vries denied he had promised to help the people, but had been sympathetic to their plight at the meeting. "We have, as the (Dusi Marathon) association, decided not to get involved in the matter on a land issue that we do not know much about it. "We will let all the relevant authorities involved handle the matter," he said. Gcabashe said that on January 17 they would go to Inanda Dam, and this time they would not stand outside the gate, but would go inside as they believe they have the right to be there more than anyone else, as it is still their land. "I was told by one person from this dam that the water was not ours. "We obviously know that and they can take their water with them. We just want our land back if they are not going to pay us," he said. Gcabashe said the people were frustrated and now believed that their only hope was in ANC president Jacob Zuma. "We have sent out a letter to the party's secretary for him to come and meet us, so we can tell him about our problem because government has really failed us," he said. Fools Gcabashe said that on January 17 they would arrive in buses and would make their way inside the dam. "We have been made fools of for far too long and we are very tired. Nobody knows how sad this issue has made us," he said. On November 23 last year, Gcabashe and others of the Qadi tribe went to the dam to hand out pamphlets to visitors to the dam, stating that the community believed corrupt officials had stolen the money that was meant for them. The department said yesterday they were willing to place the affected families on a housing list, but said the issue of compensation was complicated because the injustices were committed by the apartheid regime. Lennox Mabaso, spokesman for the Department of Traditional Affairs, said: "We were not there before 1994 so we don't know what happened to the money they say was paid to our department, but if they feel strongly about it, they are more than welcome to take this matter to court. "We have only been in this office for four years and most of the people who knew about this matter are no longer here. "We, however, have committed ourselves to building homes for the people because we understand they are living under difficult conditions while some are homeless. We do want to help," Mabaso said. *** Sunday Independent Flooded and forgotten while Durban drinks September 23, 2007 Edition 1 By Liane Greeff Try to imagine that it is night-time on September 27 1987. You are asleep in bed when you are woken up. There is a storm outside. It has been raining for days. Everything is wet, and then the water comes in through your front door. You light some candles to see what is happening - your world has turned to water. Your neighbours are shouting in the dark, the dam is rising. You and your family run away from your home to higher ground. The next day, when the dawn breaks, you look down over the valley to where your home was, and all you can see is water. Where once there was your world, now there is water. You have nothing except the clothes you were sleeping in. Everything else is gone - your house, your clothes, your furniture, your memories, your chickens, your goats, your cattle, your ploughed fields and the crops that were growing. Even the new car you had just bought. This is the testimony of Paulos Gwala of the Mphephetheni Tribal Authority in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, outside Durban. The dam is the Inanda Dam, which was constructed in 1987 to provide Durban with drinking water. The error is a human error, a government error. The dam wall should not have been built before the people were moved. Both the Mphephetheni and the Ngcolosi communities who lived on opposite banks of the Mgeni River suffered the same fate when the waters of the dam rose unexpectedly and flooded everything that belonged to them. That was 20 years ago. After the flood the affected members of both communities were given shelter in schools and churches. They were then moved into township- style tin houses - the Mphephetheni moved to Ntuzuma G. Others chose to remain in the valley but without homes - they begged accommodation with family higher up the slopes. The Ngcolosi were moved to Molweni and KwaDinabakubo, otherwise known as Tin Town after the tin shacks that were erected there as temporary shelter. Twenty years later, many people are still living in the same shacks - tortuous accommodation in the KwaZulu-Natal heat. "For 19 days we stayed in the church hall. On October 17 we moved to Molweni. That's where we started suffering, until today," says Jabulani Msomi, a member of the Ngcolosi community. The land that was promised never materialised. Not only did they lose their possessions, they also lost their lifestyles and livelihoods. They were flooded and then forgotten. The story of a third community - the AmaQadi - differs only slightly. The AmaQadi were moved to what was to be temporary housing at Ntuzuma G and were paid compensation. The government was negotiating to buy land for their permanent settlement but the site earmarked was already occupied by squatters who refused to move. The government could not find other land, so they gave R5,6 million to Chief Nkosi Mzonjani Ngcobo of the AmaQadi - R5 million was for the 317 households to be resettled and R600 000 was compensation to the chief for tribal land that was inundated. The 317 families never saw the money. Instead, it went from the hands of the chief to the KwaZulu government, then back to the chief, and then into a development fund, where it was allegedly misspent. O'Brien Gabasche, the community leader chosen to represent the rights of 317 AmaQadi families, tracked the money and has copies of the forensic audit that was undertaken. This year O'Brien took the matter to the KwaZulu-Natal provincial standing committee on public accounts and was promised that the issue would be resolved within two months. That was six months ago. Last month, more than 200 members of the AmaQadi community marched to the offices of the department of housing, local government and traditional affairs to voice their protest. Again, they are waiting for a response. This is the pattern that has been repeating itself for the past 20 years. The three communities presented to the Southern African hearings for communities affected by dams in 1999, which had the World Commission on Dams as its audience. The WCD was a global evaluation of large dams initially funded by the World Bank and chaired by Professor Kader Asmal, then the minister of water affairs and forestry. The findings of the WCD confirmed that dams have brought benefits - in the case of Inanda Dam, improved water supply to Durban - but that too often the price, in terms of environmental and social effects, has been unacceptably high and was avoidable. A South African multi-stakeholder forum, mandated to contexualise the WCD for South Africa, visited the dam and tin town at KwaDinabakubo in 2003, as did Ronnie Kasrils, then minister of water affairs. Again, there was acknowledgement of the pain and the suffering experienced by those affected by the dam and the need to compensate them. An Inanda Dam reparations forum was established under the auspices of eThekwini municipality in 2003, but it has achieved nothing in the four years to date, perhaps because it has no teeth. And, as politicians change portfolios, so the story begins again. All these processes have brought raised expectations and, as time passes, dashed hopes. This is a human-rights story, and it bridges the old and the new South Africa. It is a story about how a small group of rural people lost everything and a large group of urban people have benefited for 20 years at their expense. It is a problem that needs a solution. One viable solution is that of benefit sharing, whereby those affected by a dam become the first in line to receive its benefits. It has been used successfully in countries such as Canada and China to remedy the social impact of dams. In the case of Inanda Dam, this could be part of its revenue stream. The dam has been successful in that it has provided water for the Durban metropole. Umgeni Water manages the dam and provides eThekwini municipality with the raw water. The water is then sold to the residents of Durban by the municipality at a cost calculated to cover the costs of supply. The cost of compensation for the losses experienced by those affected by the dam is also a legitimate cost of the dam, the same as the cost of the concrete that built the dam wall. The selling of water is a very lucrative component of local government services, which is in part why there has been such controversy and debate about the privatisation of water services both globally and nationally. If a minute fraction of the cost of the water was earmarked as compensation for those who first "owned" the resource, it would go a long way to ending the two decades of waiting and suffering of almost 1 000 families. Then, and only then, will the people of Durban be able to drink the water that gushes from their taps with a clear conscience. # Liane Greef is programme manager for the Water Justice Environmental Monitoring Group. *** Restriction of expression Officials have abused many people's right to protest, most recently the right of the Qadi to demonstrate at the Dusi canoe marathon January 22, 2009 Edition 1 Patrick Bond IN Durban, your constitutional rights are often limited if there's a chance you'll create a nuisance. It's a complaint we've heard many times before when it comes to ordinary citizens' freedom of expression. Creating a nuisance is the ambition these days of O'Brien Gcabashe, spokesman for an organisation called the Qadi Families Evicted From Inanda Dam, after 22 years of frustration working through the system and meeting officials as important as (a quite sympathetic) water minister Ronnie Kasrils. In 1987, apartheid-era officials displaced Gcabashe's family and hundreds of others - along with the Mphephetheni and Ngcolosi communities - in order to build the bulk water supply that we drink from in Durban. Compensation for the Qadi land (R5.6 million) was paid to a corrupt chief, leaving the displaced people with nothing. Last Saturday morning, Dusi marathon canoes slipped quietly over the old Qadi neighbourhood, after municipal manager Michael Sutcliffe denied Gcabashe's simple request to stand on the water's banks with fellow victims, to pray to their ancestors, and in the process to publicise the land grab in front of athletes, the media and the society. In a letter to Gcabashe last Wednesday, the city said: "Credible information under oath has been brought to the attention of the responsible officer that there is a threat that the gathering in question will result in serious disruption of vehicular traffic, injury to participants in the gathering and/or other persons, and extensive damage to property and that the SA Police Service and Durban Metro Police Service will not be able to contain the threat." Gcabashe's response was: "It is ridiculous in every respect, and we challenge Sutcliffe and the police to prove these claims. When we met the police to discuss our aims on January 12, we said we wanted to demonstrate our anger, but there was absolutely no intention to disrupt the Dusi." Gcabashe's responsibilities under the 1993 Regulation of Gatherings Act are to alert the local police seven working days in advance of a protest, and then attend a meeting with them (within 24 hours of the alert) to work out logistics, if requested. Hostile But once Sutcliffe invoked the Act to prevent the Inanda Dam protest, no matter how unreasonably, Gcabashe had another option: taking 14 other people to the site of the protest, because the Act does not prohibit such a small number from expressing their views. The police believe otherwise. When I met their special events liaison team on Friday, officers were quite hostile to the idea that groups of 15 or fewer could demonstrate in public. In fact, no one need report to police any small-scale protest, according to the Gatherings Act, and you may have more groups of 15 nearby joining the demonstration, if they are 100m apart. So Gcabashe gathered 14 people and headed to the park entrance. "On Saturday at 7.30am, a group of us were 1km from Inanda dam, on the Hillcrest road, when roughly 50 police officers in 15 vehicles stopped us," he said. "The police did not listen to us, and simply denied us our right to travel further, to demonstrate near the road, to show our signs, or to sing and dance." Threats of arrest followed and, indeed, the police officer on the scene also told me that it didn't matter whether there were 15 or just two, the Qadi demonstrators would be locked up. "After being detained at the side of the road," said Gcabashe, "only at 10am were we allowed to proceed to the Inanda dam, after the canoeists had left." Freedom of Expression Institute director Jane Duncan said: "When our attorney phoned on Saturday to clarify why the gathering had been prohibited, she was told by the police that they did not have information on oath: a direct contradiction of what the prohibition said. She was then given a litany of excuses. This is an abuse of power." Supt Winnie Xama, of the police's special events unit, explained to me that Gcabashe and his community aimed to occupy public land that was "leased" to the Dusi marathon, a bizarre notion. She also declared the power to judge what day a protest could occur. "Any other time he's welcome to come and do the prayer, but not on the day that he wants. I know he wants publicity," she said. Well, of course the Qadi people and others displaced want publicity. That's the whole point behind raising their voice, when the state plays deaf. How many others need publicity to correct historic and contemporary wrong- doing? The shack-dwellers of Kennedy Road and other Abahlali baseMjondolo communities do, but were denied their right to march to City Hall in February 2006, though Sutcliffe's ban was overturned by a judge after the march was due to start. Informal traders were arrested in their hundreds and subjected to police brutality in June 2007. Last year, too, a variety of activists were denied the right to protest in the centre of town after the police overreacted. Between June and October, the DA and IFP protested against street name changes (27 000 citizens' applications to reconsider the new names were dismissed with no reasons given), the ANC attacked the National Prosecuting Authority, and trade unionists protested against municipal labour practices. On two occasions, eThekwini threatened to prohibit all downtown marches "to ensure no disruption to business and trading takes place". A Mercury report in October said: "Heavily armed riot police, snipers on rooftops and police helicopters combined to prevent former Remant Alton bus drivers and Durban Solid Waste workers from marching." Durban's Zimbabwean refugee community had tried to hold four anti-Mugabe protests last year, said Shepherd Zvavanhu, a local Movement for Democratic Change organiser, but to no avail. "They always turned us down, for no good reason," he said. Dissent Denial of rights is not limited to the central business district. South Durban Community Environmental Alliance members were harassed twice last year after they notified the police about demonstrations against Engen for regular explosions and against Transnet for its pipeline proposal. Last April, the day before a march against Engen, the alliance had the high court interdict the municipality to reverse its ban, so the protest went ahead with no problems. Typical police practice is to wait until the day before the protest, before ruling on its legality and then issuing a permit which, in any case, is not required by law.