SACP TO LEAD A PROTEST MARCH AGAINST JOHANNESBURG HOUSING COMPANY (JHC) ON THE 27TH JULY 2013, 11H00 FROM NEWTOWN MARY-FITZGERALD SQUARE.
Following a successful Land and Housing Summit held yesterday 21 July 2013, the SACP Gauteng Province will lead a protest demonstration targeting the Johannesburg Housing Company (JHC) to demand the immediate return of the building it acquired through a liquidation process that according to court papers was riddled with alleged acts of rampant maladministration, fraud and corruption.
The building was collectively owned by the working class through a Cooperative that unfortunately fell victim to the dominant corrupt morality of monopoly capital and the capitalist system as a whole.
The SACP firmly believe that the JHC acquisition of the property through liquidation, impose on it a moral obligation and responsibility to appreciate the sensitivities and controversies around the building, and the fact that it was owned by a Cooperative that sought to provide low cost housing to the working class and poor, who in their majority are Africans and Black people.
The demonstration will also proceed to the Provincial Government and the City of Johannesburg to call for the immediate buying of the building by government at an auction price of R28 Million, and not its market value. The march will also seek to defend Cooperatives as a model for low and social housing delivery.
The demonstration will also make the following demands:
1. Government conduct an urgent land audit in Gauteng and develop clear policies to sell, buy and alienate land by organs of the state for residential, business and other use. This is critical to fighting against corrupt disposal of land belonging to the state on behalf of the working class and the ordinary people as a whole.
2. Government must defend the working class and the poor, especially vulnerable groups such as women, children, people with disabilities and the elderly against evictions to ensure that such vulnerable groups are not rendered homeless. The SACP will also work on the ground to oppose illegal and anarchist land and property invasions as our democracy provide platforms and avenues to address concerns on land and housing service delivery.
3. Review current subsidy policies to reaffirm house ownership by the working class and people as a whole protected by the state against unscrupulous predatory elements.
4. Call for the review of policy and practices where low cost houses are sold to non-deserving people who use such property for wrong reasons and or buy such houses as a short cut to acquire land on which they end up building mansions.
5. Finalise the long-outstanding problem facing the people of Lenasia whose houses were demolished in the most shocking and inhumane manner and at this point there is absolutely no progress on improving their living conditions. It is also regrettable that culprits who demolished these houses were never held accountable for their illegal acts.
Statement issued by Jacob Mamabolo SACP Gauteng Provincial Secretary, July 22 2013
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