Begin forwarded message:
From: Monwabisi Dasie <[email protected]>
Date: 13 July 2011 12:59:07 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Fwd: An Open Letter to Jacob Zuma from the Unemployed
People’s Movement
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: AFRIKAH <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 12:03 PM
Subject: An Open Letter to Jacob Zuma from the Unemployed People’s
Movement
To: [email protected]
An Open Letter to Jacob Zuma from the Unemployed People’s Movement
Dear Mr. President
On the 14th of July you will be awarded the freedom of Grahamstown
by the Makana Municipality. Raglan Road, which runs up through the
township, its shacks and broken down RDP houses, will be renamed Dr.
Jacob Zuma Road. We have been told that the budget for the ceremony
will be R250 000. We know that in reality it will cost more than
this but the Municipality are refusing to give us all the
documentation that would allow us to see the real cost of this
ceremony.
The Makana Municipality is a failed Municipality. The needs of the
people are not met, corruption is rampant and authoritarianism is
worsening. Twenty thousand people remain without homes. When homes
are built they fall down in the first storm. When a wall collapses
people are given a plastic sheet to hang up. People go for months
without water. Unemployment is at 60%. Activists are arrested on
trumped up charges and given unconstitutional bail conditions that
ban them from political activity. The thugs of the ANC Youth League
close down meetings that they can’t control. A whole generation of
youth live without hope.
Your presidency is a failed presidency. Under your authority the ANC
has become, from top to bottom, very little more than a way for the
politically connected and the politically loyal to feed off the
public purse via access to the state. The state has become a site of
patronage and self enrichment and not a tool for development.
Democracy is being rapidly curtailed. The media are under serious
attack, protesters are being murdered by the police in broad
daylight and movements like Landless People’s Movement and Abahlali
baseMjondolo, as well as local structures like the Makause
Development Forum, are under open attack by the ANC with the support
of the police. There is no vision for the homeless, the unemployed
and the raped. The party is divided and an aggressive right wing
demagoguery has taken centre stage.
A failed municipality wants to give the freedom of Grahamstown to a
failed president. This is a farce. It is an insult to us. Every time
we walk down Dr. Jacob Zuma road this insult will be repeated. It is
unbelievable that liberation has ended in this fiasco. It is
unbelievable that the unemployed and the homeless will be expected
to celebrate this insult. Of course those who are looking for jobs
and tenders will be in the front dancing and singing when you are
given the freedom of Grahamstown. But when they lie in their beds at
night they will know that by doing what they need to do for
themselves and their families they are undermining the struggle of
the people – a struggle that stretches back to battle led by Makana
himself.
You will be given the key to Grahamstown while many of us do not
even have a key to a falling down, leaking and tiny RDP house. The
local politicians will herd people without water, electricity,
homes, decent education, work or a decent livelihood and the freedom
to organise independently to the streets to celebrate the award of
your freedom of this town. The unfree will be expected to celebrate
your award of the freedom of this town.
We will not be joining the celebration. If your government had
brought us decent homes, jobs and schools we would gladly welcome
you to our town. If you had brought us a deepening of democracy that
gave us the opportunity to shift to a bottom up system we would
welcome you to our town. But the reality is that there is nothing to
celebrate and we will not be exploited by our councillors as they
try to bring themselves closer to money and power while continuing
to fail the people. We will not celebrate our own oppression.
The reception for you after the ceremony will be held at the
monument to the 1820 Settlers. This monument is an insult to us. It
is there to celebrate invasion, dispossession and occupation - a
process that has left us shivering in the shacks of Grahamstown. We
have previously called for it to be used to house the shack dwellers
of Grahamstown. If you were a people's President you would not set
foot into this monument to settler colonialism in a town ringed with
shacks.
We thought seriously of organising a protest against this
celebration. We thought of covering the streets that your cavalcade
will come down with shit from our buckets. We thought of creating a
human chain across Raglan Road. But we know that that the police and
the army will be there in full force. They are already all over
town. We don't want more Andries Tatanes. Therefore we have decided
to meet you with ideas, with this open letter.
We will continue our struggle to win our own freedom – our freedom
from poverty, our freedom from political repression. We invite all
those who share our concerns about the failures of the Makana
Municipality and the failures of the Zuma regime to join us in this
struggle to turn a colonial town into a people's town in which there
is freedom from poverty, land and housing, water and electricity,
work or an income for all, decent schools and full freedom to write,
speak, and organise without fear.
The Unemployed People's Movement, Grahamstown
Ayanda Kota 078 625 6462
Xola Mali 072 299 5253
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