'We Are Totally Rejecting This Law': SA's Abahlali Movement Organizer on Reshaping How Courts Assess Eviction Cases
'We Are Totally Rejecting This Law': SA's Abahlali Movement Organizer on Reshaping How Courts Assess Eviction Cases
ℹ The Amendment to the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land (PIE) Act—that was introduced to manage growing incidents of unlawful land occupation—faces backlash from the local movement of over 180,000 shack dwellers.
"The current [PIE] act that we have sets out clearly that no one has to be evicted without being given an alternative accommodation," Mqapheli Bonono told Sputnik Africa.
The amendment bill revives the spirit of the 1951 Act that was "put in place by the apartheid regime, bringing back again the bill that was overcome by our democracy" and targets "the poor Black majority," he argued.
"We have seen kids leaving their homes, going to school, when they come back from school; there's no home; their parents and their mothers are crying in the street."
The new bill "criminalizes the whole occupation of land without resolving the land issue" and housing crisis, Bonono underlined.
Watch the video to learn more about the amendment bill and the struggle against it.
Subscribe to @sputnik_africa
