Download PDFIn April, community members from Midrand gathered at Johannesburg High Court to lay complaints about the forced removal of their shacks. Their case did not last more than five minutes the judge told the group that their case was not an urgent matter and that he would send their application to the Constitutional Court for them to be helped.
According to unconfirmed reports, the demolition of the shacks started during the opening week of April 2024. The affected people of Rabie Ridge have not found a way forward with their struggle.
According to one of the Rabie Ridge residents they have been living there since 2022, he was surprised when he saw the police coming to destroy their homes.
In the community, many people are unemployed leaving many without means to find alternative shelter. The government officials in attendance could not produce enough documents mandating them to take action when the community members demanded to know who sent them to destroy their homes. Instead, the officials continued with the destruction without reservation.
Many people were just standing, watching their homes being destroyed by people who didn’t care where they would sleep for the night.
The land on which the shacks stood is being claimed to belong to the government. When the demolition started the next day community members approached the local police station. They wanted to know if there was permission or order for their shacks to be taken down but were told to get their lawyers to help them to go to Johannesburg High Court. The case was not handled well but their lawyer promised them that they would try to speed up the process so that everyone would get back to their position as before the demolition.
A community member who only wanted to be called ‘JJ’, one of the people who went to Johannesburg to lay the complaint said, “These people just came out of nowhere, we were also surprised why they were acting in such [a] bad manner. They destroyed many shacks that people spent their money and time to build, was (sic) just destroyed just like that.”
Included among the people whose homes were demolished were the elderly who could not take care of themselves, according to ‘JJ’.
This article was submitted on 15 April 2024. You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Karibu! Online (www.Karibu.org.za), and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
