SOUTH AFRICA – The delegation of the Youth of Kurdistan is getting to it’s final days of works in South Africa as they meet many organizations and parties in the country to talk about the importance of the paradigm of the Revolution in Kurdistan, the freedom of Abdullah Ocalan and the importance to fight a united struggle against the Capitalist Modernity and it’s oppressive states. During the ongoing works, the delegation witnessed an illegal eviction by the private companies working for landlords, one big problem of the reality in South Africa.
The delegation also recorded the case:
The report can be read as it follows:
During the South Africa delegation, the Youth of Kurdistan put a special focus on getting to know local organizations and communities that are fighting for better living conditions and alternative forms of coexistence.
In this context, the delegation members visited the township “Orange Farm” in Johannesburg. Here, about 500,000 people live under difficult conditions in improvised corrugated iron huts, often without work, electricity or water.Most of these townships are considered informal settlements, which means that the residents have no official permission for their dwellings, but are also offered no alternative by the state. This fact is used by the government to criminalize the settlements, to demolish them arbitrarily in order to sell the land profitably and to build on it. During the visit to Orange Farm, the delegation witnessed such a brutal eviction by the private security service “Red Ants”, working on behalf of the government.
Without giving the residents time to secure their belongings and with the help of an illegal eviction order, they used bulldozers and heavy equipment for days to destroy the huts and gardens of hundreds of families.
After the violent eviction, the “Red Ants” came back one more time when the evicted residents described to the Kurdish delegation the methods of state repression they had experienced. Under the pretext of trespassing on private property, they tried to intimidate and evict those present, but after a short time they had to leave without having achieved anything. Tense and full of anger at the security forces, the township residents then discussed ways to counter this inhumane eviction policy.
They interviewed people of the Orange Farm, as they shared their reality:
