UPDATE FROM SOME OF THE AFFILIATES

BLANTYRE, MALAWI – Feb 2005

“Dear Joel

Am just excited to say that we have recieved the signed MOU with city of Blantyre and well am very excited with everything and we are part of the implementing partners now of their cities without slums project they are implementing with UN Habitat.

Bye for now see you friday

Siku”

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA – Feb 2005

From a report by Bunjiwe Gwebu

Follow Up To Amaoti Enumeration

“The whole exercise enlightened the Amaoti Community and the City on the possibility of a people driven development initiative. A mass meeting (Report back meeting) was held on the 15th of February and the HPF, City Officials, Ward Councillors were present. The Community at large was enthusiastic about starting saving schemes, and building their own houses (being involved in the Peoples Housing Process) as was clearly explained by the HPF and the City.

There are 14 sections in Amaoti and each area would have its own saving scheme. (we are looking at approximately 12 saving schemes to be created, because there are 2 already)
Development in Amaoti would be done section by section (This would depend on the community’s willingness to save towards their own housing and the decisions of the Ward Councillors)
A site visit to the Piesang River project (to see houses built by the HPF)
Information dissemination by the HPF on saving schemes (a workshop to teach the Amaoti community about savings)
Exchange visits amongst saving schemes”

SAO-PAULO, BRAZIL – March 2005

“Hi Joel,

well I am glad to report you that we made some progresses these weeks:

1) About the agreement with Durban I have the ok from Santo André and Osasco. São Paulo is also very interested, Paulo talked to international relations and I talked to Housing, both are very interested. I have a meeting with the second man in Housing just to talk about the agreement I have already emailed him. Sandra was also in Osasco selecting the first areas for the enumeration and savings scheme. Santo André and Osasco are now checking the terms of the agreement, I will officialy translate for them and they set as a good timing for the signature second or third week of april.

2) Meeting with Minister of the Cities is guaranteed. As soon as you confirm with Durban I put on the schedule of the Minister and some high officials of the Ministry of the Cities.

3) Our project in São Paulo with the Cement Association for hoousing improvements is getting famous and we have invitations for Salvador, Suzano and Catanduva (small cities in São Paulo) and from the Ministry of the Cities to scale it up on a national level. On monday I have a meeting in Brasília to talk about that. (It was an iniciative from the association, not from me)

4) Sandra is working on our saving schemes in São Paulo and giving a little push. She is not sure about Veronica and Zorilda having time for the leadership. She is going to the meetings to try to identify another potential leader. Maybe Veronica and Zorilda can have another role in the NGO. It would be great if Celine could come to help Sandra with these issues....

5) I was also contacted by an important developer that I was helping (from the municipality) to implement a housing project for 1000 units in São Paulo. By that time I just put him in contact with the social movements and it worked. Now they are moving foward and asked me for help to finish this project and start new ones.

6) The Cement Association invited our NGO to assist them on a new program of self constructed houses they want to disseminate over the country. We had a meeting in Osasco and the first pilot was approved there for a very poor slum area (we don´t know exactly the size). So Sandra will start a savings scheme there too.

7) The assistance to the Ministry of the cities is doing very well. They will receive technical assistance to harmonize and improve all housing subsidies with the financial system and also implement a new urbanization program for metropolitan areas, and we should help on the design of that.

I guess that´s all for now. I let you know about the bank account.

Many greetings for everybody,
Anacláudia”

ZAMBIA – March 2005

Dear Joel,

I am just checking whether you got my email regarding Zambia. I,together with Nelson and some federation members vist Zambia in mid March to just assess the situation but we were thinking what might be useful for them would be consistent support for a while. i had therefore wanted to know what you thought of my idea to get Nelson to anchor th Zambians for most of this year while he is doing his Honours. He is great with the federation and I think he might relish the opportunity. Basically I was looking at Nelson's expenses as well as a small budget for exchanges in and out of Zambia whatever might be appropriate.

Beth

MUMBAI, INDIA – January 2005

Hi all

Jan 2005: There have been terrible demolitions in Mumbai these last 4 weeks. Its been a parallel and paradoxical event to the Tsunami and has produced the same devastation. There have been people’s tribunals, protest meetings and many angry middle class activists, Indian and international, emailing each other aggressively, and everyone asking pointed questions to SPARC and NSDF and Mahila Milan: “What are you doing about this ?”

Good question to ask on the 20th year of SPARC’s partnership with people’s organizations. All of us in SPARC who are the middle class activist wanted to do the same activities of protesting: writing articles in English newspapers, and sending emails to everyone and undergoing all the cathartic rituals that we have become familiar with. After all, our northern donors love that, and give us funding for that - especially since everyone’s funding today is rights based. Within a log frame these activities, their inputs and outputs, demonstrate good efficient behaviors in terms of compliance to the commitments for which many of us receive funds.

But a deep disgust and anger at these strategies from community leaders of federations has made us look deeper into this process and reflect on examining what constitutes a strategic and sustainable response to such horrific and yet regular behaviour by governments. Those who have been forced to live in slums, squat on lands that either belong to the state or to a private party know that if there was a location that was thoughtfully provided by the city near opportunities for work, they would have gone there. They also know that in the absence of official policies, intermediaries (informally and sometimes directly) supported by the land owners or their managers, actually undertake to subdivide land and charge the squatters. They know that these intermediaries continue to ensure that these households are perpetually in their sway - often becoming the political vote bank for the politicians who come as their patron to defend them against evictions that he may have set off in the first place.

Communities of the poor, especially women, are clear that spurts of defiance in which their youth and men participate with support from middle class activists look good on TV and in the local newspaper, but they produce angst and fear for the women and children themselves. They have to deal with the long-term wrath of the state and the police after that. Because soon after the protest is over, the external people leave, life has to go on, and the poor have to deal with this aftermath by themselves.

Much of the struggle for those of us in SPARC has been to reconcile the right to protest against injustice to creating the basis for sustainable entitlements, which the vulnerable in the city truly need to begin to build their lives. This challenge is severe in cities where poor people’s citizenship claims are denied and where the fact that they took huge risks to leave the village and explore and aspire to improve their lives and those of their children is never acknowledged in ongoing debates around the need to build development investment and around the aspirations of the poor.

We have learnt from these communities that the only way presently that the poor get housing entitlements - regardless of international covenants and national policies - is to survive the evictions and demolitions until such time that the state concedes and enacts first protective legislation and later legal entitlements. However irrational this may sound, this is the real insight - the subtext to the ongoing war of attrition between the poor and the state.


Besides, the state and city squads which undertook the demolitions, demolished the structures and and left. .NSDF observations and our study of the situation informs us that almost all those who had no place else to go rebuilt their huts either on the same place or nearby. This constituted about a third of the households that had faced demolition of their shelters. Another one third - who are actually households that have overgrown existing slum households and had bought into these new settlements - have gone to their parent dwellings until the heat of these demolitions are over. And one third of structures were those that were built for future sale by the informal slum marketers.

The federation’s suggestion for advocacy was very simple but very effective. It encouraged community leaders to go into dialogue with all ward officials to minimise the brunt of the demolitions to the extent possible. It also sent out a message that unless communities of the poor get organised, participate in a process of transformation either through NSDF or through any organisational process, no real long term solution would work. It entered into dialogue with the municipality's senior officials to suggest that the state government must acknowledge that the city slums themselves needed more space - because over half of the city was living in 18% of the space and this would need allocation of more land.

Unless an alternative is planned, there will be no way that the same slums would not come up again. And so the cycle begins - to search for a sustainable solution, demonstrating scalable strategies, defining roles and functions that ensure participation of the poor in these solutions and creating space for dialogue and negotiation between the authorities and organised poor slum communities.

Is this a rights based approach or a need based one? Will the international community that valorises and finances struggles for entitlements, and the whole range of human rights acknowledge this as part of the pantheon of human rights activism? Or will this be dubbed as reformist and welfare?

Sheela