ORANGE FARM, 8 FEBRUARY - For the past year, Indymedia South Africa has been reporting extensively about the increasing repression against activists fighting GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution), the ANC neoliberal strategy. After being shot at by Johannesburg Mayor's security guard, 87 Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee activists were jailed for two weeks in April - the case is still pending in court. More than 200 Anti-Eviction Campaign activists across the Cape Flats have been arrested and detained since June - almost ten court cases are still pending against them. The presence of international delegates during the World Summit on Sustainable Development didn't stop the government: when the summit opened, 100 activists of the Landless Peoples' Movement were jailed for refusing to leave the site of a march, another 100 activists from the Soldiers' Forum (an Anti-Privatisation Forum affiliate) were detained for 'taking a train'. In order to market their 'home-grown' structural adjustment programme for Africa, NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development), Thabo Mbeki and his government had to hide and repress the growing dissent against the same neoliberal policies that have been tested in South Africa since 1996.

Early this morning in Orange Farm (an informal settlement of 1.5 million people South of Johannesburg), in what appears to be a politically motivated attack, 61 year-old APF and Orange Farm Water Crisis Committee (OWCC) activist Emily Nengolo, was shot dead in her home by two unknown assailants. According to family members who were present in the house at the time of the murder, two adult black males forced their way into Emily Nengolo’s house around 1am on Friday night shining flashlights into the darkened rooms. When they came upon Emily Nengolo they were reported to have said, “this is the one we are looking for”, and proceeded to shoot her twice. The two men ignored the other four people present, ran out of the house without taking anything and then disappeared into the streets of the sprawling settlement. Comrade Emily died on the spot.

Over the last year, the OWCC has been actively and effectively involved in resisting water and electricity cut-offs and evictions in their community as well as building community organisation and struggle for meaningful socio-economic development in response to the anti-people, GEAR-inspired policies being implemented by the ANC government.

Photos of Orange Farm, by imc italy: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

In another informal settlement of Johannesburg, Protea South, the Red Ants - members of Wozani Security, the private security company specialized in mass evictions which is being hired by ANC councillors to do their dirty job - have begun travelling around to intimidate the residents and to plan their attack on them. The Protea South Landless Peoples' Movement condemns "the vengeful plans of the Red Ants to begin another forced removal in our settlement after some of our members supported our comrades resisting the forced removals underway in Eikenhof."


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