an update from hangberg
May 15, 2012
May 14, 2012
the uprising of hangberg screening at national arts festival
April 25, 2012
April 19, 2012
April 2, 2012
February 11, 2012
February 10, 2012
February 7, 2012
February 6, 2012
January 24, 2012
January 23, 2012
December 22, 2011
walter fieuw on the uprising of hangberg
December 12, 2011
Helen Zille’s War: The DA’s Cape Town model and state violence
this article first published here: http://www.abahlali.org/node/8559
November 24, 2011
November 8, 2011
October 21, 2011
August 18, 2011
ICE FURNACE EYE – a song for auriel cloete in hangberg
Guns were aimed to maim…rabid rubber bullets were sprayed
No one lost their lives…But several lost their eyes
One of them is a single mother hiding, raging, drinking,
Resenting the state’s compensation: a glass eye
Her children run to granny saying…Mummy is crying
Mummy is crying again…but the tears, they only come from one eye
Mother, it’s not your fault you cannot cry your rubber bullet blues
Right now it’s not your fault you cannot see yourself reeling
See yourself drowning through the eye of the bottle
Trying to cry your rubber bullet blues
Help cry this mother back alive
The long arm of the law can kill a mother’s eye and kill her tears
But it can never violate her wisdom…There will always be children
There will always be children who inherit their mother’s resilience
Single mother with your burning ice furnace eye
Scream you rubber bullet blues
A blinding siren…A lunar flare uprising
Sapphire amplifire…screaming you rubber bullet blues
Help cry this mother back alive
Mother, blind us with your resilience
Your resilience is your children’s inheritance
That’s a mother’s wisdom
Don’t lose sight of your vision
Focus your attention…A ruthless compassion…a Sentinel for restitution
When you’re ready, will you forgive my part in this world that perpetrates blindness
And when your face petrifies your children sleeping next to you
Turn to singing…Together sing the nightmare to sleep
sing to the dark…songs from the deep
sing for those who have never seen the sea
sing for those who will not see
sing a way of living…sing a way of seeing that doesn’t need eyes
August 10, 2011
the uprising of hangberg: filmmakers’ statement
The dvd of the documentary film “EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS DURING THE UPRISING OF HANGBERG” is intended first and foremost as a means for the community of Hangberg to put across their version of the events that transpired on 21 and 22 September 2010.
The mass media, both electronic, broadcast and print, has overwhelmingly failed the people of Hangberg in putting across a balanced, objective and truthful version of events. Even worse, the print media has deliberately printed outright lies, allegations and complete fabrications (litigation against these media is in progress).
As filmmakers Dylan Valley and I felt it was important to proceed in a clearly partisan way, putting our skills in the service of the community of Hangberg, thereby giving them a platform to voice their version of events and confronting the police with documentary evidence of brutality, extreme violations of good practice, illegal and unconstitutional activity etc.
This dvd will be distributed throughout the Western Cape at community centres, libraries, NGOs, universities, schools etc, in order to heighten awareness of the considerable injustice that has been perpetrated by the City of Cape Town and its Metro Police force on the citizens of Hout Bay Hangberg. The dvd will furthermore be spread nationally and internationally, with the aim of preventing this outrageous display of state hostility towards the citizenry from being brushed under the carpet.
The world needs to know how South Africa’s police force behaves today. The world needs to hold the politicians, (Helen Zille and Councillor JP Smith) who gave the orders for this outrage to take place, accountable for their actions. Spreading this information is a democratic essential at this point in our country’s history. We cannot allow this incident to merely become another statistic in the thickly woven tapestry of South African service delivery riots.
The importance of the Hangberg Uprising is strategic. The extent of the atrocities perpetrated by the police is entirely out of kilter with the “Proudly South African” image of the country that was displayed to the world during the recently held World Cup. The mask has been lifted. Naked terror is now the order of the day. This tendency must be stopped at all costs. We hope that by spreading this dvd we will help contribute to a climate that refuses to tolerate police brutality as the “norm”.
Aryan Kaganof & Dylan Valley
July 19, 2011
a letter to khadija sharife about the uprising of hangberg
you know khadija dylan and i have been walking around in that community for more than a month now
every day
quite often i am alone there
with like a hundred thousand rand’s worth of gear, and i am very vulnerable because i am old and slow
i mean if anybody there had wanted to take me out i was the easiest target
it’s is very hilly terrain, hard to walk there, it is a maze as well, easy to get lost in
every time i go in there people are kind, friendly, decent, sweet, accommodating
people always share what they have
coffee, advice, humour – they don’t have a lot but they always share
occasionally somebody slightly inebriated sort of stands there and looks a bit confused
not once has anybody from hangberg been rude to dylan and i (except on one occasion when three clowns from the anc youth league tried to intimidate dylan – but the hangberg people immediately jumped to our defence, intriguingly the anc youth league people were not from hangberg, had probably never been there before, and we have never seen them since that press conference)
my point is that this hangberg affair is NOT about ANC-DA politics
both of those parties are equally inept at solving the hangberg crisis, both are equally self-serving and the people who suffer are the people of hangberg
the documentation we have put together does not serve a political agenda
it is an attempt to use the medium to allow the people of hangberg to tell their story
throughout the editing process we have constantly gone back and forth, screening the film to the community, getting their input, taking criticism on board, getting advice about what issues to pick up on and who to speak to
the edit is an intervention that is explicitly NOT NEUTRAL
there was a grave breach of justice in hangberg on 21 and 22 september and that breach of the law was done by the so-called law enforcement agencies themselves
poorly trained thugs beat up on people, bullied people and basically just went to town with impunity
they delivered a hiding that was totally out of kilter with the law and with the constitution
they behaved like fascist troops in a fascist state
quite frankly i am not interested in what the city and the DA have to say
i have watched countless mainstream tv media programmes that present the story “objectively” and it is simply the same old lie again and again
the much vaunted “objectivity” always means that the people of hangberg are condemned a priori for living in “illegal shacks”
well those are not “shacks”, they are homes
and that “illegality” is a term that the settler pirates have coined using legal jargon from europe that should have been radically cast aside in 1994
the law itself is illegal
and behaves as such