In the back streets of Clairwood, several old homes have gone to rack and ruin or have been turned into truck and transport yards. The community is up in arms over plans to rezone the area for industrial use.
Hundreds of people packed a community hall in Durban last night to denounce City Hall plans to rezone the Clairwood residential area into an industrial zone and to demand that council officials “stop talking with forked tongues”.
Shouting “We shall not be moved! We shall not be moved!” residents cheered when community representative Roland Parsotham told city officials and consultants that people in the South Durban area were not “idiots” and did not believe the municipality’s assurances that no one would be forcibly removed to make way for the multibillion-rand dig-out harbour expansion plans.
Parsotham was speaking at the Clairwood Tamil Institute at a city-organised consultation meeting which was eventually called off after residents, many of whom arrived in buses from other parts of South Durban, shouted down the facilitator and said they would not listen to official presentations until the city laid all its planning cards on the table.
Parsotham also accused eThekwini spokesman Thabo Mofokeng of “hypocrisy” for stating that no one would be removed forcibly because of the expansion plans.
“The intention is quite clear. You will be forced to sell your homes because [living] conditions will become unbearable and more people will be killed by the trucks,” he said in reference to plans to rezone Clairwood from a residential area into a “logistics” zone for shipping containers, warehouses and truck transport.
Parsotham also presented a list of five demands, including a call for a mass meeting of all South Durban residents instead of current “divide and rule” tactics by the city.
