{"id":243171,"date":"2022-11-16T20:58:43","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T18:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/cissy-gool-house-residents-rattled-by-raid-our-dignity-is-being-stripped\/"},"modified":"2022-11-16T20:58:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T18:58:43","slug":"woodstock-residents-rattled-by-police-raid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/woodstock-residents-rattled-by-police-raid\/","title":{"rendered":"Woodstock residents rattled by police raid"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/daniel_steyn\/dscf2176_copy.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/woodstock-residents-rattled-by-police-raid.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Cissie Gool House residents meet on Monday night after a raid by police on Friday at the occupation. Photos: Daniel Steyn<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Woodstock Hospital, which activists have renamed Cissie Gool House,was raided on Friday morning and 16 people were arrested.<\/li>\n<li>Residents claim that officials were heavy-handed and searched minors without permission.<\/li>\n<li>The City of Cape Town says the building has been \u201chijacked\u201d by unlawful occupiers and the leadership of the occupation has lost control.<\/li>\n<li>The leadership accuse the City of trying to \u201ccriminalise\u201d the occupation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When Faghmeeda Ling woke at 5am on Friday morning to find that Cissie Gool House was being raided, she told everyone in her corridor to open their doors.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/woodstock-residents-rattled-by-police-raid.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>\u201cLast time the police kicked in our doors, but this time we didn\u2019t give them the satisfaction,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Cissie Gool House is the name given to the former Woodstock Hospital. The hospital, which had been closed for almost two decades, was occupied in 2017 without permission, mainly by people who had been or were facing eviction from their homes in Woodstock due to rising rental costs. The alternative for many of the residents is to live on the streets, or to move to settlements far from the City.<\/p>\n<p>The occupation is part of the Reclaim the City (RTC) movement for affordable housing, supported by activist group Ndifuna Ukwazi.<\/p>\n<p>Jameelah Davids, also a resident, told GroundUp: \u201cJP Smith [Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security] must come and engage with us instead of sending his hoodlums \u2013 and see that we\u2019re human too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The raid was carried out by City of Cape Town law enforcement, metro police, and the South African Police Service (SAPS). This is the second raid this year. A raid in February also led to some arrests.<\/p>\n<p>The City says that the raid was in response to complaints about drugs and firearms at the building.<\/p>\n<p>Karen Hendricks, leader of RTC\u2019s Woodstock Chapter, said that the raid is an attempt by the City to \u201ccriminalise\u201d the occupation and use this against them in court. Ling, who is also a leader of the occupation, told GroundUp that while drugs have been traded on the property, this is not condoned. She said there was an incident when a gun was found, but no gun has ever been fired on the property.<\/p>\n<p>According to the City, the building has been \u201chijacked\u201d by unlawful occupiers and RTC has lost control over the \u201clawless situation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Hendricks says hundreds of officers participated in the raid which lasted three hours. Everyone was searched, she says. More than 1,000 people from 328 families live at Cissie Gool House.<\/p>\n<p>Eleven immigrants were arrested for being undocumented; one for having fraudulent papers; and four people were arrested for the possession of drugs.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/daniel_steyn\/dscf2167_copy.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/woodstock-residents-rattled-by-police-raid-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Woodstock Hospital was occupied in 2017 without permission, mainly by people who had been or were facing eviction from their homes in Woodstock due to rising rental costs. The hospital had been closed for decades.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"subheading\">House meeting called<\/h2>\n<p>During a house meeting on Monday night, about 150 residents of Cissie Gool House gathered to share their experiences of the raid.<\/p>\n<p>One of the residents claimed that officials conducted cavity searches on minors. A mother said that her 15-year-old daughter was searched while in her underwear by a male police officer and that pictures were taken of her.<\/p>\n<p>Another resident, whose son works for the City, was told that \u201csomeone who works for the City doesn\u2019t belong here\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Some residents suspected that the raid was conducted to collect data, because the officials were asking questions about whether they paid rent and who they paid. Others accused fellow residents of tipping off the police about people who sell drugs.<\/p>\n<p>No one denied that drugs were found on the premises or that there are residents who sell drugs. The meeting took a resolution to stop drug trading on the property as top priority.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe social issues that exist at Cissie Gool are found everywhere in working-class communities throughout South Africa,\u201d said Hendricks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSocial challenges should not be the reason why people cannot access a roof over their heads \u2026 We want the City to refrain from this intensity in their conduct,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>At the meeting, residents agreed to enforce house rules and strengthen disciplinary processes to \u201cclean up\u201d the house.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf people are dealing drugs here, it is very bad for the future of the house,\u201d Buhle Booi, head of political organising at NU, told the residents.<\/p>\n<p>The City wants to evict the residents and develop 700 social housing units on the site. But Cissie Gool House residents are afraid that if they are moved, they will not be coming back.<\/p>\n<p>The 12 arrested immigrants appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate\u2019s Court on Monday after spending the weekend at Woodstock Police Station. All were released with a warning and are to appear in court again in February.<\/p>\n<p>William Siska, from Malawi, was one of those arrested. \u201cRaids are a part of life now,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m used to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He has lived at Cissie Gool House since 2016. He has been unemployed for two years now, doing piecemeal jobs. This was his first arrest. He says that getting the right documents to stay in South Africa will be a challenge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur dignity is being stripped,\u201d said Ling, who grew up in Woodstock. \u201cI can tell you everything about Woodstock. Now they want to throw me out of the city \u2026 Why do we have to fight to have a roof over our heads? For heaven\u2019s sake, we\u2019re not asking for mansions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/woodstock-residents-rattled-by-police-raid.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cissie Gool House residents meet on Monday night after a raid by police on Friday at the occupation. Photos: Daniel Steyn Woodstock Hospital, which activists have renamed Cissie Gool House,was raided on Friday morning and 16 people were arrested. Residents claim that officials were heavy-handed and searched minors without permission. The City of Cape Town [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":243172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-243171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/woodstock-residents-rattled-by-police-raid.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}