Monday, October 31, 2005

$9.2 million is enough to kill for

Orlando José Rodrigues, known as Soul, who was appointed to be Bem-Te-Vi's successor as chief of trafficking in Rocinha, lasted two days on the job before he was bumped off by two of his erstwhile colleagues, according to the latest news reports.

Here's why gang members are killing each other to get to the top: sales of cocaine in Rocinha bring in R$400,000 a week, the daily newspaper O Dia reports. At the current exchange rate, that's an annual turnover of $9.2 million.

Here are the details of Soul's assassination, in Portuguese:

Sucessor de Bem-Te-Vi é assassinado na Rocinha

Agência Estado

Líderes comunitários da Rocinha informaram hoje à Polícia que o traficante Orlando José Rodrigues, o Soul, apontado como sucessor, na chefia do tráfico de drogas na favela, de Erismar Rodrigues Moreira, o Bem-Te-Vi, morto por policiais na madrugada de sábado, foi assassinado com outros quatro comparsas.

A ação, que integrantes da comunidade, em tom irônico, estão chamando de "golpe de Estado", teria sido comandada pelos bandidos conhecidos como Nem e Joca, que eram do bando de Soul e agora seriam os chefes do tráfico local.

A situação na Rocinha é de tranqüilidade, mas o ambiente ainda é de tensão. A Polícia ainda não subiu o morro para tentar localizar os corpos. Policiais do 23º BPM reforçam o patrulhamento dos acessos.

It takes getting used to

Here's something that people in Rocinha, and many of the other favelas of Brazil, have to get used to: kids with guns. These kids (photos provided by an anonymous favela resident) have handguns, but I saw many with assault weapons in my time in the favela.


So far as I know, there are only a handful of favelas in Rio de Janeiro that are not strongholds of the drug trade. Some escape because they are small and out of the way in the jungle. And one large favela, Rio das Pedras, has its own vigilante posse that is as well armed as the dealers and metes out justice with as much brutality. The word is, if you get caught dealing drugs (or doing other anti-social activities) in Rio das Pedras, the posse will kill you. Quite a deterrent.

To be fair, the drug gangs lodged themselves in the favelas because the government refused to provide services. With no cops to interfere with their activities, the dealers became entrenched. They are also communitarian and invest in good things for the residents, including recreational space for kids, child care facilities, and parties. They also help resolve community disputes. One dealer, the former chief of trafficking in favela Dona Marta, above the legal neighborhood of Botafogo, claimed that he was only seeking to raise enough money to create an alternate government in the favela to run things more democratically and securely for the residents. Of course, he continued dealing, was later arrested, and died in jail, I believe.

Also to be fair: the residents of the favelas find the dealers infinitely preferable to the cops. The cops are corrupt. They harass the residents. They believe they have the right to burst into people's houses and trample their freedoms in ways they never would in the legal world. The second day I was in Rocinha, my friend Paul and I were accosted by the cops as we left the favela. We spent 15 or 20 minutes with guns pressed into our stomachs until Paul convinced the cops we were not traffickers or buyers. Rocinha residents go through this kind of harassment with much more regularity.

It also appears that as much as the cops fight the dealers, the drug gangs have connections to the highest echelons of society. A police officer I know, who I will call Jorge, told me that when raided the favelas, he often found caches of brand new weapons that seem to have come straight from the military. He suggested that the real chieftains of drug trafficking in Brazil were well-regarded military and political leaders of the country.

Finally, remember this: that as compelling as these images and stories are, the vast majority of favela residents are good people who are trying to provide for their families. It has been estimated that just one percent of the people who live in the favelas are involved in the drug trade.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Death of a Drug Dealer



Bem-Te-Vi (real name Erismar Rodrigues Moreira), the chief of trafficking in Rocinha, was killed by the police on Saturday. He was shot four times at the end of an hour-long shootout in the Rocinha neighborhood called Valão. Four other favela residents, including three innocent bystanders who just happened to be in the area and had no connection to the drug kingpin, were wounded in the melee.

The person who sent me the news had an interesting reaction to the shooting. "This guy was a very bad guy," he wrote, but added that he is angry at the police for storming the favela and wounding innocents: "I do not like trafickers, but as usual, people who are not bad get injured or killed. I love Rocinha and hate the police."

The photos here, taken by a different Rocinha resident, show the tension in Rocinha. Note the kid in the second photo, walking down the beco (or pathway), seemingly oblivious to the heavily armed masked policeman staked out just around the corner.

***
Bem-Te-Vi foi morto com 4 tiros

Agência Estado

Chefe do tráfico na Rocinha, o bandido mais procurado
do Rio, Erismar Rodrigues Moreira, o Bem-Te-Vi, de 29
anos, foi morto na madrugada de hoje, dentro da
favela, na zona sul, em uma troca de tiros com a
polícia. Conhecido pela vaidade, que o levou a ter
armas, cordões e pulseiras banhadas a ouro, e pelos
contatos com jogadores de futebol, ele foi baleado
durante a operação Cavalo de Tróia. Três moradores
também foram atingidos, e uma quarta pessoa, que,
segundo a polícia, é integrante da quadrilha do
traficante, morreu.

Bem-Te-Vi resistiu à prisão e foi morto às 3h, após
uma hora de confronto, acossado nas proximidades do
valão do Largo do Boiadeiro, na parte baixa da favela,
informou a polícia. Ele estava acompanhado por seis
traficantes armados de fuzil. Os criminosos usaram
granadas contra 10 policiais da 25ª DP (Engenho de
Dentro), que estavam na linha de frente da operação.

Na reação, quatro tiros foram dados no bandido - um na
cabeça, dois no abdômen e outro entre o tornozelo e o
pé - que tinha ainda vários ferimentos na parte
direita do abdômen. De acordo com o Instituto
Médico-Legal (IML), a pistola Glock 9mm dourada, que
estava na cintura do bandido, foi alvejada, e o
gatilho acabou entrando no abdômen. Além da arma, ele
trazia um bracelete de ouro.

Durante o tiroteio, o túnel Zuzu Angel, que liga a
zona sul à Barra, na zona oeste, permaneceu fechado e
às escuras, assustando motoristas. Moradores da
comunidade também viveram momentos de muita tensão. O
coordenador da operação, delegado Luiz Antonio
Ferreira, da 25ª DP, contou que nunca viu tantos
disparos na vida. Acionado para retirar o traficante e
os policias da favela, o carro blindado da
Coordenadoria de Operações e Recursos Especiais (Core)
levou 40 minutos para sair do local, devido à intensa
troca de tiros.

***

Here is an Estadao article, in Portuguese, about his burial. The article notes that residents expect more violence in the favela.

warning: if you don't want to look at a disturbing image, of Bem-Te-Vi's body being unceremoniously hauled out of the favela by the cops, don't read on.



Saturday, October 29, 2005

Many Indian politicians are squatters

Amazing but true: some of India's toniest politicians and stars are squatters, according to this article from gulfnews. The list of illegal occupants include Bihar Governor Buta Singh, Communist Party (Marxist) leader Harkishen Singh Surjeet, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, artist Jatin Das, Kathak dancer Birju Maharaj, Bharatnatyam exponent Leela Samson and Kuchipudi dancers Raja and Radha Reddy. They all seem to be occupying government-owned houses that are far beyond what they are entitled to under law. Left and right are implicated in the scandal--and although it is the sad norm in India, it is a scandal. By what right do politicians push out the poor, while preserving their own illegal percs.

70 favelas at risk in Rio

Vila Alice, a small favela nestled in the hills above middle class Larangeiras is now at risk of eviction after a 12-year-long fight over land rights with a nearby highrise development, The Guardian reports.

"Fourteen shantytowns, the majority in upper-class boroughs such as Gávea and Jardim Botânico, were recently earmarked for removal by Rio's public prosecutor, while there has been a recent jump in the number of legal battles" over favelas, the newspaper reports. The official reasons for the evictions vary from ownership disputes to attempts to protect the environment and concerns over the safety of those living in the hilltop favelas. But for those fighting removal, the motivation is simple. "It isn't about land or trees or anything like that. They don't want the poor close to them," said Sebastião Machado, 47, a community activist and odd-job man involved in the battle for Vila Alice."

Indeed, if we're talking environmental concerns, the wealthy mansions of Larangeiras are just as destructive of the environment as the small but cozy homes of the poor. And if the risk of landslide is the issue, only the homes directly impacted by this should be relocated.

Several politicians in favor of eviction want the favelados moved further out of town. But favela dwellers and their allies dismiss this as pushing the problem away.

"People are confusing the issue of violence and the issue of favelas. The middle class are scared of the violence but it's not removal that will solve this. In the past ... removal has only helped change the address of this problem," Ricardo Gouvêa, an architect and human rights campaigner from the Bento Rubião Foundation told the Guardian. He cited the example of the Catacumba favela, whose expelled residents went on to form the Complexo da Maré, a sprawling slum near Rio's airport often referred to as the "Gaza Strip" because of its high death rate. "In the 1960s more than 100,000 families were brutally removed and this didn't solve the problem," he said.

The battle over Vila Alice culminates Nov. 8th and is extremely important. José Nerson de Oliveira, vice-president of the Federation of Favelas in Rio de Janeiro, told the Guardian that as many as 70 communities could be at risk.

Vila Alice occupies a chunk of land owned by the nearby highrise. Does anyone believe that this is anything but a real estate grab? And won't Brazil's recently enacted City Statute protect the residents?

How many times do we have to say it: eviction is not the answer, no matter how much political and legal swat rich people can muster. It's time for a dialogue between communities, designed to ensure that they can live together, and share the space in the city.

Another thought on evictions

Here's something for the United Nations to think about: how to penalize nations that allow squatter communities to be evicted. There will be no let-up in drives against squatters if municipalities and countries don't face dire consequences. The well-meaning world body does all sorts of after-the-fact reports detailing the human suffering and misery that comes with eviction and demolition. For once let's try getting out in front of this issue and preventing evictions rather than simply cataloguing them.

Friday, October 28, 2005


To go along with jj's photo, here's one of mine, of the tufts of rebar that energize the built forms of Rocinha. It's not widely known, but there's a vast commercial marketplace in most squatter communities. The sign at left, cut off in the photo, is advertising a kitchenette apartment for rent. And, of course, there's always coca cola in the favela.

City of water tanks


This photo, taken by jj, a correspondent who was born and raised in Rocinha, shows a forest of caixas d'agua--water tanks--on the rooftops of Rocinha. Jj is 19, and is studying English and teaching ju jitsu in the favela. He likes Rocinha, and says that he once tried to live in the ritzy Barra da Tijuca, but found that people there were not friendly once they found out he was from Rocinha.

Of Rocinha's reputation as a dangerous place, he says: "I think we have 300,000 people and maybe only 200 are they very bad ones....We in Rocinha make very little money. We do not buy the drugs." The drug dealers, he says, cater to middle class/rich people. If these outsiders stopped buying, the traffickers would be out of work.

He also notes something that I have written about: that the drug dealers invest in the community. The police are much more disruptive, and do not distinguish between law abiding residents and dealers. "We favelados do not like the police. They come in shooting everybody and innocents get killed. The traficantes, we understand, are doing bad things, but not to us."

Thanks, jj. Please keep us posted on daily life in Rocinha.

Business Development for Cairo's squatters

A project training women in Cairo's squatter areas so they can get jobs claims impressive results, the Mail & Guardian Online reports.

Did Squatters spike the cars?

After the demolition of five squatter shanties not far from Talisay City in the Philippines, nails were strewn across a local highway, disabling 15 cars, The Freeman reports. The newspaper doesn't know if it's the work of disgruntled squatters.

Tomb Raiders

A small squatter encampment is threatening a World Heritage Site in Peru, Reuters reports. A few dozen squatter families have erected wood and straw huts on the edge of the Nazca lines, a little-known but vast area 400 km south of Lima. where enigmatic shapes and lines, stylised figures of birds and animals were etched in the desert 2000 years ago.

"Look around: ... it's full of excrement, rubbish, (old) signs of looting," said Maximiliano Tenorio, one of the new squatters.

Though the new settlement is far from the best of the Nazca drawings, archeologists fear that squatter homes will spread unless people are evicted.

If the government wants to protect the Nazca lines (which have periodically been chopped up by legal development and destroyed by tomb raiders), it will have to negotiate with the squatters to provide land and infrastructure elsewhere. As in Turkey and Brazil, when governments negotiate in good faith, the squatters themselves police their boundaries and prevent further encroachments on ecologically or culturally sensitive parcels.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Where are the hooligans when you need them

Squatters in Jo-burg will likely be evicted in a plan to clean up downtown in time for the 2010 Football World Cup, Reuters reports, via the Pakistani paper DAWN.

"City officials hope that by the time the world's gaze rests on Johannesburg for the 2010 World Cup, squats will have been replaced by upmarket loft apartments, smart delis and trendy boutiques."

Call it the globalization of desire. Even under ANC rule.

Hire squatters to build new housing

Here's a plan so sensible it's amazing no one's thought of it before: One South African municipality plans to hire squatters who are being evicted to build their new homes in a new township, News24 reports.

Beyond the Upscale

While squatters in the developed world used to be people with means who were making a political and alternative statement, The Guardian reports that this is changing. Now, squatters in the UK and elsewhere are from other countries, economic refugees, priced out of the housing market in the increasingly pricey cities of the west.

High Court Orders Squatter Eviction in Delhi

A Delhi Court has ruled that the city must remove squatters from public lands, expressIndia reports. Of course, the judges didn't express any worry about where the squatters will go. It's the old cliche: out of sight, out of mind. Pitiful.

The judges seem to blame the squatters for the mess. If it's true, as they wrote, that "this kind of encroachment develops into a nexus between various wings of authority as these illegal encroachers are allowed to stay in permanent poverty only as they serve as vote-banks,’’ then the solution is to prosecute politicians for corruption, not to blame the squatters, who are simply doing what they have to do to get shelter.

Baghdad Squatters: No homeland in their own land

Here's what democracy has meant for many Iraqis: evictions and rising rents. This Washington Post article describes the problem: "After the [U.S.] invasion, landlords across Iraq seized the opportunity to increase rents and force out people who could not pay. Within weeks, thousands of suddenly homeless families had started looking for abandoned buildings."

The government has vowed to give these squatters the boot, but has delayed implementation of the rule until after elections in December. "Once the government becomes strong, these squatters will be forced out," Mohammed Hareeri, spokesman for the Housing and Reconstruction Ministry, told the Post.

As Sajida Abboud, an elementary school teacher who has been squatting in a former government building for the past 2 1/2 years, said: "We are really lost. We need a homeland. We are without a homeland."

Without a homeland in their own land. What could be more eloquent.

[thanks to Annia for the article link]

Monday, October 24, 2005

No gun ban in Brazil

Despite 36,000 shooting deaths last year, Brazil's voters have strongly rejected a proposed ban on guns Reuters reports. All areas of the country voted against the ban. Here's the vote breakdown by region (note: in the upside-down world of referendums, a yes vote was a vote against guns, and a no vote was a vote to keep them.)

Commentators have explained the vote by suggesting that Brazilians didn't trust the authorities to be able to disarm entreched mafias and drug gangs, and believed that a gun ban would leave them more exposed to violence. Indeed, one of the shortcomings of the proposal was that it would not have covered guns purchased before the ban went into effect, which in a way would have legitimized the vast cache of arms held by clandestine drug gangs.

The ban would have halted sales of guns and ammunition to the public. But since drug gangs often get their weapons through illegal conduits, including ties to the military, the ban probably wouldn't have affected their ability to get assault rifles and other heavy arms.

Brazil second in the world behind Venezuela in per capita gun deaths, with 22 for every 100,000 people.

So the spiraling violence will continue: indeed, on Saturday night, a young girl in Rio de Janeiro's favela Morro do Dende was wounded by a stray bullet as police clashed with drug traffickers.

Looking Backward for a Way Forward in New Orleans

Almost unknown in the U.S., the ancient Roman legal concept of usufruct might help save New Orleans, The Los Angeles Times reports.

"You are not going to rebuild New Orleans unless you are able to get government access to private property," Mtumishi St. Julien, a longtime community advocate and housing advisor to Mayor C. Ray Nagin, told the paper. "If government does not solve that problem, everything else is just talk. It is foolish to believe otherwise."

As this backgrounder discusses, usufruct involves the ability to use, invest in and profit from property belonging to another. The holder of a usufruct right must return the property to the owner in at least as good condition as it was initially. And the usufruct right can be used to get a mortgage. A potential drawback: the usufruct right can also be bought and sold.

Still, this is a novel way of thinking about rebuilding the city, and would give the New Orleans government some important control over the future of the city. The key question: how to involve the current owners and, most importantly, the mass of city people who had no ownership right whatsoever. Tenants have a stake in the city, too, and must be involved in all decisions involving neighborhoods.

Memo to community organizations active in New Orleans: now's the time to speak up and organize for real.

note: without the University of Pittsburgh's Jurist clippings service, I probably wouldn't have found this story.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Squatter Activism in Switzerland

Squatters in Rhino, a squatter-led building in Geneva, are vowing to defy a judge's eviction order, the swissinfo news service reports. The squatters argue that eviction would be inhumane because it would put 60 adults and ten kids into the street during the winter.

I visited Rhino when I was in Switzerland back in April and it was an incredibly organized and communal and exciting building. the squatters have occupied it for almost two decades, and if they are pushed out, it would surely be transformed into luxury housing.

Seems like a no-brainer: there's no good reason to evict the squatttes.

Anti-property.... a good idea

Check out this BBC article on a great new strategy to create housing and avoid abandonment being premiered in Britain: Britain's Deputy Prime Minister's office has floated a plan that would enable local authorities to move families into buildings that have stood vacant for a year and to hold them for more than seven years before returning them to their owners. See also this story from: The Mirror.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Burn out the squatters!!

That's what former residents of District 6 in Cape Town are threatening to do now that the South African government has relocated 30 families to a plot in the area, the Cape Times reports. District 6 has a grand and notable history. It was one of the few multi-ethnic and multi-racial areas in the country (see history here) and faced years of sporadic forced removals. But things accelerated after the passage of the Group Areas Act, which made it illegal for people of different races to live in the same neighborhood. In 1966, the apartheid government declared District 6 a 'whites only' area. Between 1966 and 1980 60,000 people were forcibly removed from the district and their houses and shops bulldozed to the ground. Today, many of the original residents and their descendants, have petitioned to get their homes back, and they are worried that the squatters will now gain a competing claim to the land. Seems like there's got to be room for both in a renewed District Six. After all, isn't that what the spirit of the neighborhood was all about.

Monday, October 17, 2005

A Paris Bidonville

From BBC NEWS, a photo essay on a tent city established by African immigrants who were evicted from various squatted buildings in Paris. With winter approaching, the families have now accepted temporary housing in a short-stay facility where each family only has 120 square feet.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

A New Book on Caracas

It's rare to find architects who are willing to listen to and learn from squatter communities. Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, two of the driving forces behind the Caracas Think Tank in Caracas, Venezuela, have spent the past six months working with squatters in the Venezuelan capital. Now they have joined with German journalist Kristin Feireiss to bring out informal city: caracas case (Prestel Art Books.)

For planners this is an important text. As Brillembourg and Klumpner write: "If one looks at the barrios at a distance--in person or in an aerial photograph--one sees sprawling, rhizome-like shapes; one searches in vain for an ordering principle." But, they assert, we can learn from the informal city. "Informal does not mean 'lacking form'. It implies, for us, something that arises from within itself and its makers, whose form has not yet been recognized, or is unfinished, but which is subject to rules and procedures potentially as specific and necessary as those that have governed official, formal city-making."

It's expensive ($60) and largely academic in tone, but informal city is enlivened with lots of photos and it makes the right argument: that squatters have made a valuable contribution to urbanism in the 21st century.

Indian architect works with squatters

Pratima Joshi runs Shelter, an NGO in Pune, India, which encourages squatters to organize. The result: they think for themselves. "Some slums wanted sanitation, others wanted water. If they were by the river bed or in difficult terrain, they opted for housing," says Joshi, an architect by training. BBC NEWS has more details.

London Squatter Gets Security

Harry Hallowes, who for 19 years has been living on London's Hampstead Heath, now has security of tenure. In a deal between a property development company and the Camden Council, Hallowes will be allowed to remain on the heath in hsi cozy 12ft by 8ft shack, plus a 90ft by 90ft back garden.
The Independent reports that the deal will also save a portion of the development site as a nature reserve.

The Japanese Get It

Yukitoshi Nagashima, a Japanese architecture student, decided to do his thesis on the architecture of the homeless. He discovered a whole world of nuance in their crude encampmants. He has now published a book: "Danboru House" (Cardboard box houses), put out last month by Poplar Publishing. And his years among the homeless resulted in a personal life change too: he's become a newspaper reporter. Asahi Shimbun reports.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Squatter Demolitions in Sudan

The government of Khartoum embarks on regular "replanning operations" to drive squatters and refugees from the war-torn southern region out of the capital. Last December, police destroyed a squatter encampment close to the city and relocated 12,000 people to a desolate desert 55 km out of town. In August, after some families moved back, police again destroyed their homes. "This is the sixth time that my house has been destroyed since the late nineties," a woman who declined to be named told IRIN News. "I lost everything apart from some clothes." Estimates are that in the past two years, 300,000 people have been forced out of Khartoum through these violent evictions.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

A Law Professor Endorses Squatters Rights

Bernadette Atuahene, Assistant Professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, thinks squatters have rights. She outlines her thoughts in this brief article in the South Africa newspaper Business Day.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Favela Rising

Afro-Reggae, a wonderful grassroots movement straight from Rio's tough Zona Norte favelas, uses music & dance to build social transformation. The group was profiled in a recent documentary, 'Favela Rising,' which won the best new documentary filmmaker prize at this year's Tribeca Film Festival. Now, The Hollywood Reporter has announced, the film has a U.S. distribution contract, too. So it should be in theaters next year, courtesy of ThinkFilm and HBO/Cinemax. Check it out when it comes to your town.

Well, the Right Certainly Won't Do It...

...so the left has to: take up the issue of forced eviction of squatters with Sonia Gandhi, head of India's ruling Congress Party. The Statesman offers a short report.

Food For Junk, Food for Thought

AP via The Seattle Times: Hugo Chavez has figured out a way to interact with Venezuela's squatters--offer them food in return for garbage. Of course, it's political influence peddling at its most naked. But it's also not a bad deal. Who could complain if politicos in Kenya did this in their campaign fight over the proposed new constitution, which seems likely to fracture the already fractious governing coalition (see this article from the East African Standard.)

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Brainstorm - How Shantytowns Become Real Cities - FORTUNE

Here's my latest piece on squatters, from Fortune Magazine, pointing out the energy and entrepreneurial spirit in the world's shantytowns. Check out the print version for a bunch of my photos of the communities I lived in.

Scoop: UN declares evictions are not the answer

Well, now the UN has said it: Evictions are not the answer to the growth of squatter communities and shantytowns. "Evictions and demolitions are not the answer to the challenges of rapid urbanization," Secretary General Kofi Annan said. "We must have pro-poor, participatory urban development in which women and men are empowered to manage their communities."

Amen. Now do it!

Zim blitz 'pre-emptive'

A government-controlled newspaper in Zimbabwe has printed an article admitting that the massive drive against squatters over the summer was politically motivated. The Zimbabwe Herald ran an article from the October issue of New African magazine, asserting that the entire anti-squatter "operation was the brainchild of Zimbabwe's intelligence community," which feared that the squatters and illegal merchants were about to engage in a Ukraine-style mass demonstration against Zimbabwen President Robert Mugabe. The article also asserted that officials have admitted that some of the items in a highly critical UN report on the demolitions were justified, and that security forces were excessively brutal. The Herald also reports that illegal vendors have begun to return to the cities, and that police have arrested more than 14,000 people over the past two weeks.

Sounds Big, But Is It?

The East African Standard reports that the Kenyan government will spend "a whopping Sh880 billion [approximately $11 billion] to upgrade all slums and informal settlements in the country." This could be a great thing, if done right. But financing and exact plans for improving the shantytowns and squatter areas are sketchy. A long-planned effort to upgrade a tiny sliver of Kibera has taken three years already and no housing has yet been built. It's still unclear who will live in the new buildings, who will own the new housing, and whether everyone in the affected community, called Soweto Village, will gain. That doesn't bode well for the proposal.

Also, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki faces a political crisis over his planned new consititution (his proposal would enable him to continue to hold tremendous centralized power) and one of his most powerful allies, Roads Minister Raila Odinga, who represents Kibera in Parliament, has announced that he will run against Kibaki in the next Presidential contest. So this could just be a political promise, with no real weight behind it.

But we can hope it's real, and done right, with democratic participation and decision-making by the squatters.

Africans in Paris left on the street

Reuters, via the Pakistani newspaper DAWN reports that some African squatters in Paris have refused to leave the streets after being evicted from their homes following several fatal fires. But the fires were not set by the squatters and they are now left with no place to live. "We are the ones who get up in the mornings to work in buildings," one squatter told the news agency. "It's African women cleaning up the mess of politicians in their offices in the morning. And at night, we come back to our derelict homes."

In India, No Room at the Inn

Homeless? Who cares? That's the attitude of Delhi's high court in rebuffing squatters attempts to avoid the bulldozers, The Times of India reports. The squatters had argued that it was unconscionable and illegal that bulldozers arrived with no notice. But the court ruled that demolitions with no warning were the right thing, and that property rights should trump human rights: "Show us any document which gives you the right to live on that piece of land. Are you a tenant? The question is, what is your entitlement to occupy that land?" [fact check item: though I don't know the specifics of this case, I do know that most squatters in India do pay some form of ground rent to the government. So they are, in a way, tenants.]

Tanzania Shows The Way

Tanzania discloses that about 2/3 of the people living in its cities are living illegally, many of them as squatters. But Lands Minister Gideon Cheyo vowed that the country was embarking on an ambitious plan to provide security of tenure to everyone, regardless of the legality of their land holding. "We are in the process of formalisation of land [and] housing in unplanned areas," he said. "The aim of the programme is to officially recognise such property and finally create security of tenure." He told IRIN Africa that more than half the homes in Dar es Salaam have been registered. With security of tenure, people will improve their communities, over time, as they have the money. And they feel more right to organize to demand public services such as water, electricity and sewers.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Monsters of the Moment

I'm playing catch-up with some things I missed over the past few months.

1. The Guaridan's John Vidal blasted the west for demonizing Robert Mugabe. A bunch of letters blasted him back.

2. Also, a new study by James Tooley, of Newcastle University (you can download it here) purports to show that poor people in the 3rd world are increasingly chosing private schools over public schools--and criticizes the UN for pushing for universal free primary education by 2015.

Here's something from his press release: Where the “success” of free primary education (FPE) is celebrated, as in Kenya, which introduced FPE in 2003, the research shows that the reported increase in enrolment is, at best, children moving from private slum schools – forced to close – to overcrowded state schools. “That’s not a success story, it’s a disaster," adds Prof Tooley.

I visited many of the private schools in Kibera, Nairobi's largest shantytown, and many of them were little more than overcrowded warehouses for kids and big money-makers for their owners. Public education is not perfect, certainly. I was in Kibera at the time free public education was insituted, and I didn't many parents who preferred to send their kids to private schools. The biggest problem was that the public schools didn't have capacity for all the kids from Kibera. It would have been good to see the best of the 'slum schools' integrated into the public education system. But I doubt that has happened, and I'd bet many slum schools, most of which are woefully overcrowded and short of textbooks and supplies, are still profiteering off of desperate parents.