The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign is a non-racial popular movement made up of poor and oppressed communities in Cape Town, South Africa. It was formed in November 2000 with the aim of fighting evictions, water cut-offs and poor health services, obtaining free electricity, securing decent housing, and opposing police brutality.
The movement is the oldest of the first generation of so-called 'new social movements' to spring up after the end of apartheid and is known for its direct action style militancy, its refusal of all forms of vanguardism, including NGO (Non-Governmental Organisations) authoritarianism. The movement has sought to retain its autonomy from NGOs and publicly refused to work with some local NGOs and insists that the middle class left respect the autonomy of grassroots movements.
The AEC is a founding member of the Poor People's Alliance and, along with the other members of the alliance, refuses all electoral politics and encourages the development of popular power rather than voting for political parties.
The AEC was able to successfully mobilise against the 2008 xenophobic attacks in the areas where it is strong.
The AEC opposed evictions related to the FIFA 2010 World Cup.
Read more about Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign: Communities, Coordinators, Activities, Campaigns, Poor People's Alliance, Influence, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words western, cape and/or campaign:
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away, and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Now, Mr. President, we don’t intend to trouble you during the campaign but after you are elected, then look out for us!”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)