This petition is hereby to bring to your attention as the community to intervene and assist on protecting our rights to housing as it is stated on constitution of our RSA Constitution on section 26 and also on freedom charter and as well as our frustration and dissatisfaction with the City of Joburg,Madulammoho,Absa.K206 and Ekurhuleni municipality and Gauteng Province Premier as well as MEC of human settlement and Minister of human settlement to stop eviction, to give ownership to the tenants, to allow us to pay only levies, to change the social housing policy system as is to date.

We as the residents of the above mentioned city’s social housing tenants led by the joint social hosing scheme tenants committees we had several engagements with the with above mentioned and the several accredited social housing representatives i.e Joshco, Madulamoho,K206,Ekurhuleni and ABSA to discuss some most stressing situation that the tenants in the social housing schemes are facing namely the serious threat of being homeless due to financial challenges as result of unemployment and retrenchments because of badly performing South African economy and request to be given ownership of the respective units that we have been renting endlessly under the banner of social housing scheme.

Because of the above we engaged the City of Johannesburg,City of Ekurhuleni,Madulamoho,Absa,K206 and Premier’s office as well as delegation from the office of MEC of housing to:

1. Stop immediately threatening residents with evictions letters that are practically voters and residents of the city and the province;

2. Handover the ownership of the flats to the residents, in order to give them dignity to the people;

3. CoJ,City of Ekurhuleni,MEC of housing and Gauteng Premier to immediately facilitate a Social Housing Indaba to review and restructure the social housing scheme in Gauteng as the current model is not designed to serve the issue of South African housing backlog but it is profit driven;

4.To investigate the social housing scheme employees and SHRA CEO;

5.To Pay low rental increase(Levies).

In other meetings with Joscho it came out clearly that as Joscho themselves indicated that they are an entity COJ and therefore their mandate is coming from political head of COJ and that they cannot agree on the demands of the tenants without been given a directive by COJ.

This response from Joscho led to the march that was held on 01 March 2019 to handover a memorandum (copy attached) to the office of CoJ's Mayor (Mr. Herman Mashaba) and CoJ's Speaker's Office (Da Gama) and CoJ's MMC for housing (Van Wyk). It is sad to inform you that even today we have not received any reply from the COJ and instead:

1. The MMC for housing, Mr Van Wyk went to SABC Radio to undermine us and arrogantly stating that the tenants at COJ Social Housing will never get ownership and they will rent for the rest of their life and failure to pay rent will lead to in human evictions family or no family;

2. Even though our memorandum was never directed and handed over to Joshco,as all the so called accredited social housing provider refused to be part of the receiving party of the memorandum and still decided to respond to it. We therefore rejected and do not recognise the Joshco's, Madulamoho and ABSA opportunistic response;

3. Joscho has intensified the issuing of eviction letters to the tenants and we are assume that they are declaring their intentions of defying any means of getting to an amicable solution to the matter and blatantly refuting our basic human right to shelter in this human rights month and on the eve of elections. Therefore as united social housing tenants in the whole of Gauteng and voters in all Social Housing Schemes are ready to directly confront CoJ and Joscho in any way.

And also the ignorance and arrogance of the above mentioned COJ officials led to the march that was held on 12 April 2019 to handover a memorandum (copy attached) to the office of Premier David Makhura and MEC of housing Uhuru Moiloa.It is sad to inform you that even today we have not received any reply from the Gauteng Province premier and instead:

1. They promised to do a moratorium of no eviction and up until today,nothing yet.

2. They promised us to convene a social housing indaba summit to restructure social housing scheme.

3. Even though our memorandum was never directed and handed over to Joshco,as all the so called accredited social housing provider refused to be part of the receiving party of the memorandum and still decided to respond to it. We therefore rejected and do not recognise the Joshco's, Madulamoho and ABSA opportunistic response;

4. Joscho,Ekurhuleni social housing company,Absa and Madulamoho has intensified issuing of eviction letters,letter of demands and summon to appear at court to get a grant/permission to evict the tenants the tenants and we are assume that they are declaring their intentions of defying any means of getting to an amicable solution to the matter and blatantly refuting our basic human right to shelter in the freedom charter point number and also in our democratic constitution on section 26 . Therefore as united social housing tenants in the whole of Gauteng Province municipalities, we request human rights commission to intervene to protect the rights of the poor people and investigate all social housing scheme.

We therefore urgently request for your intervention as people are abused daily and living with fear in their own country of birth because now housing is nolonger a right but now it is business.