Slovo Park at a Glance

Slovo Park is situated in a politically and socially sensitive stretch of land south of Soweto. The community has been known by national government as Nancefield, by local council as Olifantsvlei and in the last five years as Slovo Park – named in honour of South Africa’s first minister of housing and former Umkhonto we Sizwe General, Joe Slovo.

The forced changing of identity reflects an on-going struggle faced by the leadership of Slovo Park to gain recognition as a legitimate settlement to access governmental support. This battle has been fought through constant shifts in governmental policy, power and promises for the community of Slovo Park. Their only tactics comprising of service delivery protest, painstaking formal requests for upgrade and currently a lawsuit against the City of Johannesburg.

Currently the community of Slovo Park with its development partners are strategizing this key social and political move.


THIS SITE SERVES AS A PORTAL FOR THE COMMUNITY OF SLOVO PARK & THE VARIOUS DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS TO SHARE THE JOURNEY OF RE-DEVELOPMENT.


NEWSFEED



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Thursday, October 14, 2010

Day 4:Site Works and Sponsorship

The morning was spent acquiring materials from Kliptown from a benevolent hardware store owner who was kind enough to give us 5 cubes of pre-mix as well as all his broken bags of cement to cast a foundation.





Using a truck from the community we transported the cement and stored it in Mapara's tavern.



For the rest of the day we continued to clean the rubbish from the site and try to level a platform beneath the postboxes well as flattening the soil above the toilets.




We had detailed discussions about how to cast the foundations and whether or not we needed brick piers in the northern wall. We came to the conclusion that we needed an engineer legally.








After a long day we went to see a flushing toilet and paving detail in one of the houses while we waited for some bricks to be delivered by a friendly helpful class mate.




We sat and watched the sunset with our backs to the southern post box and experienced the dusk activities around the postboxes. The atmosphere was definitely 'chilled', with one lady sells boerewors from a cooler box in the street while small children play in the dirt and the young guys survey the streets for pretty girls.

The view to Nancefield is bustling with people returning home from work.