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.


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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Day 9:Earthworks

Today was a great success. Thanks to the generous donation of Sanyati Construction of a bobcat and a roller, for the day, the difficult and time consuming tasks of compacting earth and levelling were completed quickly. The project is beginning to take shape and the slab is ready to be cast tomorrow morning.

The first task of the day, was propping up the steel structure so that it was level with the foundation walls.The brittle existing slab which initially was meant just to be chipped, was instead broken up into small pieces, and reused as a substrate.

The bobcat moved soil into the foundation walls, where after it was levelled by hand with spades and rakes, and compacted by the roller.

Walter, the roller operator his colleagues and the community helped us set out the pegs for the paving excavation, grading and compacting it,so that stormwater does not dam in the centre.



The post boxes were moved to their final positions made level, and supported by concrete lintels.All that is left to complete is to treat the soil, so that grass does not grow, but otherwise the site is ready for the next step tomorrow morning