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A Short History of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban Shack Dwellers' Movement
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Submitted by inkani on Monday, 18 September, 2006 - 13:53
The Abahlali baseMjondolo Book Collective The Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement began in Durban, South Africa, in early 2005. Although it is overwhelmingly located in and around the large port city of Durban it is, in terms of the numbers of people mobilised, the largest organisation of the militant poor in post-apartheid South Africa.
Its originary event was a road blockade organised from the Kennedy Road settlement in protest at the sale, to a local industrialist, of a piece of nearby land long promised by the local municipal councillor to shack dwellers for housing. The best way to make direct contact with Abahlali baseMjondolo is to send a letter to: Abahlali baseMjondolo Kennedy Road Informal Settlement 286 Kennedy Road Clare Estate 4138 Durban South AfricaBelow you can find a selection of some of the pamphlets, memoranda, speeches, press releases and articles that have been developed by the movement in English. It is not, at all, a comprehensive archive but does give a good enough feel for the various forms of writing that have been produced from within this rapidly developing struggle. For a small and quick to download selection of pictures go to: http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/09/11109.php
1. 'We are the Third Force' by S’bu Zikode This journalistic intervention by S’bu Zikode, the chairperson of Abahlali baseMjondolo, caused a national sensation when it was first published in November 2005 and then rapidly translated into Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu and widely republished in newspapers and popular magazines. It is quite probably the most widely republished piece of journalism in post-apartheid South Africa. The term Third Force became part of the national imagination in South Africa after it was used to describe the apartheid security agents who offered covert military support to Zulu nationalists waging a war against the ANC in last years of apartheid. It is highly pejorative, implies covert white manipulation towards evil ends and, in its contemporary avatar, assumes an absolute inability for poor black people to exercise historical agency on their own. From the road blockade that birthed this movement until now numerous, and very often contradictory variations of the Third Force argument have been deployed by the state in an increasingly neurotic and at times outrightly hysterical mode. It is an unfortunate fact that a section of the NGO/academic left, a section that chooses not to attend the meetings or to engage in serious discussions with the people it assumes a right to lead, is increasingly also resorting to the white agitator thesis to try and explain away the fact that a large movement of the militant poor is uncompromisingly asserting the right to speak for and to represent itself. It seems that everyone in the business of speaking for the poor, in the state or on the NGO/academic left, is equally disturbed by the assumption by the poor of the right to speak and act for themselves. In this article Zikode offers a startling and now classic response to claims that the Third Force is behind the mass mobilisations organised by Abahlali baseMjondolo.
2. The Road Blockade and the Birth of a Movement The police reported that there were more than 6000 'illegal' protests in 2005. The vast majority of these protests were aimed at local targets, most were organised in shack settlements and many took the form of road blockades. This tactic was used with particular effect in Cape Town and has recently been used to good effect from the Orange Farm settlement in Johannesburg. The state responded to the 2005 national outbreak of road blockades by sending in the National Intelligence Agency to find the Third Force. Much of the NGO/academic left responded by dismissing these protests, protests from which they were entirely alienated, as 'spontaneous' and continuing to obsess about which individual (with no mass constituency) made which (entirely futile) gesture of proposing what strategy for 'the left' at some or other NGO forum. Both views assume a lack of serious political thinking in the settlements from which these road blockades were being organised. Because the Kennedy Road blockade led to the emergence of a large and sustained movement it has now assumed something of a mythic character. Here are some accounts of the blockade ranging from the first eyewitness account published in a local newspaper the day after the blockade to a more careful exploration of memories of what became Abahlali's originary event. Because it has so many formal and informal spaces for collective reflection on experience thinking in Abahlali develops rapidly but this is a useful series of snapshots of how some people were thinking at and soon after the begining of this struggle. Fred Kockott's eyewitness account of the road blockade in the Sunday Tribune: A brief overview of the blockade and the events leading up to the formation of the movement from Monthly Review:
3. Begining with Local Domination After the 14 people arrested in the road blockade were released from prison a number of marches were held on local councillors. The first march was organised from Kennedy Road on Yakoob Baig and then similar marches were organised from other settlements. In each of these marches a mock funeral was held and the local councillor was symbolicly buried. The kind of 'radical' academics who like to write about the struggles of the poor without deeming it necessary to speak to the poor or to attend their meetings or take any attempt to learn their language have often considered these mobilisations a consequence of ignorance or false consciousness. They would prefer a march on the World Bank, or, at least, the president or capital or white power. But ordinary people live and work in local places and are watched and controlled by the state, via the party, in these local places. No popular radicalism is possible without first taking on the local relations of dominations that immediately restrict the possibilities for subaltern militancy. Local councillors chair the local ward committees and Branch Executive Committees of the ANC through which local and micro-local political control is exercises over an often restless populace. After seeing a pamphlet produced by the Anti-Eviction Campaign in Mandela Park, Cape Town, in which children and teenagers had written letters to the mayor and the president Abahlali decided to produce a similar pamphlet. The result is below as is a press release for the memorial service of Mhlengi Khumalo, a one year old child, taken by the fire in the Kennedy Road in October 2005. The Municipality stopped providing electricity to shack settlements a few years ago because of 'the cost'. This means that people reply on candles for light and parafin stoves for cooking. Both result in regular fires. Many people believe that the Municipality is deliberately reducing services to shack settlements to force people to accept relocation. Mhlengi was the first person to be taken by fire since the movement began and since then Abahlali has according due dignity to all deaths by fire by honouring the lives and struggles of the dead and the bereaved and up politicising the deaths that the state tries to naturalise. None of this went down well the state who fought back at the local level with ever more virulent versions of the Third Force slander and so it was decided to make all Abahlali meetings open to all. First Negotiations: IndyMedia articles on the Quarry Road March on Councillor Jayraj Bachu: The 'Hear Our Cries' Pamphlet: Press Release for the Memorial Service for Mhlengi Khumalo: Press Advisory - Come and Meet the Third Force:
Press Advisory - meet the third force.doc 28KB
4. The Battle of Foreman Road By November 2005 Abahlali were ready to take on the mayor, Obed Mlaba. A march was scheduled from the Foreman Road settlement. The City Manager, a former Marxist academic, issued a diktat illegally banning the march. After careful discussion at a mass meeting it was decided to go ahead with the march. As people left the settlement they were savagely attacked by the police. There were 45 arrests and a number of serious injuries. System Cele, a young woman from Kennedy Road who had worked on the Hear Our Cries pamphlet, had her front teeth broken. The savagery of the police attack, and a fight back with stones that kept the police from entering the settlement, became a major national and then international story featuring on Al Jazeera and resulting in a full page article in the New York Times. The police attack in Foreman Road was quickly followed by illegal evictions from the nearby Lusaka settlement. The ban on Abahlali marching or protesting outside of the settlements stayed in force until late February the following year. Abahlali Press Release on the Banning of the March: Freedom of Expression Institute Letter to the Municipality on the Banning of the March: IndyMedia Stories on the Battle of Foreman Road: Photographs by Todd McPhearson & Raj Patel: Freedom of Expression Institute Statement on the Police Attack:
5. Mayor Mlaba Responds With Lies After images of the Battle of Foreman Road even started cropping up in The Economist and the New York Times the City panicked. The Mayor called a press conference on one of the old sugar plantations that are now being turned into gated housing developments, malls and offices parks for the rich. After the usual Third Force rant he announced, with a grand sweep of his right arm, that all the land around him was to be made available for housing for the poor beginning with Kennedy Road. He promised that a meeting would soon be held to clarify the details and even agreed to have the meeting in one of the settlements. Abahlali held a number of meetings to discuss the questions that they needed to have answered by the mayor. One of these meetings is described in article by Raj Patel that also usefully theorises the democratic practices developed by Abahlali baseMjondolo via the work of Alain Badiou. But it soon became clear that Mlaba had lied. In response to open panic from the rich in their gated communities the corporate landowner issued statements denying that any deal had been made with the city to build houses for the poor so near to the rich. The questions that Abahlali wanted to ask the mayor, and a press release denouncing his lies, are below. A Short Course In Politics At The University Of Abahlali Basemjondolo by Raj Patel:
6. Quick Repression in New Areas to Break with Loal Party Control The movement was growing rapidly in the political ferment leading up to the March 2006 local government elections. But most new areas faced very serious intimidation at the micro-local level as they tried to build a politics autonomous from the party/state. Below is an article about threats made to militants in the Joe Slovo settlement, the first settlement in the Southern part of the city to join Abahlali, and press releases from E-Section, Umlazi, where assassination became a form of political control. Joe Slovo had a tought time but have stood their ground recently staging a successful occupation of the local police station. In Umlazi weekly protests eventually led to the prosecution of two of the local councillor's employees on charges of murder. Fazel Khan, who co-wrote the Joe Slovo story with Steph Lane, is now himself under threat from the management of the University where he works. See http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/11357.php and http://www.metamute.org/files/cafa.letter.doc In her other life Steph Lane is a housing activist in Chicago. As Abahlali got better and better known they got more and more platforms in the media and other forums. They have resisted, with admirably resolve, the pressure to have S'bu Zikode substitute for the mass movement. They scrupulously elect, mandate and rotate representatives to take platforms and attend meetings. But the media interest in Zikode does mean that there is more of a written record of his comments. Here is a transcription of an impromtu talk he gave at an NGO meeting. 'Joe Slovo Under Threat' by Steph Lane & Fazel Khan: S’bu Zikode’s Transcribed Speech Made at the Centre for Civil Society Colloquium:
7. Triumph in the High Court and in the Streets of Durban By late February 2005 the movement was strong enough to organise a march of 20 000 on the Provincial Minister of Housing. The repression leading up to the 2 March 2006 election had been intense. The ban on marching had remained in place since November 2005 and they had even been physically prevented by the police from taking up an invitation to appear on a TV talk show. But they had the critical intellectual and material mass to be able to withstand this repression. A march was scheduled for 20 February and banned. It was rescheduled for 27 February and then rebanned. But in the interim Abahlali had secured pro bono legal support and went to the high court where the ban was overturned and they marched into the city in triumph. Below are some press releases and pamphlets about these events. The triumphant march into the City was followed by a successful boycott of the local government elections two days later. Abahlali banned from TV Talk Show: 27 February March Pamphlet: Triumphant March into the City
8. Some Time for Reflection after the Election The reduction in political pressure after the elections created some space for less pressured reflection. Here is a short article from The Witness newspaper reflecting on the high cost to local democracy of the March 2005 local government elections. There are also two longer articles that reflect on the struggle to this point. The first article gives an overview of the first year of the Abahlali struggle situating it with in the rich history of shack dwellers resistance in Durban and some of the debates about resistance from the shanty town. It is followed by an article by Alex Beresford which is based on careful interviews with Bahlali and trade union officials and which explores the prospect for a worker shack dwellers alliance. It's conclusions are not exactly positive but the paper provides important unsight into the thinking in Abahlali and some of the bigger unions (and it has the enormous merit of being based on what the people being written about think rather than, as with so much work, being entirely speculative). This section ends with a transcipt of the remarks made in English by S'bu Zikode during his Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture. The Lecture used to be held every month in Durban. Usually important intellectuals spoke about the poor. Zikode’s lecture was the first time that some one living in a shack had access to this kind of platform. 'Our Struggle Is Thought, On The Ground, Running' by Richard Pithouse: Trapped in Corporatism? Trade Union Linkages to the Abahlali BaseMjondolo Movement in Durban by Alex Beresford:
Beresford.DOC 268 KB Mercury edit of Zikode's Lecture:
9. The Struggle Continues - More Fires, More Threatened Evictions...
Abahlali continue to win excellent press coverage locally and nationally in English and Zulu media. The press releases below, from the Motala Heights settlements, the first settlement in the nearby industrial town of Pinetown to join Abahlali, are about threatened evictions. The community there is very well organised and have twice forced off the officials, accompanied by police and private security, who have come to mark their homes slated for eviction. Their pistol wielding cowboy councillor is in league with a local tycoon who wants to develop gated housing for the middle class on their land. They got good media coverage too and there is currently a stalemate. The state has promised to 'clear the slums in time for the 2010 Football World Cup and is now looking to set up a paramilitary force to control shack dwellers. An article from the Mail & Guardian newspaper reflects on this development. There is also a press release and article about another person taken by the fire in Kennedy Road, this time an old man.
Two Motala Heights Press Releases (and pictures on IndyMedia): 'Human Beings are Living There' - article from the Mail & Guardian: 'Shack Fire Takes Life, eThekwini Municipality Electrification Policy Takes Soul' by Shantel Vachani: 'Shack Fire Leads to More Mass Action' by Kerry Chance (with pictures of the Baba Dhlomo Memorial):
http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/10998.php Previous Fires The Lacey Road Fire:
10. UnFreedom Day 27 April, the anniversary of the first democratic parliamentary elections in South Africa, is a national public holiday. Every year politicians deploy their portly patriarchal authority and heritage budgets to herd the poor into stadiums to be lectured on their leaders’ heroic role in the struggle and to be reminded ‘how far we have come’. This year Abahlali, working with various other organisations decided on something different. They hosted an UnFreedom Day celebration at which different communities came together to avoid pompous speeches and instead share music, dance, theatre and poetry. A booklet produced for this carnival of heresy included submissions from many of the community organisations that came together for UnFreedom Day. It became an important moment in the development of the movement’s self consciousness and is very well worth looking at. UnFreedom Day also marked the entrance of various settlements and a militant organisation of street traders from the nearby town of Pinetown into Abahlali. This event was also the first, and second last, time in which NGO was able to use its resources to buy influence in the movement with the result that a simulated but easily malleable ‘movement’ made up of 3 middle class people got the same billing on the press release (and a large allocation of the treasured red t-shirts that were still sitting in a university office months later) as a mass democratic movement of, at that time, more than 20 000 people…So it goes…Struggle is a school. Booklet: http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/10341.php
11. We are Human Beings, Not Pets Xin Wei Ngiam, a student and migrant hotel worker organiser in Boston, recently spent a month in Durban. While here she wrote an article based on interviews with Bahlali. The key theme that emerges in her beautifully written essay in which she weaves together insights gleaned from interviews is a problematisation of orthodox ideas of what constitutes 'democracy'. This very political question, rather than the economic questions that have often dominated left thought, is at the heart of the continually developing thinking that has driven this movement. Taking poverty seriously: What the poor are saying and why it matters by Xin Wei Ngiam:
12. Using the Constitution, Getting Assaulted and Shot at by the Cops In August this year Abahlali used the Promotion of Access to Information Legislation to compel the city to make public its plans for shack dwellers. This audacious use of progressive legislation won the movement major media attention. The state didn’t like this. Abahlali were called in by the office of the Provincial Minister of Housing and instructed, in the most contemptuous manner, to cease speaking to the media. They noted their defiance in a press statement and proceeded to humiliate officials from the ministers’ office in two major radio debates. Then, working with community groups from Municipal flats in Chatsworth and Wentworth, they staged an impressive protest outside the International Convention Centre where various ‘stakeholders’ (government, business, the World Bank etc) were discussing housing for the poor. The t-shirts made for the occasion read ‘Talk to Us, Not For US!’ A few days later, on 12 September 2006, S’bu Zikode and Philani Zungu were arrested on trumped up charges and severely assaulted while on the way to a radio interview. Bahlali attempting to march on the police station were shot at with rubber bullets and live ammunition and defended themselves with bricks and stones. Press Release for PAIA Press Conference: Pictures of PAIA Application Delivery: Press Release Declaring a Refusal to Obey Inkosi: 13. New eMouse Cracks On Monday 2 October New eMouse became the 34th settlement to join Abahlali. It was the first area built as a formal housing development but now predominantly a shack settlement to join the movement. It has an interesting history in that the formal housing was built by the Catholic Church after people were evicted from Church land to make way for factories.eMouse Press Release: http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/11342.php
14. No Longer on Our Own Freedom of Expression Statement on Increasing Police Repression: 15. But Repression Continues A number of Bahlali are facing intimidation at work consequent to their open commitment to Abahlali baseMjondolo. http://www.metamute.org/files/abm-work intimidation press release.DOC For updates on Abahlali and other shack dweller struggles in South Africa and around the world watch: UPDATE: ALSO CHECK OUT THE VERY NEW (AND VERY MUCH STILL WORK IN PROGRESS) ABAHLALI SITE at: http://www.abahlali.org. There are also a lot of traces in text and image of Abahlali history online at: And, finally, the Abahlali logo: Developed in a series of workshops over a few months the logo is now constantly mutating and developing in the hands of various embroidery and silk screen artists. subject: Commons | History | Independent Media | New Enclosures | Occupations | Politics
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Congratulations on your resistance against repression.
It really is an inspiration to us.
I think this is the beginnings of something really BIG, and I mean worldwide - planetary, and cosmic.
God Bless.
Chris, from Australia.