Abahlali baseMjondolo

Abahlali Assembly, Foreman Road Settlement

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a movement of shack dwellers in South Africa which started with a road blockade in the city of Durban in early 2005.^[1]^[2]The words Abahlali baseMjondolo are isiZulu for people who stay in shacks.

Abahlali refuses to participate in party politics^[3]^[4]or any NGO style professionalisation or individualization of struggle and instead seeks to build democratic people's power where people live and, to a much lesser extent, where people work. ^[5] Abahlali has members in just under 40 shack settlements most of which are in and around the cities of Durban, Pinetown and Pietermartizburg. Although it is a regional rather than a national movement it is often referred to as by far the largest movement of the poor to have emerged outside of the ANC alliance thus far in post-apartheid South Africa. Abahlali have been subject to severe state repression and have a very high media profile especially in the isiZulu media and on local radio.

Context

The eThekwini Municipality which governs Durban and Pinetown has embarked on a slum clearance programme which means the steady demolition of shack settlements and a refusal to provide basic services (e.g. electricity, sanitation etc) to existing settlements on the grounds that all shack settlements are now temporary. In these demolitions some shack dwellers are simply left homeless and others are subject to forced evictions to the rural periphery of the city. Abahlali is primarily committed to opposing these demolitions and forced removals and to fighting for good land and quality housing in the cities. In most instances this takes the form of a demand for shack settlements to be upgraded where they are or for new houses to be built close to where the existing settlements are. However the movement has also argued that basic services such as water, electricity and toilets should be immediately provided to shack settlements while land and housing in the city are negotiated. The movement has had a considerable degree of success in stopping evictions and forced removals, has had some success in winning the right for new shacks to be built as settlements expand and in winning access to basic services but, with the exception of one piece of land in Pinetown, has struggled to win access to good urban land for quality housing.

From its origins in a rejection of the representative role of local councillors, Abahlali have also argued very strongly for direct popular democracy (i.e. popular counter power) as a goal and mode of struggle. In practice this has meant democratising settlements that were run on the basis of various forms of authoritarianism, refusing to participate in (state) electoral politics and seeking to force all would be representatives of the poor (in government, NGOs, churches, universities etc) to 'speak to us, not for us' with a view to building the power of the power of the poor against the rich rather than advocating for a counter elite who will represent the poor against the rich. Abahlali has had great success in building popular power outside of the councillor system and in winning the right for the poor to speak for themselves in the media and in various kinds of engagements and encounters. However in a number of settlements the struggle against unelected authoritarian (and often armed) local elites, who often try to deliver the settlement to a political party in exchange for petty favours, is ongoing.

Growth and influence of the movement

Since the 2005 road blockade the membership of Abahlali has grown from the entire population of the 6 000 strong Kennedy Road settlement in the Clare Estate area of Durban to the point where 13 entire settlements have voted to collectively affiliate to Abahlali and govern themselves autonomously from party/state politics. There are also a further 23 branches in other settlements in Durban and the nearby town of Pinetown that are not collectively affiliated to Abahlali but which do allow independent political activity. In some instances this space is given willingly but in others it remains highly contested. The movement now also works with street traders and has a further 3 branches of street traders, all of which are in Pinetown. It also has members in eMmaus and Motala Farm who live in poor quality houses rather than shacks and who joined because their communities are adjacent to Abahlali shack settlements. Recently branches have also been opened in the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town. The movement is multi-national, multi-racial and multi-ethnic.

The movement's red t-shirts have become famous and Abahlali is often simply known as Izikipa ezibomvu (the red shirts). Individuals in the state, and linked to a local NGO, have alleged that the shirts are provided by some nefarious source. But Abahlali members, as well as visiting academics who have spent time with the movement, and some journalists, report that the shirts are, in fact, most often made in the shacks on rented pedal power sewing machines by the Abahlali Women's Sewing Collective.

Activities of the movement

The movement is best known for having democratised the internal governance of many settlements (although these struggles continue in many settlements and are not resolved everywhere) and having organised numerous large marches on local councillors, as well as the mayor and the provincial Minister of Housing and high profile protests against a local police officer and the premier of KwaZulu-Natal. The organisation has also fought against evictions and forced removals by mass mobilisation and court action; successfully used access to information law to force the city to reveal its plans for the forced removal of many shack settlements and its land holdings; demanded the electrification of shack settlements to stop the regular fires and trained people to make illegal electricity connections safely; campaigned for access to water and sanitation; fought for land and housing in the city; started creches; held quarterly all night music, poetry and drama evenings; produced a number of choirs and bands that have developed explicitly political forms of various traditional musics; run a 16 team football league; provided HIV/AIDS care; started a ten thousand copies per issue newspaper; undertaken various education projects; vigorously opposed what it sees as authoritarianism from government, business and some NGOs; won major and sustained media attention particularly in the Zulu language media; campaigned in support of shack dwellers in Zimbabwe and Haiti; campaigned for access to schools, sports facilities and libraries; won legal status for new shacks and for expanded shacks, and sought to win popular control over decision making that affects poor communities. Abahlali has produced 6 or 7 shack dwelling public intellectuals who regularly comment and, in some instances, write in the local media in English, Zulu and Xhosa.^[6]. There were no evictions from or demolitions of shacks in Abahlali settlements from December 2006 till July 2007 when four new shacks were demolished in the Foreman Road settlement. This demolition is being vigorously contested.

Abahlali is currently mobilising against the Slums Bill, a new law that seeks to enable the rapid mass eviction of shackdwellers, to set up 'transit camps' in which to house evicted shackdwellers and to criminalizes all resistance to evictions.^[7].

The movement has formal and vibrant relationships with the Anti-Eviction Campaign in Cape Town, the Landless Peoples' Movement and the Combined Harare Residents' Association in Zimbabwe and a number of other community organisations. There are also connections to movements of the poor in Turkey and Haiti.

A key slogan of the movement is 'Sekwanele!' ('Enough!')

Structure

Office holders at branch, settlement and movement level are elected annually in open assemblies. At least half of all elected positions are filled by women. Office holders are given mandates for action at open weekly meetings, are subject to recall and the secretariat can credibly claim to represent approximately 30,000 people. People elected into office are not elected to make decisions on particular issues but rather to ensure democratic decision making on questions and matters related to those issues and to carry out mandates received this way. People who present the movement to the media and who travel to represent the movement elsewhere are always elected, mandated and rotated and at least half of the people elected to fulfil these responsibilities are women. At large assemblies male and female questioners and speakers are alternated. One of the movement's founding principles, which is regularly reaffirmed publicly, is that no one in the movement will ever make any money from the movement. The movement accepts no money from political parties, governments or from those NGOs which seek to use donor funding to substitute their own voices and projects for those of the poor and is 100% run by unpaid volunteers. Funds are raised by a small annual membership fee of R7 (1$ US) and occasional irregular small donations and are strictly used for movement (not individual) expenses such as transport, printing, bail costs etc. Donations are only accepted when the movement's meetings (rather than the donor) will have full control over how the money is used.

The movement has a number of sub-committees and internal organisations such as a Churches Sub-Committee, a Youth League, a Women's League, a Book Collective, etc, etc.

Philosophy

The movement's philosophy has been sketched out in a number of articles and interviews. The key ideas are those of a politics of the poor, a living politics and a people's politics. A politics of the poor is understood to mean a politics that is conducted by the poor and for the poor in a manner that enables the poor to be active participants in the struggles conducted in their name. Practically it means that such a politics must be conducted where poor people live or in places that they can easily access, at the times when they are free, in the languages that they speak etc, etc. It does not mean that middle class people and organisations are excluded but that they are expected to come to these spaces and to undertake their politics here and in a dialogical and respectful manner. There are two key aspects to the idea of a living politics. The first is that it is understood as a politics that begins not from theory but from the experience of the people that shape it. It is argued that political education usually operates to create new elites who impose ideas on others and to exclude ordinary people from thinking politically. This politics is not anti-theory - it just asserts the need to begin from lived experience and to move on from there rather than to begin from theory. The second key aspect of a living politics is that political thinking is always undertaken democratically and in common. People's politics is opposed to party politics or politicians' politics and it is argued that the former is a popular democratic project undertaken without financial reward and with an explicit refusal of representative roles and personal power while the latter is a top down, professionalised representative project driven by personal power.

The movement often but not always opens and closes its meetings with a prayer. It has engaged in theological debates internally and with churches. It is not linked to any particular church and welcomes various forms of religiosity. Most members are Christian but some are Muslim, Hindu and atheist and a Muslim person is just as likely to be asked to open a meeting with a prayer as a Christian person.

Harassment

In the early days of the movement individuals in the ruling party, including the eThekwini City Manager Mike Sutcliffe and Mayor Obed Mlaba and many others, often accused Abahlali of being manipulated by a white man, a 'third force', or a foreign intelligence agency.^[8] Similar claims have been made by people in and associated with two left NGOs. No empirical evidence was ever been adduced for these claims but they created a climate that justified violent repression. Since then the state has developed much better intelligence and now appears to be very well aware of who the key movement people are in each settlement and to be targeting those people in various ways.

The movement has suffered sustained illegal harassment from the state^[9]^[10]^[11] that resulted in more than 200 arrests of Abahlali members and repeated police violence in people's homes, in the streets and in detention. On a number of occasions the police used live ammunition, armoured vehicles and helicopters in their attacks on unarmed shack dwellers. In 2006 the local city manager, Mike Sutcliffe, implemented a complete ban on Abahlali's right to march which was eventually overturned in court. Abahlali have been violently prevented from accepting invitations to appear on television and radio debates by the local police. The movement has laid numerous assault, as well as theft and wrongful arrest charges against the police. On 4 December 2006 a pregnant women lost her child and a man was killed when the police attacked residents of the Siyanda settlement who had blockaded a major road. Police harassment has been strongly condemned by human rights organisations including, most notably, the Freedom of Expression Institute which has issued a number of statements in strong support of Abahlali's right to speak out and to organise protests. Police violence against Abahlali has been quite widely covered in the mainstream international media (e.g The New York Times^[12], The Times (London), Economist, Le Monde etc). Not one of the arrests of Abahlali members has ever led to a trial and no member of Abahlali has ever been convicted of any offence.

A number of Abahlali members have come under major pressure at work due to their activities in the movement and some have been forced out of jobs in both the public and private sectors including S'bu Zikode^[13]^[14], the current elected head of the movement.

Abahlali have organised against police brutality and after a march on Supt. Glen Nayager of the Sydenham Police Station in April 2005, a march that received strong church support, there seems to have been an improvement. Although there have been arrests after that march (for connecting electricity illegally) no one has been assaulted while in police custody.^[15].

Controversies

Abahlali, sometimes acting together with the Cape Town Anti-Eviction Campaign, have marched on various forums in which the state, academics and NGOs (including left academics and NGOs) have been discussing issues of poverty. They have often argued that they should, as poor people, be included in the planning and conducting of these discussions and that they should be planned and run democratically and that they should be held where poor people live, at times when poor people are free to attend meetings and translated into the languages that poor people speak. They have asserted that 'we are the Professors of poverty' and worn t-shirts with the slogan "Talk to us, not for us!". These protests have included marching against the World Social Forum in Nairobi together with Kenyan shack dwellers as well as various protests in Durban against the state, NGOs, academics and transnational organisations. Some have seen this tactic as a positive and radically democratic development in that it aims to ground left practice in the lifeworld of the poor rather than have it as a battle between contesting elites with one faction paid to represent the poor and the other paid to represent the rich. However some NGO people have argued that it is divisive and regrettable.

2010 World Cup

In the run-up to the 2010 World Cup, shackdwellers have been considered by some in government as a blight. City Hall has promised to 'clear the slums' by 2010 and there are real fears that in Durban, as in other South African cities like Cape Town, shack dwellers will face forced removals and evictions on a major scale in the run up to the World Cup. These fears have escalated greatly with the June 2007 passing of the Prevention of Slums Bill in the Provincial Parliament. The Bill compels landowners to evict on the threat of arrest and criminalises resistance to evictions. The provincial Department of Housing, that brought the Bill to the Provincial Parliament, has repeatedly stated that 'the slums will be cleared by 2010 in KwaZulu-Natal'. Abahlali is planning mass mobilizing against the Bill and is also taking the matter to the Constitutional Court with support from a pro bono legal legal centre.

For further study

The situation in South Africa is not unique. There are many examples of similar settlements, be they called favelas, Bidonvilles, Gecekondu, Kartonsko naselje, flophouses, shanty towns, ghettos or colonias. Examples include New Village in Malaysia, Cité Soleil in Haiti, and Kibera in Kenya. For more information on shack settlements around the world, see the work of researchers Robert Neuwirth and Mike Davis as well as the special issue of Mute Magazine on shanty town struggles.

External links

Notes and references

^ [1] Article by Richard Pithouse on the origins of the movement
^ [2] Article by Jacob Byrant on the origins of the movement
^ [3] Article by M'du Hlongwa examining the refusal of electoral politics in Abahlali
^ [4], Article by Raj Patel examining the refusal of electoral politics in Abahlali
^ [5] Article by Xin Wei Ngiam that includes interviews on conceptions of democracy amongst Abahlali militants
^ [6] A collection of online articles by Abahlali public intellectuals
^ [7]The text of the Slums Bill plus various documents in response to it
^ [8] Article by S'bu Zikode written in response to Third Force allegations
^ [9] An eyewitness account of police violence in the Mail & Guardian newspaper
^ [10] Article on police violence by System Cele
^ [11] Article on police violence by Philani Zungu
^ [12], New York Times article
^ [13] Article by S'bu Zikode on being fired
^ [14] Article by Nigel Gibson that includes a theorization of S'bu Zikode as political philosopher plus some biographical information
^ [15] Pictures and memorandum from a protest against Nayager

[1] [1] Article by Richard Pithouse on the origins of the movement

[2] [2] Article by Jacob Byrant on the origins of the movement

[3] [3] Article by M'du Hlongwa examining the refusal of electoral politics in Abahlali

[4] [4], Article by Raj Patel examining the refusal of electoral politics in Abahlali

[5] [5] Article by Xin Wei Ngiam that includes interviews on conceptions of democracy amongst Abahlali militants

[6] [6] A collection of online articles by Abahlali public intellectuals

[7] [7]The text of the Slums Bill plus various documents in response to it

[8] [8] Article by S'bu Zikode written in response to Third Force allegations

[9] [9] An eyewitness account of police violence in the Mail & Guardian newspaper

[10] [10] Article on police violence by System Cele

[11] [11] Article on police violence by Philani Zungu

[12] [12], New York Times article

[13] [13] Article by S'bu Zikode on being fired

[14] [14] Article by Nigel Gibson that includes a theorization of S'bu Zikode as political philosopher plus some biographical information

[15] [15] Pictures and memorandum from a protest against Nayager

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