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Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is a shack-dwellers' movement in South Africa. The movement grew out of a road blockade organized from the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the city of Durban in early 2005 and now operates across the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and in Cape Town. It is the largest shack dweller's organization in South Africa and campaigns to improve the living conditions of poor people and to democratize society from below. According to the The Times of London the movement "has shaken the political landscape of South Africa." According to academic Joel Kovel Abahlali baseMjondolo have opted "to recreate Commons" and "have organized themselves into a modern simulacrum of the Paris Commune."

The words Abahlali baseMjondolo are isiZulu for people who stay in shacks.

Since 2005, the movement has carried out a series of large scale marches. and created numerous dual power institutions. AbM has called for "a living communism", has often made anti-capitalist statements and has demanded the expropriation of private land for public housing.

Abahlali states that it refuses to participate in party politics or any NGO-style professionalization or individualization of struggle and instead seeks to build democratic people's power where people live and work.

Academic work on the movement stresses that it is, indeed, non-professionalized (i.e. independent of NGO control), autonomous from political organisations and party politics and democratic.

The movement has been involved in considerable conflict with the eThekwini Municipality and has undertaken numerous protests and legal actions against the City authorities. Its members have been beaten and many of its leaders arrested by the Sydenham police.The movement has sued the Provincial Government of KwaZulu-Natal to have the Slums Act declared unconstitutional.

The movement took a strong stand against the xenophobic attacks that swept the country in May 2008 and there were no attacks in any Abahlali settlements. The movement was also able to stop an in-progress attack in the (non-Abahlali affiliated) Kenville settlement and to offer shelter to some people displaced in the attacks.

Abahlali has often made claims over severe police harassment, including torture. On a number of occasions, these claims have been supported by church leaders and human rights organisations.

In late December 2008, S'bu Zikode announced that after long negotiations, the movement was about to sign a deal with eThekwini Municipality to provide services to 14 settlements and to build houses at 3 settlements. But as yet there appears to have been been no official announcement in this regard.

Context

In early 2008 the United Nations expressed serious concern about the treatment of shack dwellers in Durban.

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 unlawful 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 quickly had a considerable degree of success in stopping evictions and forced removals, winning the right for new shacks to be built as settlements expand and in winning access to basic services but for three years was not able to win secure access to good urban land for quality housing. However in late 2008 S'bu Zikode announced a deal with the eThekwini Municipality, in Durban, which will see services being provided to 14 settlements and tenure security and formal housing to 3 settlements.

The movement has, along with the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign refused to work with the NGO run 'Social Movements Indaba' (SMI), and some of the NGOs involved with the SMI, and they vigorously reject its claims to represent movements of the poor in South Africa.

Campaigns

• Housing

The primary demand of the movement has been for decent, public housing housing. The movement has often used the phrase 'the right to the city' to insist that the location of housing is critically important and demands that shack settlements are upgraded where they are and that people are not relocated to out of town developments.

• Services

The movement has also campaigned for the provision of basic services to shack settlements.

• Evictions & Forced Removals

The movement opposes all evictions and forced removals and had campaigned vigorously on this score via public protest and, also, legal action. .

• Fire & Electricity

In South Africa there are an average of "ten shack fires a day with someone dying in a shack fire every other day". Abahlali has campaigned on this issue demanding, amongst other things, the electrification of shacks.

• Dual Power & the Refusal of Electoral Politics

Since 2005 Abahlali baseMjondolo has refused to vote in all state elections. The movement states that it aims, instead, to build a counter power to that of the state by creating a series of linked collectives and communes. This position is shared by all the organisations in the Poor People's Alliance.

• The Slums Act

Abahlali baseMjondolo is currently taking the Provincial Government of KwaZulu-Natal to court to have the Slums Act declared unconstitutional.

• Xenophobia

As noted above the movement has campaigned vigorously against xenophobia.

• Police Brutality

The movement has organized numerous actions against police racism and brutality.

Philosophy

The movement describes it self as‘a homemade politics that everyone can understand and find a home in’. Its 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. 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 external theory but from the experience of the people that shape it. It is argued that political education usually operates to create new elites who mediate relationships of patronage upwards and 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 (usually imported from the Global North) and to impose theory on the lived experience of suffering and resistance in the shacks. 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 (as well as to top down undemocratic forms of NGO 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.

Harassment

In the early days of the movement individuals in the ruling party often accused Abahlali of being criminals manipulated by a malevolent white man, a 'third force', or a foreign intelligence agency.

The movement, like others in South Africa, has suffered sustained illegal harassment from the state that has resulted in more than 200 arrests of Abahlali members over the last 3 years 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, unlawfully 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 Freedom of Expression Institute has issued a number of statements in strong support of Abahlali's right to speak out and to organise protests. The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions and a group of prominent church leaders have also issued public statements against police violence, as has Bishop Rubin Philip in his individual capacity, and in support of the right of the movement to publicly express dissent.

In March 2008 the Mercury newspaper reported that both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International were investigating Human Rights abuses against shack dwellers by the City Government.

Church Support

The movement has received strong support from some key church leaders. In a speech at the AbM Unfreedom Day event on 27 April 2008 Anglican Bishop Rubin Philip said that:

"The courage, dignity and gentle determination of Abahlali baseMjodolo has been a light that has shone ever more brightly over the last three years. You have faced fires, sickness, evictions, arrest, beatings, slander, and still you stand bravely for what is true. Your principle that everyone matters, that every life is precious, is very simple but it is also utterly profound. Many of us who hold dear the most noble traditions of our country take hope from your courage and your dignity."

The Italian theologian Brother Filippo Mondini has attempted to develop a theology based on the political thought and practices developed in Abahlali baseMjondolo.

The Poor People's Alliance

In September 2008 the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, together with Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Landless People's Movement and the Rural Network (Abahlali baseplasini) formed The Poor People's Alliance. The poor people's alliance refuses electoral politics under the banner 'No Land! No House! No Vote!'.

Criticisms

According to eThekwini City Manager Dr. Michael Sutcliffe the essence of the tensions between Abahlali baseMjondolo and the City lie in the fact that the movement "rejects the authority of the city." When the Durban High Court ruled that his attempts to ban marches by Abahlali baseMjondolo were unlawful he stated that: "We will be asking serious questions of the court because we cannot allow anarchy having anyone marching at any time and any place.".

According to Lennox Mabaso, spokesperson for the Provincial Department of Housing, the movement is "under the sway of an agent provocateur" who is "engaged in clandestine operations" and who has been "assigned to provoke unrest".

Films About Abahlali baseMjondolo

• A Place in the City by Jenny Morgan, 2008
• Dear Mandela by Dara Kell & Christopher Nizza, 2008
• The Right to Know: The Fight for Open Democracy in South Africa by Ben Cashdan, 2007
• Nayager Falls, Abahlali Rises by Sally Gilles and Fazel Khan, 2007
• Kennedy Road and the Councillor by Aoibheann O'Sullivan, 2005

Also See

• The Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee in India
• The EZLN in Mexico
• Fanmi Lavalas in Haiti
• The Homeless Workers' Movement in Brazil
• The Landless Peoples Movement in South Afria
• The Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil
• Movement for Justice en el Barrio in the United States of America
• Narmada Bachao Andolan in India
• The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa

External links

• Abahlali baseMjondolo Website
• Khayelitsha Struggles
• Abahlali baseMjondolo newswire
• A collection of articles by Abahlali baseMjondolo members
• A Digital Archive of Abahlali baseMjondolo History from March 2005 to November 2006 (with links to pictures, articles, press releases etc) at the MetaMute site
• Magazine article giving a broad overview of the first 18 months of Abahlali baseMjondolo
• Articles by and on Abahlali baseMjondolo in Zulu
• Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

Notes and references

1. Article in the Sunday Tribune newspaper by Fred Kockott describing the road blockade
2. Academic article by Richard Pithouse on the origins of the movement
3. Academic Article by Jacob Byrant on the origins of the movement published in the Journal of Asian & African Studies
4. Article in the Sowetan newspaper on the launch of the Cape Town branch of Abahlali baseMjondolo
5. 'South Africa's Poor Have Had Enough' Carol Landry, Agence France-Presse, December 2005
6. 'The State of Resistance: Popular struggles in the Global South' edited by Francois Polet pp.139-140, McMillian 2007
7. iPolitiki ePhilayo
8. 'Stench of shanties puts ANC on wrong side of new divide' by Jonathan Clayton 25 February 2006
9. Joel Kovel, 'The Enemy of Nature', 2007 Zed Books, New York, p. 251
10. Resistance from the other South Africa by Neha Nimmagudda in Pambazuka News(2008-07-17)
11. See 'Rights, democracy, social movements: Abahlali baseMjondolo - a living politics' Masters Thesis by Matt Birkinshaw, University of London, 2007
12. Text of Speech at Diakonia Economic Justice Forum - Please follow the link to the PDF for the full content of the speech
13. 'Abahlali baseMjondolo – The South African Shack Dwellers Movement' by Suzy Subways, 2008
14. See ‘The poor need proper homes’ - article in the Sowetan by Mary Papayya 1 September 2008
15. Article by M'du Hlongwa examining the refusal of electoral politics in Abahlali
16. Article by Xin Wei Ngiam in Critical Dialogue (Vol.2, No.1, 2006) that includes interviews on conceptions of democracy amongst Abahlali militants.
17. , Article by Raj Patel examining the refusal of electoral politics in Abahlali
18. 'A Short Course in Politics at the University of Abahlali baseMjondolo' Article by Raj Patel of Berkeley University
19. Nigel Gibson, 'Upright and free: Fanon in South Africa, from Biko to the shackdwellers' movement (Abahlali baseMjondolo)', Social Identities (Volume 14, Issue 6 November 2008 , pages 683 - 715)
20. These are detailed in some of the academic work and there is reference to some of the legal actions in the report on Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions (Geneva) which is online at http://www.cohre.org/southafrica. The papers from many of the court actions are also archived on the Abahlali site
21. Niren Tolsi, 'I was punched, beaten' Mail & Guardian, 16 September 2007.
22. See the text of the Slums Bill plus various documents in response to it
23. Text of the Slums Bill and other Documents.
24. See http://www.abahlali.org/node/3582
25. See the article 'The Africa that Pushes Back' by Mukoma Wa Ngugi in Foreign Policy in Focus, 24 December 2008
26. 'The politics of fear and the fear of politics' by Michael Neocosmos, Pambazuka, 2008
27. See the 'The Politics of Fear and the Fear of Politics: Reflections on Xenophobic Violence in South Africa', an article by Professor Michael Neocosmos from Monash University in Australia in the Journal of Asian & African Studies Vol. 43, No. 6, 586-594 (2008)
28. 'The May 2008 Pogroms: xenophobia, evictions, liberalism, and democratic grassroots militancy in South Africa' by Richard Pithouse, in Sanhati, June 2008.
29. AbM statement on police harassment.
30. A statement against police violence against Abahlali by 11 church leaders
31. Relevant Letter and Full Report.
32. Abahlali baseMjondolo (Shack Dwellers) Movement at Indymedia UK
33. United Nations Statement on Housing Rights Violations in South Africa
34. All of these claims can be verified with reference to the report on housing in Durban (titled 'Business As Usual') by the Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions (Geneva) which is online at http://www.cohre.org/southafrica. Also see the report to the United Nations in early 2008 that claims that the City evicts shack dwellers without court orders.
35. See the COHRE report again
36. Speech by S'bu Zikode
37. AEC statement on the SMI
38. This emerges clearly in the archive of the movement's memoranda and press statements
39. There is reference to some of the legal actions against evictions in the 2008 report on housing rights in Durban Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions (Geneva) which is online at http://www.cohre.org/southafrica. The papers from many of the court actions are also archived on the Abahlali site
40. This also emerges very clearly in the archive of the movement's memoranda and press statements
41. This also emerges very clearly in the archive of the movement's memoranda and press statements
42. For a discussion of a key court victory against evictions see the article 'Chetty Champions the Poor' in 'South African Legal Brief', 24 September 2008
43. [http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/50572 Matt Birkinshaw 'The Big Devil in the Jondolos: The Politics of Shack Fires in Pambazuka News (2008)
44. See http://abahlali.org/search/node/fire
45. Speech by S'bu Zikode, December 2008.]
46. See Raj Patel,'Electing Land Questions: A Methodological Discussion with Reference to Abahlali baseMjondolo, the Durban Shack dwellers' Movement', Codesria, 2007
47. The complete text of the Act, and the legal papers from Abahlali and the state are all archived at http://abahlali.org/node/1629
48. Shack dwellers take on Slums Act by Niren Tolsi, Mail & Guardian, 14 February 2008
49. See, for instance, Against Police Brutality - March On Glen Nayager, 10 April 2007
50. 'Thinking Resistance in the Shantytown', Mute Magazine, August 2006]
51. The movement's philosophy is clearly articulated in a number of statements on its website - see, especially, the statements at http://abahlali.org/node/3208 It is also usefully summarised in the academic work by Nigel Gibson
52. Also see 'Taking poverty seriously: What the poor are saying and why it matters' by Xin Wei Ngiam in Critical Dialogue, Vol.2, No.1, 2006
53. Article by S'bu Zikode written in response to Third Force allegations
54. See a report in illegal police repression in South Africa by the Freedom of Expression Institute
55. An eyewitness account of police violence in the Mail & Guardian newspaper
56. Article on police violence by System Cele
57. Article on police violence by Philani Zungu
58. This is discussed in the Journal of Asian & African Studies Feb 2008; vol. 43: pp. 63 - 94.http://jas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/1/63
59. [http://www.fxi.org.za/PDFs/ACP/Shackdwellers/Mike%20Sutcliffe%20letter%202.pdf Also see a letter from the Freedom of Expression Institute, 23 February 2008, which gives a detailed chronology of the banning of one march
60. Article in the Daily News
61. Statement by the Freedom of Expression Institute
62. Freedom of Expression Institute statement
63. Also see 'Free expression means nothing if it’s limited to the media' by Na'eem Jenah, Thought Leader, 18 October 2007
64. Open Letter to Obed Mlaba & Mike Sutcliffe by COHRE
65. Testimony by Church Leaders
66. Sunday Tribune article on church leader's statement
67. Unfreedom Day Speech by Bishop Rubin Philip, April 27th 2007
68. See'Why we must keep our eyes on the ground' by Professor Stephen Friedman, Business Day, 17 October 2007
69. Mercury article by Imraan Buccus, 8 March 2008
70. The speech was printed in the May issue of 'Anglican News' and it can be downloaded at http://www.anglican.co.za/archives.htm
71. [http://www.korogocho.org/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=478:abahlali-basemjondolo-theology&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=76 See 'Abahlali basemjondolo Theology' by Filippo Mondini, Korogocho, 26 June 2008
72. The Struggle for Land & Housing in Post-Apartheid South Africa by Toussaint Losier, Left Turn, January 2009
73. The alliance, and its position on electoral politics, is mentioned in the speech by S'bu Zikode at http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/415682.html
74. , Press Statement by Sutcliffe
75. , Sunday Tribune article by Mabaso

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