Abahlali baseMjondolo

File:Abahlali Assembly.jpg

Abahlali Assembly, Foreman Road Settlement

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a political movement of shack dwellers in South Africa which started with a road blockade in Durban, South Africa in early 2005.The words Abahlali baseMjondolo are Zulu for people who stay in shacks.

Abahlali refuses to participate in party politics or any NGO style professionalisation of struggle and instead seeks to build people's power where people live and, to a lesser extent, where people work.

Growth and influence of the movement

Since the 2005 road blockade its membership 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 state politics. There are also a further 21 branches in other settlements that are not collectively affiliated to Abahlali but which do allow independent political activity. The movement now also works with street traders and has a further 3 branches of street traders, all of which are in Pinetown. The movement's red t-shirts have become famous and Abahlali is often simply known as Izikipa ezibomvu (the red shirts). Individuals in both the state and 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, made in the shacks on rented pedal power sewing machines in all night sewing sessions by a Women's Sewing Collective.

Activities of the movement

The movement is best known for having democratised the internal governance of many settlements and having organised numerous large marches on local councillors, as well as the mayor and the provincial Minister of Housing. 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; demanded the electrification of shack settlements to stop the regular fires; 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; run a 16 team football league; provided HIV/AIDS care; started a ten thousand copies per issue newspaper; vigorously opposed what it sees as authoritarianism from government, business and some vanguardist left NGOs and sought to win popular control over decision making that affects poor communities. One of their key slogans (along with 'Land! Housing!, 'Sekwanele!' etc.) is 'Talk to Us, Not about Us!'. 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.

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 who present the movement to the media and who travel to represent the movement elsewhere are elected, mandated and rotated and at least half of the people elected to fulfill these responsibilities are women. At assemblies male and female questioners and speakers are alternated. One of the movement's founding principles, which is regularly reaffirmed publically, 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. Funding is raised by a small annual membership fee of R7 (1$ US) and occasional small donations and is strictly used for movement (not individual) expenses such as transport, printing, bail costs etc.

Harassment

Individuals in the ruling party, including the eThekwini City Manager Mike Sutcliffe and Mayor Obed Mlaba and many others, have very often accused Abahlali of being manipulated by a 'third force' or a foreign intelligence agency. No empirical evidence has ever been adduced for these claims but they have created a climate that justifies violent repression. The movement has suffered sustained illegal harassment from the state that has resulted in more than 150 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 have 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. The movement has also 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, The 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.

Individuals in the state (and in late 2006 individuals linked to a local NGO, the Centre for Civil Society) have presented the organisation as a group of criminals under the malevolent influence of a white man. A number of local academics have responded by pointing out that no empirical evidence has ever been provided in support of this assertion, that none of the people making these claims have ever attended an Abahlali meeting or undertaken interviews with members of Abahlali, and, moreover, that this is a racist interpretation very similar to the manner in which the state and white civil society typically described mass movements of the African poor under apartheid. Moreover there is now a large body of detailed ethnographic academic work on the movement, written by researchers from around the world, all of which, without exception, stresses the highly democratic and principled nature of the movement.

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.

For further study

The situation in South Africa is not unique. There are many examples of similar settlements, be they called favelas, 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 among others.

External links

• Abahlali baseMjondolo Website
• A collection of articles by Abahlali baseMjondolo members
• Pictures by Abhalali women
• Picture & video galleries on Abahlali.org
• 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
• Academic article giving a broad overview of the first 18 months of Abahlali baseMjondolo
• Articles by and on Abahlali baseMjondolo in Zulu